Ellis Island at Roanoke
The Roanoke Avenue School in Riverhead has been recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence. It is also a school known for its diversity and its strong emphasis on respecting and uplifting the diversity of its student body. "We are a family," is its mantra.

Roanoke's third grade teachers and Librarian and Media Specialist Marge Lawrence recently took that celebration of diversity to an even higher level as part of a MESTRACT mini-grant entitled: "New York, A Melting Pot".

The essential question in social studies throughout this year was "Why is NY (America) a gathering of people and cultures?" In an effort to engage their students in experiential learning and to explore this question, the teachers and students transformed the library into a mini Ellis Island. They based their transformation on a virtual tour of Ellis Island that the students had taken during their technology time (http://www.capital.net/~alta/index.html).

As part of their studies of Ellis Island, each student took on the persona of a person from the country of their choice and created an identity for that person. They also created all of the documentation they would need to be processed through Ellis Island to become a citizen of the United States.

They stood and waited in the entrance for the initial processing, carrying suitcases and quieting fussy babies. Every child was a representative of a particular ethnic group and was dressed in clothing representative of the country of their origin. The bureaucrat who initially checked their papers often changed their names. Mario with his hard to pronounce Italian name became Mark Madison. Then, the new immigrants filed through a series of checkpoints, where they had to verify their occupations and trades and what they planned to do in America. An interview questioning their morality/ethics and two medical exams followed and finally they were handed their American flag and interviewed by the press.

When asked why he had come to America, one little boy from Central America, who is himself a recent immigrant, quietly whispered, "to be free."

A little girl, originally from Taiwan and dressed beautifully in silk, looked a little taken aback and shy when asked about how she felt about the process she had just experienced, but then flashed a hesitant smile. "That very week she and her mother had become citizens of the United States of America," her teacher explained.

Lunch was an international smorgasbord with ethnic food supplied by the families of the students. The food was awesome! As the third graders played on the school's new playground equipment together, still dressed in their costumes, it was impossible not to get yet another glimpse of the American dream!

Welcome to America!