Journey: My Story of Migration

by Luis Onofre Valencia

In this first-person autobiographical account, Luis Onofre Valencia shares his experiences crossing the US/Mexico border and living as an undocumented immigrant. His journey toward understanding and embracing his identity leads him to community leadership, police intervention activism, and mental health advocacy.

Big Idea

A person’s migration story is more than a border crossing: it includes identity, belonging, challenges, and contributions to a community. Telling one’s own story can be an act of self-definition and a pathway toward advocacy.

Discussion Questions

1.How does Valencia’s first-person perspective influence what readers understand about migration? What can his individual story teach us, and why should we avoid assuming it represents every immigrant’s experience?
2.How does the meaning of a “journey” expand as Valencia’s story moves from crossing a border to finding strength in his identity?
3.Which moments in the book help you understand the challenges Valencia faces as an undocumented immigrant? How does he describe his responses to those challenges?
4.How might Valencia’s experiences connect with his later community leadership, police intervention activism, and mental health advocacy? What evidence supports your thinking?
5.Where does the narrative invite you to slow down and reflect, and where does it move quickly? How do those pacing choices influence your understanding of Valencia as a person?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 Copies of the book or authorized excerpts, paper, pencils, colored pencils or markers, sticky notes, and a board or chart paper.

Learning Goals

Use textual evidence to explain connections among Valencia’s experiences, developing identity, and advocacy.
Explain how first-person narration shapes a reader’s understanding of an autobiographical account.
Distinguish between summary and scene, and explain how each affects narrative pace.
Revise factual writing through sentence length, punctuation, paragraphing, and reflective pauses without inventing biographical details.
Discuss migration and mental health respectfully while recognizing that one person’s story does not represent an entire group.

Activity Steps

1.Prepare and connect, 5 minutes: Introduce migration, undocumented status, and advocacy in age-appropriate language. Establish that students may pass during discussion and should not ask classmates about immigration status or personal trauma.
2.Read and notice, 10 minutes: Read a teacher-selected passage about Valencia’s migration, identity, or advocacy. Mark places where events move forward and places where explanation or reflection slows the reading; support observations with words from the text.
3.Map the journey, 8 minutes: Fold paper into three panels labeled “Migration,” “Identity,” and “Community Advocacy.” Add a verified detail and page reference to each panel, noting connections without assuming that one experience automatically caused another.
4.Write two speeds, 12 minutes: Select one panel and write a two-sentence factual summary. Beneath it, write a four- to six-sentence explanation that slows attention through a specific textual detail, a connection, and a reflective question; write as a student reader rather than inventing Valencia’s thoughts.
5.Read, revise, and reflect, 10 minutes: Partners read both versions aloud and identify how sentence length, punctuation, and spacing affect pace. Students revise one choice and complete the exit sentence: “I slowed down at ___ because it helps readers understand ___.”

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.3 / RI.5.3 — Explain events and relationships in informational texts using specific information; connect Valencia’s experiences, identity, and advocacy.
ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.6 / RI.7.6 — Determine an author’s point of view or purpose and explain how it is conveyed or distinguished from other positions.
ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.5–W.7.5 — Strengthen writing through planning, revising, editing, and feedback, with grade-appropriate support.
ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.4.1–SL.7.1 — Participate effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas and expressing ideas clearly.
SEL: Self-awareness and social awareness — Explore identity, recognize others’ perspectives, and practice respectful discussion without requiring personal disclosure.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

Valencia’s account offers a meaningful way to study the relationship between lived experience and narrative pace. His story encompasses both a physical journey across the US/Mexico border and a longer journey toward identity, leadership, and advocacy. In a Pace-Write-Read study, students examine how a writer can move across stretches of time while giving selected experiences greater attention. The goal is not to make migration seem like an adventure or suspense game, but to understand how storytelling helps readers recognize a person’s experiences and agency. Begin with a short passage from the actual book: notice its pacing, write a brief response or revision exercise, and read the writing aloud to hear its effects. Because the guidance below is based on the supplied summary rather than a verified full text, references to dialogue, illustrations, chapter breaks, and other features are invitations to investigate—not claims that those features appear. Across grades 4–7, emphasize evidence, distinguish the author’s words from student interpretation, and offer a neutral writing alternative whenever the subject feels too personal.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare the space given to crossing the border, living as an undocumented immigrant, and developing an advocacy role. Ask where the narrative moves through time quickly and where it asks readers to linger.
2. Plot	Map the account’s sequence of experiences and turning points using the text. Discuss how the movement toward community leadership gives the story direction without treating a real life as a neatly solved problem.
3. Prosody	Read a selected passage aloud, changing speed, emphasis, and pauses to match its meaning. Avoid imitating Valencia’s presumed accent or performing distress; focus on how phrasing supports comprehension.
4. Word	Track Valencia’s exact words for identity, belonging, and advocacy. Discuss how precise language differs from labels that reduce a person to immigration status.
5. Concept	Explore “journey” as both movement between places and change in self-understanding. Ask students to support each meaning with evidence from Valencia’s account.
6. Voice & Worldview	Identify language that reveals what Valencia values and how he interprets his experiences. Discuss how his perspective informs the story’s treatment of community and advocacy.
7. Point of View	Examine how first-person narration lets Valencia describe his own experiences and identity. Separate what he explicitly tells readers from what readers infer about other people’s thoughts.
8. Setting & Place	Locate only places named in the text and examine how they shape Valencia’s experiences. Do not invent a crossing route or assume that every setting is described in detail.
9. Original Characters	Treat Valencia and anyone else named in the account as real people rather than invented characters. Notice how actions and selected details establish individuality without assigning unsupported motives.
10. Dialogue	If the book includes dialogue, examine how an exchange slows a moment or reveals a relationship. If it does not, discuss how narration communicates encounters without fabricating conversations.
11. Details	Select a concrete detail about Valencia’s migration or advocacy and explain what it helps readers understand. Ask why that detail deserves attention rather than merely adding length.
12. Descriptions	Study any descriptions of places, people, or feelings and consider how they affect reading speed. Keep student elaborations anchored in the text rather than imagined sensory details of a border crossing.
13. Firsts	Look for experiences Valencia explicitly presents as new or unfamiliar. Discuss how a first experience can become a turning point, while avoiding labeling an event a “first” without evidence.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Identify a passage that makes Valencia’s experience feel close to the reader. Examine whether specific actions, first-person reflection, or another observable technique creates that effect.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Mark a passage that stays with one moment and another that covers a longer period, if both are present. Explain how their arrangement connects the physical migration journey with the development of identity and advocacy.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Discuss uncertainty or obstacles as Valencia presents them, noting how much information readers have at each point. Emphasize understanding real stakes rather than rating a dangerous experience for excitement.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check whether the narrative looks backward, anticipates later events, or ends a section with an unresolved question. If these devices are absent, consider why a more direct chronology might serve Valencia’s purpose.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Examine actual page or section endings for shifts in time, topic, or emotional emphasis. Distinguish deliberate chapter divisions from page endings that may simply result from the edition’s layout.
19. Pace & Creativity	Have students present the same verified information about Valencia’s advocacy in one sentence and then in a short paragraph. Compare how creative arrangement changes emphasis without changing facts.
20. Play	Use movable sentence strips to explore different arrangements of a factual response to the book. Keep play focused on writing choices, not simulations of border enforcement or undocumented life.
21. Performance	Invite students to read a short authorized excerpt or their own analytical response aloud. Compare interpretations of pauses and emphasis without asking anyone to impersonate Valencia.
22. Personality	Identify actions or reflections that reveal Valencia’s individuality beyond his immigration status. Support descriptions such as determined or community-minded with specific evidence rather than relying on the summary alone.
23. Humor	If humor appears, discuss whose perspective it expresses and how it changes the emotional pace. If it does not, consider why humor is not a required ingredient in this personal account.
24. Pause	Locate a sentence or passage that deserves a reflective pause, especially around identity or mental health advocacy. Ask how pausing can create space for understanding rather than simply interrupting the story.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Investigate whether Valencia uses imagery, metaphor, or other poetic language; quote only what is actually present. Begin with the title’s possible literal and figurative meanings of “journey.”
26. Repetition	Track any repeated words or ideas connected to identity, migration, or community. Distinguish exact verbal repetition from a theme that returns in different language.
27. Rhythm	Compare sentence lengths in two passages about different stages of Valencia’s life. Read them aloud to test how their patterns create momentum, steadiness, or reflection.
28. Punctuation	Examine how the punctuation in a selected passage groups ideas and signals pauses. In students’ own responses, test a period versus a comma and discuss how the change affects pace and meaning.
29. Questions	Notice any questions Valencia asks and what they reveal about his concerns or purpose. Separately, collect readers’ questions about identity and advocacy, distinguishing those the book answers from those requiring further research.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare how Valencia describes himself at two points in the account. Use evidence to explore change and continuity rather than framing migration as a simple contrast between two countries.
31. Objects	If a concrete object receives attention, investigate its practical or emotional significance in context. Do not supply stereotypical migration objects or call an object symbolic without textual support.
32. Threes	Look for any actual three-part phrasing or grouping in the text. As a separate student-created structure, organize a response around migration, identity, and advocacy without claiming that Valencia uses that pattern.
33. Lists	If Valencia uses lists, examine whether they compress time, accumulate challenges, or highlight action. Students can also turn verified details about his advocacy into a list and compare its pace with paragraph form.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Inspect the edition’s paragraph spacing and section gaps to see where readers receive visual breathing room. Distinguish visible layout choices from information that the author simply does not provide.
35. Art & Graphics	If photographs, illustrations, maps, or graphics appear, examine how they complement the first-person account. If none appear, discuss how prose establishes place and identity without visual support.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Create a low-stakes evidence hunt for a time shift, a reflective statement, and an advocacy detail. Keep the challenge about reading craft, never about earning points for overcoming simulated migration dangers.
37. Placement	Examine where Valencia introduces information about identity or later advocacy. Ask how receiving that information earlier or later might change readers’ understanding of preceding events.
38. Form	Discuss how a first-person autobiographical account differs from a news report or a biography written by someone else. Consider what this form allows Valencia to explain in his own voice.
39. Dummy	Explain that a dummy is a rough page-by-page book mock-up. Students can make a four-page informational response using verified details about Valencia, testing how page divisions guide attention without presenting it as his original design.
40. Passion	Identify evidence of the concerns and commitments behind Valencia’s community leadership, police intervention activism, and mental health advocacy. Discuss how a writer’s purpose can influence which experiences receive the most space.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: “Slow Down for Identity.” Minutes 0–4: Read a short teacher-selected passage in which Valencia discusses identity, community leadership, police intervention activism, or mental health advocacy. Underline one verified detail and mark a place where the reading seems to accelerate or pause. Minutes 4–7: Write a two-sentence factual summary of the passage in third person, including a page reference. Minutes 7–13: Expand the summary into a five- to six-sentence reader response: retain the facts, explain the significance of one detail, and connect it to identity or advocacy. Use one short sentence and one deliberate paragraph break to guide attention; do not invent dialogue, feelings, or events. Minutes 13–17: Read both versions to a partner, who identifies where the expanded version slows down and whether that pause deepens understanding. Minutes 17–20: Revise one pacing choice and add a craft note: “I used ___ to help readers notice ___.” Students may write about how the passage is constructed rather than discuss its emotional content, and no personal migration disclosure is required.

Classroom Activities

A Journey in Two Speeds

Students create a folded-paper narrative map showing how Valencia’s story connects migration, identity, and community advocacy. Using one teacher-selected passage, they compare a concise factual summary with a slower, evidence-based reflection, then use visual spacing and read-aloud practice to explore how pacing directs readers’ attention. Students do not reenact a border crossing or disclose personal or family immigration experiences.

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