Dehumanizing images and stories of immigrants in public discourse shape the American consciousness (Beckwith, 2018) as immigrants, including unaccompanied minors, continue to cross the southern border of the United States in record numbers (Sullivan, 2021). This situation is hardly unique to the United States: more than 11,000 unaccompanied and separated minors arrived in six European countries between January and March of 2021 (United Nations Children's Fund, 2021, p. 2). Moreover, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the number of school age Ukrainian refugees in Poland and other European countries is estimated at 1.9 million as of May 31, 2022. How do educators address and meet the needs of these students whose languages, cultures, and lived experiences differ from the educators working with them in an uneven world?
This presentation details two primary school teachers' participation in a book group project in a professional development program in the United States. The books, young adult fiction storying the journey and lives of undocumented students in the United States, detail immigrants' lived experiences and inform teachers. Conceptualized as counter-stories (Delgado, 1989), these books were used to address the following research question: How do counter-stories of immigration transform mainstream teachers' understandings of emergent bilinguals (EBs ) and their families in their rural educational context?
The presentation details the teachers' online postings and action plans using Vygotsky's (1971; 2004) theorizing on imagination, emotion, and catharsis in relation to art, complemented by Nussbaum's (2017) work on the narrative imagination. Results show how reading the counter-narratives triggered an emotional response, enabling teachers to develop an informed empathy and to re-story interactions with previous EBs and understandings of familiar rural spaces. With expanded understandings of undocumented students' lived experiences, teachers could more responsively address the needs of EBs and their families in this specific spatial and sociopolitical context. The presentation concludes with some self-reflections learned through having these difficult discussions on systemic inequities, and educators' own White and linguistic privilege.
References
Beckwith, R. T. (2018, January 18). President Trump called El Salvador, Haiti 'shithole
countries': Report. Time. http://time.com/5100058/donald-trumpshithole-countries/
Data.europa.eu. (2022). Refugee flows from Ukraine.
https://data.europa.eu/en/datastories/refugee-flows-ukraine
Delgado, R. (1989). Storytelling for oppositionists and others: A plea for narrative. Michigan
Law Review, 87, 2411-2441.
Miller, R., Liu, K., & Ball, A.F. (2020). Critical counter-narrative as transformative
methodology for educational equity. Review of Research in Education, 44, 269–300.
Nussbaum, M. (2017). Cultivating humanity: The narrative imagination. In J. Rivkin & M.
Ryan (Eds.), Literary theory: An anthology (pp. 382-401). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Sullivan, E. (2021, July 16). The number of migrants arriving at the border was the largest in
years. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/us/politics/us-mexico-border-record.html
United Nations Children's Fund (2021). Refugee and migrant response in Europe. Humanitarian situation report No. 39, UNICEF, New York.
https://www.unicef.org/media/97056/file/Refugee-and-Migrant-Response-in-Europe-SitRep-31-March-2021.pdf
Vygotsky, L. S. (1971). The psychology of art. M.I.T. Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (2004). Imagination and creativity in childhood. Journal of Russian and East
European Psychology, 42, 7–97.
490 words
