Independent Study: Important Dates

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Welcome back from spring break! It might not seem like it now, but we have just hit the slippery slope heading to the end of the year. Not counting Finals week, we only have roughly 8.5 weeks of class left! The countdown has begun and it's time to start thinking about your final due dates.

You decided on these due dates in class, so I hope you can keep up! As usual, you will have weekly/daily logs due every week (on Friday) but here are the big assignments leading up to, and including, your final!

• April 8th – Interview Questions Due
• April 18th – Interview Transcript and Reflection Due
• April 27th – 1st Rough Draft Due
• May 9th – 2nd Rough Draft Due
• May 20 – Final Paper Due
• May 26 – Infographic Due (may change depending on finals schedule)

Contemp Issues: The Least of These

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Today we will be picking up on our discussion of the US immigration policy that deals with children and families in detention centers. Last time we read about Fega, a Nigerian girl who was kept in detention for over a year after being abandoned by her parents. Today we will be looking at the Hutto Facility in Texas, were families with children are kept pending their asylum applications or deportation hearings.

As part of the Bush administration policy to end what they termed the “catch and release’” of undocumented immigrants, the U.S. government opened the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in May 2006 as a prototype family detention facility. The facility is a former medium-security prison in central Texas operated by CCA, the largest private prison operator in the country. The facility houses immigrant children and their parents from all over the world who are awaiting asylum hearings or deportation proceedings.

As these events unfold, the film explores the government rationale for family detention, conditions at the facility, collateral damage, and the role (and limits) of community activism in bringing change. The film leads viewers to consider how core American rights and values – due process, presumption of innocence, upholding the family structure as the basic unit of civil society, and America as a refuge of last resort – should apply to immigrants, particularly children.

As we watch will need to come up with three open-ended questions which you will bring up in discussion at the end of the film. These questions will be for a grade.

Independent Study: Google Search Tips

Here's the information we went over yesterday in class, if you would like to take a look again. I recommend looking at this in full screen (under the "More" button) to be able to read it clearly.

Google Search Tricks on Prezi