These activities ask students to engage with the question of what an equitable school calendar looks like and how to make their own school calendar more inclusive.

“The New Deciders” examines the influence of voters from four demographic groups—black millennials, Arab Americans, Latino Evangelicals and Asian Americans. Viewers will meet political hopefuls, community leaders, activists and church members from Orange County, California, Cleveland, Ohio, Greensboro, North Carolina and Orlando, Florida, all of whom have the opportunity to move the political needle, locally and nationally.

In “Pass or Fail in Cambodia Town,” host Maria Hinojosa visits Long Beach, California, where she finds a Southeast Asian community struggling with what one interviewee describes as a “trauma-informed history.” Far from the stereotype of Asians as a “model minority,” less than 65 percent of Cambodian adults in the United States have graduated from high school. Cambodia Town, a neighborhood in Long Beach, is a community plagued by poverty and gang violence.

In “Politics of the New South,” Maria Hinojosa revisits Clarkston, Georgia, featured in a previous episode and notable for its immigrant population. It’s three days before an election in which three former refugees are running for city office for the very first time.

In this lesson, students will see how statistical data can tell a larger story, understand numbers in various contexts and explore different points of view in relation to data. They will also consider how—as future voters—they will help determine how the political process can serve everybody.

America by the Numbers with Maria Hinojosa, a PBS documentary series produced by the Harlem-based Futuro Media Group, reveals how dramatic changes in the composition and demographics of the United States are playing out across the country.

Especially during election season, American politicians like to accuse each other of backing ideas and policies that are “outside the mainstream.” But what really characterizes that mainstream? And does it change over time? The video documentary “America by the Numbers: Clarkston, Georgia” makes the case that there is a “new mainstream”—one that is wider, more inclusive and will continue to affect our political process.Maria Hinojosa and her crew use numbers to help tell the story of Clarkston. By itself, the demographic data is useful because it’s concrete. It shows us how much our nation has changed in just the last few decades. But with its focus on Clarkston, the documentary puts those numbers in a context that makes them real to us. The numbers now tell a story.

In this lesson, students apply a geographer’s framework to the migration of women who leave Latin America and enter the United States without legal documentation. Students explore the motivation for movement among their peers and then compare their classmates’ experiences with those of some of the women profiled.

The lesson focuses on issues of immigration and on the problems and difficulties faced by immigrants as they wrestle with the dilemma of leaving their country due to economic conditions and other hardships. The lesson lets students experience how immigrants examine their current situation and deal with making the decision to immigrate to the United States.

Barack Obama ran for President in 2008. He won, became the 44th President of the United States and served two terms. In this lesson, students will analyze some of Obama's comments about immigrants. Students will also examine their history textbooks to see how the books shape America's view of the immigrant narrative. In the speech, then-Senator Obama made in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, he said of white Americans, “Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they're concerned, no one has handed them anything." Obama's observation points to a complex reality of American culture: The classic immigrant story — of overcoming hardship, working hard and succeeding — is often invoked by white people who recognize the migrant story in their own history. Despite that, many still reject new immigrants to this country.