On Coming to America

Through the On Coming to America page (formerly the Student Gallery), we warmly invite students, teachers, and community members to share first-hand accounts of tough, timely topics,  such as immigration and displacement – along with stories of those who have found the courage to stand-up and speak out on behalf of others.

As we explain on our About page, the Time of Remembrance Project recognizes that history happens one story at a time. We seek to showcase stories not necessarily included in textbooks. We encourage all visitors to this website to explore and document historical events through interviewing family members, community members, authors, educators and others with eyewitness accounts.

On Coming to America is an ongoing invitation and project. From audio files to videos recorded on cell phones, mobile devices or cameras, we welcome your immigration stories. As new submissions come in, we will continue to update the page, rearranging and adding new headings as needed.

For resources on how to conduct an interview with a refugee or immigrant, check out the links below:

• Sample Interview Questions – From the On Coming to America Teacher’s Guide.
• Re-imagining Migration – From Talk, Teach, and Learn.
• Interview Scoring Guide – A rubric for students, from the On Coming to America Teacher’s Guide.
• KQED: Coming to America – Our Best Student Podcasts About Immigration.

If you have an interview or project that is a match for On Coming to America, please fill out the TOR On Coming to America Submission Form and we will review the project and respond via an email or phone call. 

Featured Interview: Storming the Tulips, an Interview with Hannie Voyles

Note: To quickly access specific parts of Hannie’s interview, here is the link to the time codes and short descriptors. Thank you to our partnership with the Sacramento Educational Cable Consortium (SECC) for filming the interview.

Interview Resources:

• Storming the Tulips – A Hyperdoc Lesson
• Storming the Tulips – Teacher’s Guide

Note: We are saddened to share that Hannie passed away in October 2022 – Read her obituary on Legacy.com

Student & Teacher Created: On Coming to America Stories

The stories/interviews below have been recorded by teachers and students, using whatever devices or technologies available in the moment. We hope they serve as a reminder of the importance of documenting immigration stories from our own communities.

• The Children of Syria – A Lost Generation – A Documentary – As a 7th grader, Hasan Alsamman created this documentary during his Video Productions class at Winston Churchill Middle School (Sacramento, California).
• An Interview with Emma – From Germany to California – When student assistant to Granite Bay High School librarian Julia Hedstrom realized one of their classmates had recently made the journey to America, they captured her story with a cell phone.

The space below is reserved for your On Coming to America Stories.