Lessons from an expert teacher of immigrant youth: A portrait of socially just teaching

Abstract

Purpose and Perspectives: The purpose of this paper is to describe, analyze and theorize the culturally responsive practice of an accomplished teacher, Rebecca, who successfully supports the growth and achievement of immigrant youth who are newcomers and also beginning English learners. Census figures indicate there are approximately 40 million “foreign born” in the U.S. (Greico et al., 2012); unsurprisingly, one in five school children is an immigrant or a child of immigrants (Rong & Preissle, 2009). The majority of immigrants do not speak English “very well,” one in ten speaks no English at all, and 85% of the foreign born speak a home language other than English (Goodwin, 2016). This translates into 4.6 million English language learners who speak a multitude of languages (USDOE, 2014), and require English language support (Hopkins, Lowenhaupt, & Sweet, 2015; Batalova, & McHugh, 2010). Given the reality of “the new collective majority of minority children” in public schools (Maxwell, 2014, para. 3), many classrooms are witnessing an intense concentration of newcomer students. Yet, the achievement gap between English language learners and/or the foreign born versus their English-speaking, native-born peers, has persisted (APA, 2012; Murphy, 2014; Rong & Preissle, 2009). Clearly, public schools have not lived up to the promise of educating all equally, especially those who embody diverse histories, languages, and needs. Modes of Inquiry and Data Sources: Data were collected primarily through a series of dialogic interviews between Rebecca and myself, that blurred researcher-participant boundaries and disrupted subject-object dichotomies. This mode of inquiry enabled us to fluidly traverse multiple roles—questioner/answerer, researcher/researched, mentor/learner, as we built and examined a narrative of Rebecca’s practice through conversational inquiry, reflexive introspection, and autoethnographic story-telling. Other sources of data included student artifacts, which illuminated students’ passions, assets, and knowledges, and curriculum plans/materials, which revealed Rebecca’s pedagogical decision-making. Conclusions and Scholarly Significance: The data reveal how a skillful teacher taps into immigrant youth’s deep awareness of policies that threaten their lives and their possible futures, and activates their prior knowledge to scaffold new understandings. Two such issues identified by students—climate change and the recent travel ban—motivated them to find the language to express their lived experiences and enact their activism through social action projects. In light of shifting immigration trends and demographics, teaching must be rethought to ensure culturally and linguistically responsive curriculum and equitable classroom practice. Educators have long struggled with this imperative, but with limited success. One untapped resource is those expert teachers who consistently support new immigrant students’ achievement by drawing upon their funds of knowledge, engaging them in meaningful curriculum around issues relevant to them, and encouraging them to find their voice and exercise their agency through social action. Rebecca is such a teacher from whom we can learn much about teaching for justice and equity, and there is much her students can share with us about how teachers can/do make a difference in the lives of immigrant youth.