Students learn about Ellis Island by living the journey

• Before they could reach the shelter of the Statue of Liberty%2C the students had to pass a battery of tests.
• Each worked out an identity%2C with a country of origin%2C age%2C family and occupations.
• A teacher who organized the event coached parents on how to be tough inspectors.

They had come from all over the world, from Poland and Ireland, from Africa and China, to pack together into lines on the far side of an auditorium. Between them and the other side of the room sat an imposing row of frowning bureaucrats behind desks.

On the other side of the door at the end of the room? America.

Underneath shawls and worn caps, the hopeful immigrants were anxious. What if their paperwork wasn't in order? What if they didn't have enough money? What if the proctors found some kind of medical condition that might be contagious?

What if, after all their journeying, they couldn't make it to the other side of that room?

Today, Ellis Island is something students all over America see in their history textbooks. They read the stories of people who crossed oceans with little money, few connections and maybe even a different language who would go on to build modern America.

Fourth-graders at Odyssey Charter School in Wilmington got an even closer connection to those stories than pictures and journal entries. On Wednesday, they basically went through Ellis Island themselves.

Students came to school dressed as immigrants from the early 1900s. Over the previous days, they had each worked out their own identity, with a country of origin, age, family and occupations.

Some had researched their ancestors for inspiration, trying to put themselves in the shoes of the first American shoots in their family tree.

Around noon, they were herded into tight lines in the gym, where they found rows of tables manned by immigration officers – actually teachers and parent volunteers decked out in costumes from the Delaware Children's Theater.

"Move! Move!" the officers barked. "Pay attention!"

Before they could reach the shelter of the Statue of Liberty, the students had to pass a battery of tests, with proctors checking their eyesight, combing through their hair for lice, and grilling them on how and where they would find work.

One of the big moments of truth was near the end, when officers asked for money. Some students had been given enough to gain entry, but some hadn't.

Most of the students ended up making it through – some after some sweet-talking to smooth out some bumps – but more than a dozen didn't.

"I know what it was like to be there. It was pretty cool," said Henry Annene "I was nervous. I think they did a really good job. They were pushing us around, saying move over there, move over there."

Nicole Poulos, a teacher who organized the event, actually coached the parents to be tough.

"I know it's hard, but you have to be able to tell some of them that they didn't pass. And we do want to make them nervous," she told them. "We want this to be realistic. And, as we learned in class, the real immigrants would have been very nervous."

"It was really cool that we got to feel like the actual immigrants did," said Bella Demetriou, who pretended to be an immigrant from Greece. "I feel like I know more what they went through now."

Contact Matthew Albright at (302) 324-2428 or at malbright@delaware.com. Follow him on Twitter @TNJ_malbright.