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The American Immigrant Alliance is an archive and magazine. We document, publish, and preserve the stories and the contributions of the American immigrant — and through that work, we help all Americans see, with greater clarity and honesty.

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Essay

A Classroom in Three Languages

A profile of the educators in Dearborn, Michigan who are teaching American history in Arabic, English, and the silences in between.

By Jonas Whitfield May 11, 2026

On a Tuesday morning in October, Ms. Hayat Saleh asks her ninth graders to consider what Frederick Douglass might have said about the word *home*.

The answers come back in three languages. Some students arrived from Yemen last spring. Some were born on this block. All of them are reading the same essay, and all of them, in their own ways, are writing themselves into it.

This essay is part of *The American Classroom*, an Alliance series on the educators shaping how a new generation of immigrant Americans learns the country's story — and how that story, in turn, is being expanded by their presence.

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