When I was writing my college essay, I was taught to talk about something that sets me apart. Growing up in culturally homogenous Vermont, what set me apart was my skin color and my family’s background. I wrote about my relationship to my immigrant father and his culture, my resistance to his artform, African dance, and my realization that I had been denying my culture all along. It wasn’t completely true at the time, but when I re-read it to my college essay classes, it rings true. Teaching college essay writing reminds me of the pressure high school students face to know who they are at 17 and to explain that to an institution. That pressure is only intensified when you are new to the country, to its rules, and to its language.

Teaching college essay writing reminds me of the pressure high school students face to know who they are at 17 and to explain that to an institution. That pressure is only intensified when you are new to the country, to its rules, and to its language. 

At International High School, every student is an immigrant and an English Language Learner, thus every student, to some admission counselor’s standards somewhere, has the perfect topic for a college essay: their very own coming to America story. However, writing “the immigrant story” stirs a lot in the classroom. We start with the expectation that this is the only option, and we continue to navigate the trauma that it brings up in our students. This is a moment where young adults are expected to share a complicated piece of their life in 600 words, and it is challenging! Writing the immigrant story requires sensitivity and encouragement, where writing their story is not only about the pain they’ve experienced but about the resilience and determination they demonstrate through whatever they’ve been through. 

As I’ve taught this class for the past three years, I’ve noticed my students struggling in certain ways. 

The Topic

College essay writing curriculum begins with reviewing the prompts that the common application offers the students and brainstorming an idea for each of the prompts. The most popular prompt in my classes is usually option 2: Describe adversity or a challenge you’ve faced and how you overcame it. 

This is the easiest prompt to connect to for my students, and they often respond with “Coming to this country.” But what does that mean? What specifically about coming to this country was the challenge? There is so much in that sentence that could be difficult, and students feel stuck with where to proceed. 

This is where we start to talk about the story. I ask them what part of their story demonstrates their strength against adversity. They often respond with all of it, and that is so true. The entire journey takes immense strength, and I commend them for doing something I’ve never done. Yet they only have 600 words to describe the nuance of their journey, so we have to get specific. 

I ask them, “What is it about your immigration story that you want to talk about?

Was it the moment you said goodbye to loved ones, was it your last day of school at home or your first day of school in a new country?” Or “What about the moment you stepped off of the plane? Your first couple months? Learning English?” 

This gets students thinking, and they tend to find their way to a version of the similar narrative structure, a version that is deeply personal and oftentimes traumatizing. This brings us to:

The Story

When we seek to help students write the immigrant story, we will hear about the pain and trauma they’ve endured. Personally, I’ve been emotionally affected by some of the essays I’ve read, and I’ve witnessed students be similarly affected as they write and begin to work through painful memories. There is a need to succeed, especially for new Americans who came to this country or were brought here by someone else, evidently for a “better” experience or “more” opportunities. Students will often go to the darkest place when they begin telling their story because they believe that is what colleges are looking for. 

In my class, I do my best to avoid this assertion. I want them to see this as an opportunity to write creatively, to tell the story in an effective way, and instead of focusing on the pain, focus on the changes going on within them and how this will affect them in the future. If a student feels that they need to write about their trauma, but this is too painful for them, I will often encourage them to write about something else since these students are so much more than young immigrants: they are artists, athletes, scholars, people with passions. So, with our focus on storytelling in its true form, sharing who we are and who we are becoming, I promote the beauty of the stories in the classroom rather than the misery. 

These students are so much more than young immigrants: they are artists, athletes, scholars, people with passions.

I had a student who was writing about the death of her grandfather, the patriarch of her family, the man who raised her. She was clearly inspired by the prompt. When we began writing, she was typing for the whole period with an intense and deliberate focus. At the end of the period, I read her work, and it read like a diary entry. The pain of her loss and how alone she felt without her grandfather in her life, in this new country, was so evident in her writing. She discussed everything he taught her, how much she struggled when he died, and how much despair she was in to live this life without him. I was heartbroken for her and unsure of how to proceed. On one hand, I felt so proud of this student for being so vulnerable and honest in her writing, as well as the articulate way she described her emotions. On the other hand, what this student had written was not a college essay. 

This is what educators come up against, especially teaching writing in marginalized communities. Writing is a deeply intimate thing, and the way we talk to students about their writing is crucial in their development and requires so much care. For this student, I commended her on what she wrote. I sincerely apologized for her loss, and this brought the student to tears. To be honest, I was blinking a few back myself. I offered her a tissue, and once I felt we were in a place to meet each other, I proceeded by saying, “Thank you for sharing your story. This is a beautiful and honest piece of writing, and it is a part of your life and your journey that has shaped who you are.” From there, I went on to explain that although she had written something beautiful that she should hold on to, she did not follow the prompt. We went back to the prompt together and broke it down, emphasizing the growth part. Every common application prompt requires the students to discuss some element of growth and discovery in their own life. We then went through her writing and outlined what was important to share about this story and when the story became about her future. When my student said to me, “I don’t know how I will go on without him.” I simply asked her, “But will you go on?” Her answer was yes, and when I asked her why, she said, “To make him proud.” 

To make him proud. That was my student’s reasoning for keeping up with her schoolwork throughout her grieving process, for taking care of her younger siblings, for starting her own business. After we were able to process and acknowledge the profound impact her grandfather’s death had on her, we then found a way to turn the story back to her. 

Additionally, when reviewing, I went through her piece and underlined sentences that she needed to include, while clarifying that the end of her essay needed to focus on where she goes from here. 

After all, a college essay calls for an estimate on a student’s future, how they might do in school, what they care about, what they want. Although students may start this written exploration through trauma, they should end looking towards the future. 

A college essay calls for an estimate on a student’s future, how they might do in school, what they care about, what they want.

This is not easy. As a deeply empathetic person, especially to the immigrant experience, I feel for my students when we begin to deal with this topic. I struggle to connect with this part of them. If a student is certain this is the story they want to tell, I’ll encourage them towards depth, ask them to think about descriptive language when describing their feelings. Poetic elements can be a great avenue to expressing emotions without feeling the effects of expressing them. Like including a metaphor of depression, rather than saying “I was depressed.” Sometimes I encourage other avenues when I can tell a student is way too affected to speak on this journey. A college essay should never be reason enough for retraumatizing or triggering a student in class. To think these students have experienced so much before they have even applied to colleges. It takes a toll on them, yet they understand so much about life, and many of them write beautiful and enlightening essays that speak to an immigrant experience we don’t often hear.

For those of you teaching college essay writing (or writing in general) to immigrant populations, please ask them about their background. Ask them to explain the beauty of their home country, ask them how they would say something in their native tongue, this is the way we encourage the immigrant story, and the way we diversify our own perspective of the students we teach. 

It’s best to break the college essay writing process into several classes, beginning with, “What is the college essay?” And reviewing the prompts for each student. Once each student has an idea for each prompt, you ask them to pick the idea that they want to write about, and then we collect our background information. Here is a lesson plan to help you get started.

Sample Lesson Plan: Gathering Background Information

GAME: The West Wind Blows If . . . 

You ask the question, and students raise their hands if it applies: 

• You come from another country
• You speak another language 
• You miss someone

This game is great because it helps you get to know your demographic, but it’s also important to illustrate that although we have things in common, we all have our own story. You can stop in between and ask specific students to answer the question you posed, and you will see just how different, unique, and individual each student is. 

This is a fantastic transition into our lesson because now it is time to get specific. 

I teach images, and we go over examples together. 

Images: an image is a picture described through your writing. 

Example

The sun against the window was glaring at me. 
The dirt roads that led to my grandmother’s compound. 
The silence, unlike the city, unlike anything in America. 

I ask them, in regards to their topic, to write down as many images that come to mind as possible. If they’re writing about their home country, I will remind them, “The person reading your essay might not have been there, so what is the weather like? What do the roads look like, what does the food smell like?”

This way their writing comes pre-loaded with descriptive language and connected storytelling, and so, next week, when they begin to start a draft, they have more to grab onto. 

After they write images, they move onto the event. I specify that this is a singular event in their life that they are choosing, of course, more will happen in the course of the essay, but they have to be specific. Again, I encourage every detail. What were you wearing? Who was there? What happened and when? What do you remember? 

By the end of this lesson, students realize they have a lot more to say about their topic than they initially anticipate, and from there, we go on to formulating first drafts, the editing process, and the finalization of an essay. 

I’ve come to realize that writing a college essay is just writing a short story about an important moment in your life, the impact it made on you, and how this will affect your future. They don’t give you much time, so you have to capture their attention right away. It is natural to turn to trauma for that quippy first line, but when I listen to the stories of the immigrants I teach, I hear so much strength and beauty in their journey, and I encourage them to begin with that. 

Photo by cottonbro studio.