UNDOCUMENTED: STORIES OF ONE AND A HALF GENERATION MEXICAN MIGRANT STUDENTS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST by Dennis Michael Boyer A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in Curriculum and Instruction Boise State University May 2015 © 2015 Dennis Michael Boyer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE COLLEGE DEFENSE COMMITTEE AND FINAL READING APPROVALS of the dissertation submitted by Dennis Michael Boyer Dissertation Title: Undocumented: Stories of One and a Half Generation Mexican Migrant Students in the Pacific Northwest Date of Final Oral Examination: 05 March 2015 The following individuals read and discussed the dissertation submitted by student Dennis Michael Boyer, and they evaluated his presentation and response to questions during the final oral examination. They found that the student passed the final oral examination. David Gabbard, Ed.D. Co-Chair, Supervisory Committee Scott Willison, Ph.D. Co-Chair, Supervisory Committee Norm Friesen, Ph.D. Member, Supervisory Committee Stanley Steiner, Ph.D. Member, Supervisory Committee The final reading approval of the dissertation was granted by David Gabbard, Ed.D., CoChair of the Supervisory Committee, and Scott Willison, Ph.D., Co-Chair of the Supervisory Committee. The dissertation was approved for the Graduate College by John R. Pelton, Ph.D., Dean of the Graduate College. DEDICATION Dedicated to Nima, Leif, Avery, and Isaac. The time I devoted to writing this dissertation is time I missed with you. Your many sacrifices and willingness to support my educational aspirations made this research a reality. I love you and I could have never done this without you. Your love always keeps me going when I face setbacks and prevents me from becoming discouraged. I want to thank my committee members, Dr. Willison and Dr. Steiner who read and provided feedback on my numerous drafts and for your collegiality. I want to thank Dr. Friesen for preparing me to conduct narrative research to challenge society’s master narratives. I want to thank Dr. Sills, Dr. Gabbard and Dr. Bahruth for being outstanding mentors and for providing me with a model of scholarship committed to social justice. I also want to acknowledge the scholarship of Dr. Four Arrows (a.k.a. Don Trent Jacobs) and Dr. Howard Zinn for inspiring me to pursue unpopular truths and to conduct research that serves the people. I also want to acknowledge the sacrifices made by my mother, Carol Hargis, and to formally thank her for instilling in all of her children a belief in education as the means to improve our lives. Thanks go out to all eight of my siblings for your love of humanity and our philosophical conversations over the years. Finally, I would like to thank my research participants and all of my former students who continue to make me proud in the classroom and beyond and who have taught me much about life and learning. iv ABSTRACT One out of two emergent bilingual students do not graduate from high school. The majority of emergent bilingual students in the United States consist of Latinos, primarily peoples of Mexican origin. This research documents historical and political issues that affect students of Mexican origin, such as immigration policy and educational policy. On a micro level, this study uses storied accounts of life experiences of “one and a half generation” migrant students from Mexico to illuminate the subjective realities of how students exercise agency to overcome social barriers. These narratives are analyzed with reference to a range of narratological and rhetorical formalisms and categories, drawn from multiple disciplines ranging from literary criticism to psychology. My research uses hermeneutics to interpret themes that emerge from interviews regarding the relationship between the individual and the social and narratology to investigate how people construct storied realities to make meaning of their personal and educational experiences. Keywords: narrative inquiry, hermeneutics, historical-emplotment, culturally relevant pedagogy, bilingual education, hybridity, self, agency, master narratives. v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ......................................................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................. v LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................. xii LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................... xiii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 Problem Statement ........................................................................................................ 2 Research Questions ....................................................................................................... 5 Situating My Experience as Teacher ............................................................................ 5 CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ................................................................. 19 Mexican in America: A History.................................................................................. 19 The Conquest of the Americas ........................................................................ 20 The Spaniards.................................................................................................. 21 America’s Indigenous Peoples ........................................................................ 23 Colonialism ..................................................................................................... 25 The Colonial System Based on Racial Hierarchy Today................................ 29 What Is DACA? .......................................................................................................... 33 Immigration and Educational Policy .......................................................................... 34 When Did Immigration Become Illegal in the US?.................................................... 38 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ...................................................... 41 vi 9/11 and the Immigration Gold Rush.............................................................. 42 Increased Criminalization of Migration .......................................................... 42 Life in the “Constitution Free Zone” .............................................................. 43 Higher Education’s Role in the Surveillance Industry Complex ................................ 45 Educational Policy: The Historical Landscape ........................................................... 47 Implementation of Language Policy ............................................................... 47 Language Programs ........................................................................................ 48 Language and The Civil Rights Movement ................................................................ 49 Brown v. Board of Education 1954 ................................................................ 49 Bilingual Education Act of 1968 (Title VII)................................................... 50 Lau v. Nichols (1974)...................................................................................... 51 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) ....................................................................... 53 Multicultural Education Reforms in the United States ............................................... 55 Student Identity ............................................................................................... 57 Critical Pedagogy ............................................................................................ 59 A Vital Role for Teachers ............................................................................... 64 Developing Multicultural Literacies ............................................................... 66 Social Interaction Around Text....................................................................... 69 Critical Literacies ............................................................................................ 72 Narrative Writing as Culturally Responsive Pedagogy .................................. 75 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 78 CHAPTER 3: METHODS ...................................................................................................... 81 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 82 vii Narratives in Research ................................................................................................ 82 Assumptions of Narrative Inquiry .............................................................................. 83 A Narrative Mode of Knowing ................................................................................... 84 Why Narrative Works as an Ideal Method ................................................................. 88 Positionality of Researcher ......................................................................................... 90 Experience of the Researcher...................................................................................... 93 A Socio-historical and Cultural Triangulated Analysis of Narrative.......................... 94 Concepts for Data Analysis ........................................................................................ 95 Hermeneutics .................................................................................................. 95 Narration ..................................................................................................................... 98 The Centrality of Plot: How the Story is Told ................................................ 98 Narrative Themes .......................................................................................... 101 Grand Narratives ........................................................................................... 102 Emplotment: Different Kinds of Stories ....................................................... 103 Using History to Contextualize Themes in Discourse: Analyzing What is Told ............................................................................................................... 107 Identity ...................................................................................................................... 108 Agency, Selfhood Two Sides of the Debate ................................................. 110 Tensions of Time, Space, and Relationships ................................................ 114 Data Collection ......................................................................................................... 116 Context of Interviews .................................................................................... 116 Procedures ................................................................................................................. 117 Interviews as Field Texts .............................................................................. 119 Secondary Forms of Field Texts ................................................................... 119 viii Participants ................................................................................................................ 121 Sampling ................................................................................................................... 122 Drawing Conclusions as a Researcher ...................................................................... 123 Trustworthiness of Narrative Data ................................................................ 123 CHAPTER 4: BECOMING THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES WE TELL: PRESENTATION OF DATA AND ANALYSIS ................................................................ 130 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 130 Jesus: Pushed Out ..................................................................................................... 131 Jesus’ Tragedy .............................................................................................. 139 Jael: Hybrid Culture .................................................................................................. 142 Jael’s Romance ............................................................................................. 151 Chato: Undocumented .............................................................................................. 154 When I Came to the US ................................................................................ 156 Chato’s Tragicomedy .................................................................................... 164 Jesus .............................................................................................................. 169 Jael ................................................................................................................ 169 Chato ............................................................................................................. 170 CHAPTER 5: CONNECTING MICRO AND MACRO NARRATIVES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING .................................................................................... 173 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 173 Discussion ................................................................................................................. 174 Theme 1: Hybrid Identity, and Selective Acculturation ............................... 174 Constructing Self .......................................................................................... 176 Theme 2: Being Undocumented or an Illegal Person ................................... 178 ix Illegality: a History ....................................................................................... 179 Theme 3: Pushed Out .................................................................................... 181 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 184 Scaffolding Personal Relationships with Students ....................................... 185 Closing the Circle ..................................................................................................... 187 Recommendations ..................................................................................................... 188 Teacher Education Must Prepare Teachers to Dismantle Master Narratives ...................................................................................................... 188 Expand Diversity Requirements and Integrate Critical Theory Throughout Teacher Preparation Programs .................................................. 189 Add Second Language Requirement for Teacher Candidates ...................... 190 Incentives for Districts to Add More Dual Immersion Language Programs ....................................................................................................... 190 Passage of the Dream Act ......................................................................................... 191 Immediate Expansion of DACA ............................................................................... 192 Future Research Directions ....................................................................................... 193 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................... 194 APPENDIX A ....................................................................................................................... 216 Consentimiento Informado ....................................................................................... 216 APPENDIX B ....................................................................................................................... 220 Informed Consent...................................................................................................... 220 APPENDIX C ....................................................................................................................... 224 Narrative: Jesus ......................................................................................................... 224 APPENDIX D ....................................................................................................................... 239 Narrative: Jael ........................................................................................................... 239 x APPENDIX E ....................................................................................................................... 251 Narrative: Chato ........................................................................................................ 251 APPENDIX F........................................................................................................................ 260 IRB Approval ............................................................................................................ 260 xi LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Changes in Language and Terminology .................................................. 53 Table 3.1 Frame for Comparison of Different Types of Stories ............................ 104 Table 4.1 Summary of Findings ............................................................................. 168 xii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Constitution Free Zone (ACLU, 2015) ..................................................... 44 Figure 3.1 Layers of Narrative Context (Boyer, 2015) .............................................. 96 Figure 3.2 Hermeneutic Circle (Forum: Qualitative Social Research) ...................... 97 Figure 4.1 Parts to Whole to Part ............................................................................. 131 Figure 4.2 Cage on the Border Outside Douglas, Arizona (Photo by Rob Hunt). ... 161 Figure 5.1 Weaving Macro and Micro (Boyer, 2015) .............................................. 174 xiii 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION An important impetus for this dissertation came about as I was loading boxes off the moving truck into my storage unit when one box buckled under the strain of the load and the contents of the box spilled out all over the parking lot. At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of this strange welcome to Boise. As I started to clean up the mess of papers, I immediately recognized the black and white photocopied books of students’ stories and artwork we made together a decade ago in ESL class. I began to study the face of each young author and carefully read each story. They were simple stories that really moved me; two hours later I found myself sitting alone in my storage unit reliving a special moment in my teaching career that I thought was perhaps gone forever. These books represent a snapshot of a school year that seems now to have been merely a brief moment in time; it captured a classroom of learners engaged in dialogue around their autobiographical stories. A decade has passed since I was transferred from that school to another and then later moved to another community. I could not believe that I had allowed myself to lose touch with these kids. I decided right then in my storage locker that I would find the authors of these stories and re-establish my relationships with them. I wanted to know where they were and what their lives were like now. I didn’t know at the time, but eventually I would reunite with these students to interview them and record and transcribe stories using narrative inquiry as a research method. 2 In The Pathology of Privilege: Racism, White Denial & the Costs of Inequality, author Tim Wise (2008) discusses a Gallup poll that asked white Americans whether or not they believe that racial discrimination was still a significant national problem for people of color. Only 6%, 6 out of 100, said yes, that it was a significant national problem. Wise (2008) compared the poll results to another survey taken a few years earlier where approximately 12% of white Americans said they believed there was a fairly decent chance that Elvis Presley might still be alive. Wise makes light of a serious problem concluding: White Americans are twice as likely to believe that Elvis might still be alive then we are to believe what people of color tell us they experience on a fairly regular basis. …Denial so profound as to boggle the mind, but there it is. And the people who are saying it are not mean-spirited. They are not hard-hearted. (p. 25) In this chapter, I will share my personal experience as an ESL teacher in a public secondary school. I bear witness to this denial of inequality and how it often became manifested in so called color blind approaches to teaching which stem from a lack of understanding of the complex manner in which race, national origin, language and social class become politicized in the public school context (Leistyna, 2008). Educators who continue to teach as if they do not see color or the unique needs of their students present significant challenges to students of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Problem Statement The vast majority of teachers in the nation’s public schools identify as white and middle class while the demographics of our students reflect a growing trend of student enrollment from backgrounds different from those of their teachers. Ethnic minorities made up 92% of the growth of the U.S. population between 2000 and 2010 (Banks & 3 Banks, 2013). Consider how the following demographics may contribute to a lack of cross-cultural understanding between students and their teachers. According to data from the US Department of Education (USDE) Office of Civil Rights, public school student enrollment at the national level is as follows: • 61.6% White (non-Hispanic) • 17.0% Black (non-Hispanic) • 16.1% Hispanic • 4.1% Asian/Pacific Islander • 1.2% American Indian/Alaska Native Mexican people make up the majority of “Hispanic/Latino” people in the U.S., which constitutes one of the fastest growing populations (U.S. Census, 2014). There were 54 million people in the Latino/Hispanic population of the United States as of July 1, 2012 and people of Hispanic origin comprise the nation's largest ethnic/racial minority. Hispanics constitute 17% of the nation's total population. The projected Latino/Hispanic population of the United States in the year 2060 is 128.8 million people. There are currently 5.3 million emergent bilingual students in U.S. K-12 schools, 73% are Hispanic (Grantmakers for Education, 2013). Nationally, emergent bilingual students have disproportionately high “drop out” rates, low graduation rates, and low college completion rates. In the Pacific Northwest, where this study takes place, only one of two emergent bilingual students successfully graduates from high school. Furthermore, in 2013, only 6% of Mexican immigrants (ages 25 and over) had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 28% of the total U.S. foreign-born population and 30% of the native-born population (Batalova & Fix, 2011). 4 Currently, 80% of the teachers in public schools across the nation are white and middle class, while 40% of the nation’s students come from culturally diverse backgrounds (Banks & Banks, 2013). In addition to the obvious need for a more diverse teaching force, currently teachers lack multicultural perspectives needed to teach all children (Gay, 2010). Additionally, teachers are not required to study second language acquisition theory (Cummins, 2000) and generally lack linguistic and cultural skills needed to educate linguistically and culturally diverse students. The national climate of high stakes testing and curriculum standardization fails to address diverse needs of historically marginalized communities. To start to develop culturally responsive pedagogy, educators first need background knowledge of the circumstances that have historically brought migrant children from Mexico to the United States. Culturally responsive educators then act on cultural knowledge to design curriculum that builds on students’ prior knowledge and requires educators to actively construct relationships with students and their families (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Writing autobiographical narratives with students become what Dyson and Genishi (1994) describe as “an important tool for proclaiming ourselves as cultural beings” (p. 6). This research consists of my narrative as researcher as well as narratives of former migrant students. Our stories are micro narratives within macro narratives located on a larger landscape shaped by economics, history(s) and culture(s). With a deeper level of understanding of the history of globalization, immigration policy, and educational policy toward Mexican migrants in combination with knowledge about the life stories of their students, educators can begin to position themselves to build a relevant pedagogical foundation from which to teach their students. 5 Research Questions My two primary research questions are: 1. What are the personal and educational narratives of young adult one and a half generation migrant students from Mexico? 2. How are these “micro-narratives" tied to larger “macro-narratives,” and why is the intertwining of the two essential for teachers’ understandings of these students? Other secondary questions that guided this research are: What are the main themes found in these narrative accounts? What is the significance for participants to have written personal narratives in an ESL class years earlier? Situating My Experience as Teacher In 2000, I earned my teaching credential from the university and entered the teaching profession where I worked as an English teacher in public schools in the rural Pacific Northwest, teaching both elementary and secondary students from 2000-12. My students at the elementary schools were predominantly children whose parents had brought them from Mexico to the United States at a young age in search of work and a brighter future. Children who enter the United States in this manner are neither first- nor second-generation immigrants and have come to be known as one-and-a-half generation immigrants. Some of the older students who I came to know at the high school were firstgeneration immigrants because they came into the country by themselves. The students that I came to know in my ESL classes were different from the teenagers I grew up with 6 or had known in my life; they were in some ways like adults. First-generation students at the high school lived with roommates and were motivated to work and send money back to Mexico to their parents and grandparents who were too old to work or migrate and were struggling to survive. Most of the students at the high school came to this small town because they had extended family members or friends from their town in Mexico who had already settled in the community. Many migrants worked in the fish plants or the service industry, mainly hotels and restaurants. I learned very quickly that my students’ primary goal for coming to the US was economic in nature. Some came to school to learn English because they recognized English as a means to obtaining a better job. Others came to school because the truancy officer brought them to school. Students would frequently come and go with many only staying in school long enough to land a job that didn’t require much English, like harvesting forest products or roofing houses. It was also common for my students to come to school in the day, and work a job as a hotel maid or at a fast food restaurant at night to pay rent and send money back to Mexico. They lived with roommates and pooled their resources so they could send money home and repay the debts accrued to those who financed their migration North. As I got to know my students on a personal level, I realized their need to support themselves and to send money back to their elders whose survival depended on their ability to consistently earn a wage. To say the least, I was humbled by their determination and convictions. For younger students who were brought to the United States as children, they also understood that economic realities in Mexico brought their parents North in search of the means to feed their families. 7 My close interactions and dialogue with students fostered strong personal bonds with students but this was not the case for many other teachers in the school. For the science teacher or the health teacher, migrant students were seen as a burden. Teachers complained in staff meetings about the Spanish speakers not doing their homework and offered up their personal theories to explain why students were all receiving failing grades. Teachers’ theories most commonly blamed the students’ culture or the students themselves. Teachers didn’t see a problem with using the same teaching methods they had always used and never considered adapting or modifying the way they approached teaching students who had yet to learn English. It was common for teachers in the staff room to engage in telling stories that explained academic failure for Mexican children in terms of being culturally deficient. Likewise at staff meetings, frustrated teachers blamed migrant children for being lazy or indifferent. These stereotypes conflicted with the very different reality I had experienced working with newcomers. Students were not lazy; they simply did not yet understand the English language or the culture of the school. Teachers by and large did not understand the cultural values of Mexican families, which value education and always teach respect for teachers. Teachers also failed to understand the economic conditions created by U.S. policy makers that brought migrant children and their families North immediately following the passage of NAFTA in 1994. The economic reality in Mexico after NAFTA remains characterized by dire economic conditions for Mexican farmers, which required able-bodied workers to migrate in search of work. Many migrated to the border to work in dangerous jobs in factories along the border known as maquiladoras, while others chose to continue their 8 migration further north to find work in the U.S. (Bigelow, 2006). Teachers in the community lived and worked in a climate that normalized scapegoating migrants, and I regularly heard the sentiments of politicians and media pundits echoed in the staff room that commonly blamed Mexicans as the cause of numerous social and economic ills. Opinions of teachers in this rural district were not abnormal; they were reflective of the dominant narratives about immigrants portrayed by so-called journalists like CNN’s Lou Dobbs who at the time made wild claims daily to insight xenophobia like, “The invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans”(April 14, 2005). Dobbs claimed that Mexican immigrants were bringing tuberculosis, malaria, and leprosy across the border. These claims were later determined to be false by 60 Minutes, The New York Times and democracynow (see Goodman & Gonzalez, 2007). During the time I was teaching in this school, racism seemed to be openly expressed as part of mainstream culture. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center (2005) featured an article on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" stating, For more than two years now, Dobbs has served up a populist approach to immigration on nightly segments of his newscast entitled ‘Broken Borders.’ Dobbs has run countless upbeat reports on the ‘citizen border patrols’ that have sprung up around the country since last April's Minuteman Project, a paramilitary effort to seal the Arizona border. The documentary film “Rights on the Line” (Nelson, Ybarra, & Mirano, 2005) produced by the ACLU, The American Friends Service Committee and the human rights organization Witness.org documents the rise of the Minuteman Project, Civil Homeland Defense and other paramilitary forces whose racist views were largely brought into the mainstream narrative on immigration by so-called news reporters like CNN’s Dobbs. The 9 ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center criticized Dobbs for failing to acknowledge the role white supremacist neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance played in recruiting members for these border militia groups. In addition to efforts of the paramilitary organizations, the ACLU film also documents the resources being allocated by the federal government. In 2005, the U.S. government spent $7.3 billion per year to further militarize the border and explains how this directly contributed to a scenario that deterred migrants away from populated areas and funneled them through dangerous desert terrain. At the time the film was made in 2005, the number of dead migrant bodies that had been recovered in the desert was 3,500. In the words quoted by Tim Wise (2008), teachers “are not mean spirited, or hard-hearted people.” In my years of working alongside them, it is my personal experience that, especially in rural areas, too many hold unexamined xenophobic perspectives about “the other” in general and about migrants from Mexico in particular largely as a result of mainstream discourses in the media which demonize migrants and serve to cloak economic structures that rely on a constant influx of cheap labor from countries south of the Rio Grande. During this time in 2005, the Sensenbrenner-King Border Protection, AntiTerrorism, and Illegal Immigrant Control Act passed in the House of Representatives (239-182) on December 16th but died in the Senate. This bill sought to further criminalize Mexican migration by expanding criminal provisions, making it a felony offense to enter the country without documentation. The post 9/11 climate of the times is exemplified by this bill that also sought to make it a felony for a person to provide assistance to an undocumented person living in this country. Lawmakers attempted to 10 equate one who provides humanitarian services to immigrants to one who commits a criminal act. If the bill had passed the upper house of Congress, entering the country illegally would have become a felony offense. This legislation further dehumanized immigrants in a shameful way by criminalizing their immigration status, which in the history of our country has always been a civil issue. In fact, there were students from Colorado College with the organization No More Deaths who went to the border to leave jugs of water in the dessert to help immigrants because so many were dying as they attempted to cross over, and for providing water to thirsty people the students were arrested and charged with a felony (Goodman & González, December 16, 2005). As ESL teachers, we worked with undocumented students and their families on a daily basis. We were concerned for the people in our community. During 2005, the national debate on immigration had become particularly ugly. I recall sitting with the other ESL teachers around the TV watching CSPAN waiting for information on the vote over the Sensenbrenner-King Bill to see if our jobs assisting migrant children and their families would become a potentially illegal act. As a group of ESL teachers and bilingual tutors, we discussed our commitment to help those who needed our help. Other teachers in the community seemed either unaware of the potential effects on a significant number of our students or did not share the concern of ESL teachers who worked closely and had developed personal relationships with immigrant families. Working as a new ESL teacher, my relationship with other staff at the high school was complex. On the surface, we shared common cultural characteristics, but occasionally teachers reminded me that I was an outsider because I had just arrived to 11 this small rural community; teachers also viewed me with suspicion for speaking Spanish and for being outspoken as an advocate for my students. I was repeatedly told by teachers and administrators my job was “to fix” these kids so that they could “help us meet the growth targets” for the “Hispanic and ELL subgroups” on state Math and English tests. Test scores were a distraction; my concerns were focused on the well being of students and their families who I had grown to know on a personal level. Students engaged in our literacy project started and became active in the MEChA club. And when asked, I agreed to be the faculty sponsor. We travelled together to conferences at universities around the state. Students began to collaborate with university chapters of MEChA and to network with other Latino kids located across the state. The club launched community service projects like feeding the homeless and volunteering at a retirement home. Students held dances and car washes to create a college scholarship fund for their club. Parents were supportive and friendly; they invited me to bailes, quinceañeras, and first communions. As we were both new to the community, we learned how to navigate this new landscape together. Through daily conversations with the students, I was struck by the variety of reasons and motivations students had for being in school. We learned about one another’s life story and became quite close; it was the universal appeal of the stories they told that reminded me of my own experience in high school. I grew up poor and constantly moved around changing schools; I knew something about being made to feel like an outsider for most of my life. Some students were motivated to graduate to go to college, while the educational needs for others were much more pragmatic, immediate, and tangible. These personal aspects became the topics of our writing and dialogue; I studied the motivations 12 of each student to help them develop the literacy skills they wanted. The inner-drive of my students humbled me on a regular basis. I taught them English, but they taught me more than Spanish, like how to work together to build community and the importance of self-directed laughter. In 2002, I changed jobs and moved to this new district to teach in the “Newcomers Program” at the secondary school. Before starting the new job, I had spent two years teaching in an elementary setting and I was excited when an opportunity to teach at the high school level presented itself in the neighboring district. My first year on the job administrators explicitly told me they needed me to get the Spanish speaking kids to be able to pass the state tests as soon as possible. This was the beginning of my experience with a ten-year progression of an increasingly corporatized school culture under NCLB that fixated on measuring and collecting quantitative data. I was uncomfortable with the manner in which English learners were continually targeted by administrators and scapegoated by teachers as the reason the school faced punitive sanctions inflicted by the federal government for failing to meet AYP. Building level administrators gradually started to increase the pressure on me because they were also under pressure to meet AYP by district level administrators who would only fund my ESL Teacher position half time at the high school and half time at the middle school. District level administrators did not spend the federal money on the students who generated the funds and it was abundantly clear to me that emergent bilingual students needed much more support to be “successful” in what had increasingly become a high stakes testing environment. 13 I witnessed the daily struggles of staff with issues that seemed to be directly connected to school staff’s inability to relate to students with different cultural backgrounds than their own. Misunderstandings were more common than outwardly racist attitudes. However, some teachers who thought Mexicans shouldn’t be at school if they don’t speak English outwardly expressed the underlying antagonism that fueled these misunderstandings. In reality, state laws make public school compulsory for all children living in the community, regardless of their status as citizens or ability to speak English. While administrators focused on improving their statistics to meet AYP as required by NCLB, the message they sent to Spanish speakers was to blame them for “bringing down scores” and tried to offer them other options like a GED, or to transfer. On the local landscape, pressures put on building administrators under NCLB to meet AYP often trumped concerns for upholding federal laws. I never heard administrators acknowledge the Supreme Court decision on the Fourteenth Amendment of Lau v. Nichols (1974) that requires school districts to address the needs of students who do not speak English by providing them meaningful access to the school curriculum. This important civil rights ruling becomes problematic because it is not strictly enforced, and the federal government does not provide prescriptive measures on how to address the needs of non-English speaking students; that is left to state departments of education. In addition, there are different program models between school districts with large discrepancies in terms of quality. My twelve years of teaching experience were characterized by the fact that classroom teachers are overwhelmingly unprepared to teach students from different cultural and language backgrounds. Teacher education programs are largely to blame for the fact that they are not graduating enough minority teachers and 14 the teachers they are producing are poorly prepared to teach emergent bilingual students. State departments of education that do not require training for teachers to address the needs of students still learning English further exacerbate this problem resulting in a reality where students who do not speak English but “have a right to a public education” are excluded from participating in education on a meaningful level as evidenced by a “drop out” rate for Latinos that has remained around 50% for decades. Parents of students who are undocumented are often fearful to seek redress with the local school district or to challenge the schools’ exclusion of their children in the court system. The landscape of bilingual education in the rural Pacific Northwest was full of contradictions and constantly changing (Donato, Tolbert, Nucci & Kawano, 2007). I assured students they had a right to be in school. I told them that by learning English and advancing their education, they would be able to advocate for themselves, and perhaps for their own children someday. Initially, students often questioned my motivations and even my sanity, hence the nickname they gave me, “Maestro loco” the crazy teacher, stuck. And, in hindsight it wasn’t entirely unmerited. It did not take long to understand why the burnout rate for new teachers is incredibly high. I was overwhelmed in this new job, constantly feeling like I was waging an uphill and often contradictory battle. The majority of my teacher peers did not understand why I bothered to care and why I felt passionate about “those kids”. My struggles at work did not help other aspects of my life such as the divorce I was dealing with. During this time, I came to see teaching as a rewarding experience but also realized without a support network a young teacher with good intentions could become overwhelmed. It is in this context, while trying to hold many things together, that I 15 became dedicated to daily writing, reading, and dialoguing with my students. I always learned in teacher preparation to never share personal details of your life with your students but this seemed a bit absurd considering the adult-themed stories my students regularly shared about working a full-time factory job in Mexico at age 12 to support siblings and mom, crossing in the desert, poverty, and cartel violence. My problems seemed minor compared to tales told by kids that had lived lives far beyond their years or grade level. As we came to know one another, it became imperative to get these tales down on paper; it became the content material to work with for second language acquisition. Our initial writing project originated in collaboration with a photojournalist from Mexico City who was working for the Oregon Historical Society. Paulina Hermosillo visited my classroom at the high school and shared her photography project with my students, documenting a flourishing Latino community presence in rural areas across the Northwest. From the stories that followed simple questions by the artist like, “Where is your hometown?” and “How did you come to live in this community?” our first book publishing project came to life, as a result of having a strong desire to tell one’s own story in two languages. In the initial writing project, students told stories of how they came to live in this tucked away rain forest community. The students told stories about life at home, and life here living together with roommates while coming to school to learn English during the day, working nights to send money home to family. The first collection of student narratives inspired us all to continue writing and creating more books on most nearly every topic. Our literacy project focused on students learning English while continuing to 16 develop literacy in their first language. Students exercised their choice to write their stories in Spanish and/or in English. The natural result of such a simple sounding method was students became engaged in writing about their life experiences. Motivation to acquire skills necessary to tell their personal stories was internal. Before too long, word spread about this renegade collection of photocopied books and other students became overly eager to obtain a copy; however, only students who contributed a piece to the publication would receive a copy of the finished work. To my surprise, students from outside the class started showing up with their own stories to contribute to the next several publications. Some students chose to write with a pseudonym, while others used their real names. Subject matter was negotiated so I would not get fired, but otherwise it became a viable avenue for newcomers to develop trust with their admittedly strange teacher. Building community through writing was dialectical, starting as a conversation with a photojournalist which blossomed into a literacy project in an ESL class that once again spilled over into the larger community when students posted their writing and artwork in community art shows open to all town residents. It didn’t seem like much at the time, generally authors would write stories in Spanish, and we worked together to translate them to English. I would often seek help from students on my Spanish writing. These side-by-side bilingual versions of students’ life stories inspired by Juan Sauvageau’s (1989) excellent collection of southwestern folk tales in Stories that Must Not Die! Our side-by-side life stories provided the vocabulary and grammar for the ESL curriculum that we focused on initially to learn English. Students were intrinsically motivated to learn the language needed to discuss their 17 personal life experiences. Eventually these stories would become classroom published books that students shared with friends, family, and other teachers, in what Jim Cummins (2006) calls identity texts. Narratives told took on a personal and political significance through constructing counter-narratives about immigration that could serve as a powerful way for students to make sense of their new lives in America. These books became important for other teachers in school to understand the scope of the challenges faced by migrant young people. I did not realize the scope at the time we wrote together, but in the years to follow, these stories increased in popularity with students, students began to write together outside of class, and I enjoyed writing perhaps as much if not more than the students. During these years, we made books for every purpose: a low cost yearbook with pictures, to share ghost stories, a way to reflect through writing on the importance of attending a conference at the university. Upon revisiting this collection of student stories, I was struck by the enthusiasm on the faces of each young author. I carefully studied their stories while remembering the moments we shared together; they seemed magical. Ten years had passed, yet I could not help but wonder where these folks are today. I thought about how these old books affected me and wondered if writing the stories had any lasting impact in their lives. I decided to find them. These former students are now adults with families of their own. In my dissertation, I interviewed some of these former students and asked them about their lives and to reflect on some of their educational experiences. I recorded our conversations to gain insight into the events that they told me about as well as to better understand how they told the stories of their schooling 18 experience. Due to the retrospective nature of this research and the close personal relationships that I have shared with the participants of this study, I have chosen narrative inquiry as a research method. I further explain the rationale for this in Chapter Three. In Chapter Two, I undertake a review of the literature to illuminate the historical context shaping the landscape of migrant peoples of Mexican origin and their experience with public education in the United States. This review includes discussion of immigration policies as they impact young people such as my former students and their experiences in school. This study seeks to understand how former students have gone on to make sense of those experiences and their experiences since leaving school as related to me through their stories. By sharing the stories of former migrant students who I knew years ago as children, I, too, will share my story with the intention of making meaning of past events while simultaneously striving to create future possibilities. 19 CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE This literature review draws upon multiple disciplines to gain a wider view of the social landscape that should be taken into account for developing approaches to teaching migrant Mexican children in the United States. This history also illustrates the specific context of this study, which is a rural school district located in the Pacific Northwest during the first decade of the 21st century. This chapter outlines key historical events informing educational policies relevant to emergent bilingual students. I begin with an examination of the legacy of colonization and the manner in which it continues to inform immigration policy and educational policy toward emergent bilingual students in public schools today. The last part of this chapter reviews multicultural approaches to teaching, which emerged as a result of various social movements during the mid 20th century in the United States. Mexican in America: A History The majority of both recent immigrants and people that have lived in the United States for generations who trace their heritage to Mexico self-identify as simply Mexican or mexicano. Most describe their ethnic and cultural origins as a result of “mestizaje,” or from a mixing of Spanish and Native American peoples and traditions (De Leon & Griswold del Castillo, 2006). The native heritage of Mexican people can be traced back to the Americas long before the 15th century when Europeans arrived in the new found 20 lands. However, contemporary narratives like discussions in mass media shape the discussion about immigration and Mexicans in the United States in negative terms like focusing exclusively on the alleged strain undocumented immigrants put on social service providers. These mainstream or master narratives are most often devoid of any wider socio-historical framework for understanding the current legal rationale being used to exclude migrants from Mexico. To comprehend the way cultural narratives serve to hide the reality of an economic system that requires a constant influx of cheap labor, we must examine the social construction of race itself in the historical context of conquest, colonization, and immigration that have come to shape the manner in which the Mexican in the United States has been constructed as the other. The Conquest of the Americas Edward Said’s (1993) concept of identity formation “involves establishing opposites and others whose actuality is always subject to the continuous interpretation and re-interpretation of their differences from us” (p. 332). In the United States and other countries, race continues to affect the way people shape their identities. Sociologists who study racial formation theory write of the colonial origins of race, “The state from its very inception has been concerned with the politics of race” (Omi & Winant, 1994, p. 81). Omi and Winant (1994) explain the construction of race as the rationale for building an empire, “The European explorers were the advanced guard of merchant capitalism which sought new openings for trade…never again in human history has an opportunity for the appropriation of wealth remotely approached that presented by the discovery ” (p. 61). During the conquest of the Americas, the construction of race would have a lasting legacy for over five centuries. Who were the Europeans that came to the Americas? 21 The Spaniards At the end of the 15th century, Spain was unified as a new modern state like France, England, and Portugal. In these countries, 2% of the nobility owned 95% of the land; most people were poor peasants (Zinn, 1999). The marriage of Prince Ferdinand of Aragon and Princess Isabella of Castilla in 1469 united the kingdoms of Spain, and in 1492, the last of the Muslim Moors were driven from Spain, completing the “Reconquista”. The Reconquista established a militant form of Catholicism in Spain. According to González (2001), it was the hardened warriors of the Reconquista who became the “hidalgos” or Spain’s lower nobility. “It was those hidalgos who later rushed to fill the ranks of the ‘conquistador’ armies in the New World” (p. 7). To finance their armies, “Spanish kings gradually adopted the practice of paying their warriors with grants from land they recovered in battle” (p. 7). In 1492, the newly united kingdoms, forming the nation state of Spain, would turn their focus to the New Lands of what would become the Americas, in search of Empire for Spain and new converts for the Roman Catholic Church. The Italian captain Columbus was hired by the King and Queen of Spain to search out and return with gold and spices from Asia. His reward would be 10% of profits and a governorship of newfound lands. In October of 1492, thirty-three days after leaving the Canary Islands, Columbus and his men reached what are today the Bahamas Islands. Arawak Indians immediately met the sailors, bringing them gifts of food and water. Columbus wrote in his journal, “[the Indians] are so naïve and free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no, to the contrary, they offer to share with anyone…” (Zinn, 1999, p. 3). Columbus 22 immediately seized Arawak people and insisted that they lead him to the source of the gold from which their small nose rings were made. Columbus wasted no time establishing his base, calling it Hispaniola on what is today Haiti, sending expeditions inland to search for gold. Unable to obtain the gold that he had promised Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1495 he went on a slave raid, rounding up 1500 Arawak men, women, and children. He selected 500 of the finest specimens to send back to Spain. Of these 500 slaves, 200 died en route crossing the Atlantic (Zinn, 1999). In Cicao on Haiti, Columbus and his forces “ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought the gold, they received a copper token to hang around their necks. Indians found without a token had their hands cut off and bled to death” (Zinn, 1999, p. 4). The only primary source of information about what happened on the islands comes from a young priest, Bartolome de las Casas, who transcribed Columbus’ journal and later wrote, History of the Indies. De las Casas described the Indians as beautiful, peaceful, and generous to a fault, without temples or religion. The priest wrote, Endless testimonies…prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…But our work was to exaserate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then if they tried to kill one of us now and then…The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the king that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians. (Book 2 of History of the Indies, quoted by Zinn, 1999, p. 6) The priest describes how killing Indians became entertainment, like sport for the Spaniards. Zinn (1999) provides the following historical account of De Las Casas: “[Between] 1494-1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the 23 mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it…” (p. 7). Historian Howard Zinn (1999) writes, “What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortes did to the Aztecs of Mexico…” (p. 11). When considering the histories of native peoples, one must consider that for hundreds of years the history of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs has been told in the accounts of the victors (León, Klor, Garibay, Kemp, & Beltrán, 2006). America’s Indigenous Peoples The Aztecs were the descendants of the ancient Olmec Peoples of Mexico. The Aztec came into the Valley of Mexico in the 13th century where, according to ancient prophecy, “The sight of an eagle perched on a cactus plant with a serpent in its mouth” signaled the spot where they were to build their new homeland (Gonzales, 2009, p. 20). The Aztec were fierce warriors and feared by neighboring tribes. When Spaniards arrived in 1521 in Tenochtitlan, what is now Mexico City, they marveled at the city, comparing it to Venice, and possibly only rivaled by Constantinople in its grandeur (Gonzales, 2009). The story of Hernando Cortes coming ashore wearing armor and mounted on horseback and the Aztecs mistaking him for the Aztec man-god Quetzalcoatl is well known. However, modern historians doubt its validity (Restall, 2003). Regardless, it does seem likely that the Aztecs welcomed him initially. In Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, historian Mathew Restall (2003) challenges the legend that a few outnumbered Spaniards brought down the vast Aztec Empire. His research offers perspectives of native peoples who saw the conflict more in terms of a native civil war, with the Spaniards playing an important but secondary role. 24 One thing about this epoch event is clear, the approach Cortez employed was calculated, and he had only one goal in mind: to find gold. After laying siege to the capital and holding Montezuma hostage, Cortez was initially repelled by the natives (Gonzales, 2009). Months later, the Spaniards, along with many native allies, began a death march from town to town employing a strategy consisting of overwhelming force to paralyze the people with fear (Restall, 2003, Zinn, 1999, Gonzalez, 2009). According to Gonzalez (2009), the final victory came when Cortez invited the headmen of the Cholula nation to the town square where his men sat in ambush with cannons, crossbows, muskets, and mounted horses. They massacred thousands of unarmed men and then looted the city. Historian Howard Zinn (1999) summarizes this era, The frenzy in the early capitalist states of Europe for gold, for slaves, for products of the soil, to pay the bondholders and stock holders of the expeditions, to finance the monarchical bureaucracies rising in western Europe, to spur the growth of the new money economy rising out of feudalism, to participate in what Karl Marx would later call ‘the primitive accumulation of capital.’ These were violent beginnings of an intricate system of technology, business, politics, and culture that would dominate the world for the next five centuries. (p. 12) The conquest of America signaled “the advent of a consolidated social structure of exploitation, appropriation, and domination. Its representation first in religious terms, then in scientific and political ones, initiated modern racial awareness” (Omi & Winant, 1994, p. 62). The medieval crusades to the Holy Land had already laid the foundations for Europeans of a systematic legal discourse on colonization that asserted non-Christian peoples could be conquered and their lands could legally be confiscated by “Christian Europeans enforcing their peculiar vision of a universally binding natural law” (Williams 1990, p. 13). 25 Colonialism European imperialism and its offshoot colonialism were a quest for gold and wealth, but must also be understood in their cultural and ideological manifestations. “Colonialism refers to the extension of a nation’s sovereignty over territory and people both within and outside its own boundaries, as well as the beliefs used to legitimate this domination” (Bosworth & Flavin, 2007, p. 2). It requires, in the words of Edward Said (1993), the means to convince “decent men and women to accept the notion that distant territories and their native people should be subjugated…” and through cultural means decent people are led to possess an “ almost metaphysical obligation to rule subordinate, inferior, or less advanced people” (p.10). The rationality of the English to invade and colonize Ireland in the 12th century and India in the 19th century was based on these beliefs of cultural superiority. The English viewed the Irish as innately inferior, beyond the ability to be civilized. In A Different Mirror, Takaki (1993) compares the English view of the Irish and Indians of North America, where racist opinions led the colonists to the conclusion that the only solution to the “Indian problem” was genocide or containment on reservations. The construction of race in the English colonies was, in an economic context, born out of greed for land (p. 29). The English-speaking colonists’ approach to colonial expansion was brutal and has had a lasting impact on the formation of the United States and can be seen around the globe. The Spanish presence in what is now the United States is often overlooked. In the early 16th century, the Spaniard’s search for gold led them to venture north, leaving Spanish missions along what is now the Southwestern United States. By 1600, Spain’s 26 colonies, which were dependent on Indian slave labor, produced over 2 billion pesos worth of gold and silver, three times the total European supply before the first voyage of Columbus (Gonzáles, 2001). The encomienda and other forms of coerced native labor, the African slave trade, and practices of extermination “presupposed a worldview which distinguished Europeans, as children of God, full fledged human beings, etc., from Others ” (Omi & Winant, 1994, p. 62). The hacienda system of enslaving Indians was utilized by priests to establish missions and by landowners to grow crops across what became New Spain for three centuries. This system of enslaved Indian labor was similar to the American plantation system that used enslaved African labor to produce cotton and tobacco for the export economy. Both Spanish and English colonization has played a major role in the social construction of race, as well as a racialized global hierarchy and a system of punishment that continues to criminalize difference in contemporary times (Chowdry & Beeman, 2007). In Mexico, we can view the legacy of Spanish conquest and colonization of dark skinned “Indians” who were not Christians, as the origins of a justification for a lasting racial formation. The English had their own models of imperialism that relied more on private financiers, such as the East Indies Company, and were more overtly driven by economics without any pretense of saving souls for the Catholic Church (Williams, 1990). However, both imperial powers used the same ideological justifications of race to dehumanize and dispossess indigenous peoples of their traditional homelands. Omi and Winant (1994) define racial formation “as the socio-historical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed” (p. 55). 27 During the 18th and 19th centuries, we see religious justifications of the other give way to scientific justifications. According to Omi & Winant (1994), enlightenment scientists such as Linnaeus in Systema Naturae, wrote of the concept of different races as a matter of different species, as expressed by Voltaire who wrote, “The negro race is a species of men…” (p. 63). Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau’s Essays on the inequality of races (1853-1855) influenced science for nearly a century, emerging in the Eugenics movement, initiated by Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton; “By the time of the enlightenment, a general awareness of race was pervasive, and most of the great philosophers of Europe, such as Hegel, Kant, Hume, and Locke, had issued virulently racist opinions” (p. 63). For three hundred years after the conquest, the far North region of what would later become Mexico and then the Southwestern United States, remained a colony of the Spanish empire. According to De Leon and Griswold del Castillo (2006), a caste system was firmly established based on race, social class, and political distinctions; wealthy light-skinned settlers with political ties comprised the dominant class (p. 4). The connection of race and social class cannot be overlooked. Yet, not all Europeans came to the colonies by choice. Once the Europeans had established colonies, they needed to people the colonies with their own kind. In The History of Madness (Foucault & Khalfa, 2006) implicate the Spanish state and other western European nations who sent the poor, the mad, and other institutionalized people to the “New Found Lands” as a way to deal with what the newly emerging nation-state considered to be a growing surplus urban population. 28 Much like the aristocratic “Founding Fathers” of what would become the United States, it was the class of elite property owners who declared independence from Spain on September 16th, 1810. And, in 1821, Mexico won its independence. It was only two decades later that the United States government invaded and occupied Mexico. In 1848, the United States defeated Mexico in a two-year war. As a result, the American government appropriated half of Mexico, acquiring what are now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, and other parts (De Leon & Griswald del Castillo, 2006). Many people of Mexican heritage already lived in these lands and, as a result of the boundary change between nations, would come to live under American rule. As borders changed, the form of conquest and colonization would shift to the use of cultural genocide. “As it had with Native Americans, the United States government instituted deculturalization programs to ensure that these conquered populations would not rise up against their new government. Deculturalization was vital to retaining these lands” (Spring, 2010, p. 84). To understand the socio-political context of the Mexican American War, we must examine what the U.S. Army was doing in the mid19th century to Native American peoples as it sought to expand its English-speaking Empire westward in what is now the Southeastern United States. In 1838, the U.S. Army rounded up seventeen thousand Cherokee people, many who had assimilated, becoming farmers and plantation owners alongside whites, driving them off of their ancestral lands. Spring (2010) describes the actions of General Winfield Scott and his seven thousand soldiers who looted and burned houses throughout the Georgia countryside, “Men and women were run down in the fields and forests as the troops viciously pursued their prey” (p. 29). During this same era, 29 the forces of a so-called Anglo manifest destiny displaced others further southwest. Spring (2010) writes, At the time of the invasion of Mexico in the 1840’s, Secretary of State James Buchanan and Secretary of the Treasury Robert Walker expressed their views that Northern Europeans, whom they identified as the Anglo Saxons, were the superior racial group. Within the racial ideology of theses American leaders, Mexican mestizos were a substandard racial mixture because they were descended from an inferior European race and Native Americans. The Mexican-American War was among other things a race war. (p. 87) Anglo supremacist racial ideologies like manifest destiny were utilized by the U.S. Government to justify invasion and conquest of native peoples like the Cherokee, as well as those living in what was then part of Mexico. Historians contend these ancient European and Christian attitudes toward sex, race, and war are culturally grounded in the Middle Ages and have resulted in long-term genocidal campaigns that historians say draw on the same ideologies the Nazi’s used centuries later and still remain alive today (Stannard, 1992; Jacobs, 2006; Chomsky, 1993). These ideologies have surfaced in military campaigns carried out against peoples of Southeast Asia during the 1950s-1970s, in central American countries during the 1980s, and more recently in pre-emptive invasion and occupation of Middle Eastern countries (Stannard, 1992; Chomsky, 1993). The Colonial System Based on Racial Hierarchy Today In the context of the colonization of the Americas, we can understand antiMexican sentiments as being rooted in anti-Indian practices that are still alive in contemporary social institutions. Jacobs, (2013) asks why is it that state institutions continue to honor Columbus with a national holiday? Dehumanizing Indians continues 30 normalized in mainstream American culture. There are countless examples of how Hollywood continues to portray Indians as backward and primitive. However, the most egregious forms of dehumanization are the manner in which children are socialized to believe misinformation about Indians. Jacobs (2013) cites the research of native scholar Debbie Reese, who lists forty-five children’s books on her website about the Nahua/Mexica/Aztec people that are misrepresented as being extinct or having practiced human sacrifice (p. 22). This normalization of racial ideology is pervasive in schools, pop culture, and academe. In academe, some university professors continue to build careers depicting Indians as culturally inferior. For example, Steven Pinker’s (2011) book, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, uses bone fragments and anthropological speculations to portray pre-state indigenous peoples as violent and destructive, insinuating they should be grateful as they are better off today living under the current colonial occupation. Pinker’s ideologically driven work supports the modern states’ current wars and anti-terrorism polices. Jacobs (2013) points out the poor quality of Pinker’s scholarship, as Pinker lumps very diverse native peoples together, portraying them uniformly as violent savages (p. 23). The significance of ideology’s role in education is further evidenced by the Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) ordering of teachers to stop using Bigelow & Peterson’s (1998), Rethinking Columbus: The next 500 years. TUSD also banned Arturo Rosale’s Chicano: The history of the Mexican civil rights movement, and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the oppressed (Jacobs, 2013). The colonial system continues to manifest itself based on a racial hierarchy in the United States today in the following manner: the incarceration of a highly 31 disproportionate number of people of color (Parenti, 1999; Bosworth & Flavin, 2007; Alexander, 2011); legally sanctioned racial profiling from Arizona to New York City (Urbina & Smith, 2007); the criminalization of Mexican migration (Calavita, 2007); economic inequalities between whites and people of color (Smiley & West, 2012); the banning of ethnic studies programs in Arizona (Jacobs, 2013); and the passage of laws from California to Massachusetts calling for English only, making it illegal to educate minority students in their native tongue (Macedo, Dendrinos & Gounari, 2003). The implementation of high stakes testing and standardized curriculum is the latest way educational institutions reinforce inequality and fail to address the disparities in resources in communities of color. Segregation has been on the rise since the 1990s (Tatum, 2003). Research has repeatedly found that the amount of poverty in the communities where schools are located accounts for the great majority of the differences in standardized test scores from one area to the next (Kohn, 2000). Shaughnessy and Spring (2013) describe double segregation as segregation based on race and social class, which has led to the most segregated schools in U.S. history (Harris, 2008). School segregation, disproportionate incarceration, economic inequality, and millions of undocumented people living in the United States without rights afforded to citizens can only be understood as the historical legacy of colonialism. Smiley and West (2012) cite data from the Children’s Defense Fund’s (CDF) State of America’s Children 2011 report to support their position that race continues to remain a factor contributing to economic inequality. “1of 3 Black and 1 in 3 Hispanic children are living in poverty compared to 1 in 10 white, non-Hispanic children” (Smiley & West, 2012, p. 55). The challenges faced by Latino migrant families are associated 32 with an experience of marginalization “resulting from contextual and structural factors such as racial and ethnic discrimination, lack of bilingual services, and health and economic disparities” (Parra-Cardona, Bulock, Imig, Villarruel & Gold, 2006). Across the nation, high profile cases involving police killing unarmed black men further implicates the role race continues to play in the lives of people of color. Since the social upheaval spawned by the lack of accountability in the 2014 police shooting of an unarmed teenaged Michael Brown in Fergusson, Missouri, several similar cases have made it apparent that race still matters in America (West, 1993). In what some refer to as America’s “post-racial” era, Alexander (2011) in her highly acclaimed book, The New Jim Crow, documents how fundamental structures of society have not radically changed in the United States since the Jim Crow era; what has changed is the language we use to justify it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially acceptable to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ”criminals” and then engage in the horrendous practices we supposedly left behind (Alexander, 2011). Similar to the way the “War on Drugs” has framed the issue of addiction as a crime, criminalizing migration only makes sense if people are convinced that migrants are criminals or pose a risk to the safety of U.S. citizens. This begs the question, what risks do migrants searching for work pose? By criminalizing crossing a socially constructed border in search of the means to feed one’s family, this necessary act of survival becomes equated with stealing property or committing an act of violence against a victim. More frequently, prisons are being conceived as borders, “places of exclusion 33 and seclusion wherein we confine those judged undeserving of liberty, sympathy, treatment, or trust” (Bosworth & Flavin, 2007, p. 137). Criminalizing undocumented workers becomes the rationale used to reinforce cultural notions of “the other” (Said, 1993). What Is DACA? A vocal grass roots activist group known as the Dreamers have advocated for Congress to pass the Dream Act, which would provide a path to legal status for the millions of undocumented migrants living in the shadows of U.S. society. Dreamers are primarily undocumented Latino youth who are subjected to the threat of deportation and prevented from seeking higher education and working legally in the U.S. In the recent context of U.S. Congress’ inaction to address immigration reform at all, in 2012, the Obama Administration, through executive order, initiated what is known as DACA. The following explanation of the DACA program comes directly from the Department of Homeland Security Website. On June 15, 2012, the Secretary of Homeland Security announced that certain people who came to the United States as children and meet several guidelines may request consideration of deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal. They are also eligible for work authorization. Deferred action is a use of prosecutorial discretion to defer removal action against an individual for a certain period of time. Deferred action does not provide lawful status. NOTE: On November 20, 2014, the President made an announcement extending the period of DACA and work authorization from two years to three years. (Department of Homeland Security, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) You may request DACA if you: • Were under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012; • Came to the United States before reaching your 16th birthday; 34 • Have continuously resided in the United States since June 15, 2007, up to the present time; • Were physically present in the United States on June 15, 2012, and at the time of making your request for consideration of deferred action with USCIS; • Had no lawful status on June 15, 2012; • Are currently in school, have graduated or obtained a certificate of completion from high school, have obtained a general education development (GED) certificate, or are an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States; and • Have not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, or three or more other misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety. (Department of Homeland Security, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) This program falls short of demands made in the Dream Act, specifically to provide a path to permanent legal status for undocumented youth, DACA can be viewed as largely a symbolic gesture towards the growing Latino demographic which overwhelmingly supported Obama’s presidential campaigns which promised Latino voters reform of the immigration system. Immigration and Educational Policy To understand the layers of context in which young people from Mexico come to be in our classrooms in the United States, it is important to examine the role historical, economic, political, and social forces play in the creation of material conditions that require people to migrate as a means of survival. As I have shared information on DACA of 2012–14 above, I will share a general history of key policies affecting modern migration, including the Bracero Program, the Immigration Reform Acts of 1986 and 1996, as well as the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994. 35 According to researcher Juan González (2013), there are currently eleven million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows of U.S. society. While some claim the immigration system is broken, others would argue that the current arrangements made in free trade agreements are working just as they were intended: In the interests of their multinational corporate sponsors, contending the economic role of the undocumented worker is to produce surplus labor value for business owners. In some ways, migrants have become the preferable employee for employers because they are denied basic protections and rights afforded citizens. The undocumented do not expect sick leave and do not complain about poor working conditions for fear of being deported (Bigelow, 2006). When we look at the history of migration from Mexico, what stands out is the United States’ interest in gaining cheap Mexican labor (Bustamante, 1997). Bustamante (1997) shares a personal story of Dr. Ernesto Galarza in his classic work Merchants of Labor: The Mexican bracero program, where he describes a first-hand account of power asymmetry between Mexicans and US Citizens. “Reflection on this experience made clearer to me that this is sort of a last degree of freedom before reaching the point where work stops being a social relation between an employer and a free worker and becomes slave labor” (p. 1116). According to Bustamante, the history of United States labor can be summarized as an insatiable appetite for cheap Mexican labor. The historical cycle is to allow labor in during times of economic growth. However, when labor is no longer needed (i.e. 1907, 1921,1929-34, 1954, 1974, 1981, 1992), “measures have been proposed to expel Mexican migrant workers en masse, offering ideological justifications” (p. 1116). Beginning in the 1920s and into the Great Depression, anti-immigrant 36 sentiment blamed Mexican workers for high unemployment; the government’s response was repatriation. This kind of forced deportation sent 400,000 Mexican Americans to Mexico, 60% of whom were US citizens born in the United States (Stefoff & Takaki, 2012). During World War II, the United States war economy depended on Mexican labor to meet production needs. In 1942, the U.S. and Mexico signed a bilateral agreement establishing the Bracero Program, which lasted until 1964. During that time, over two million young men from rural Mexican communities completed five million bracero contracts in the United States (Hernandez, 2009). Gonzales & Fernandez (2003) characterize the bracero program within the context of US imperialism, calling it a system of “colonial labor exploitation” (p. 26). For the decades following the Bracero era, circular migration was practiced that encouraged migrant workers to work the harvest north of the border, then return to their villages in Mexico. Fewer Mexicans were inclined to settle in the United States permanently. Congress attempted to stem illegal immigration with the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. IRCA provided amnesty for some migrants, penalized employers who hired undocumented workers, and increased funding for the border patrol (Hernandez, 2009). Also, the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) resulted in further militarization of the border and would change the circular migration that had been common in previous decades (GonzalesBerry & Mendoza, 2010). As the border tightened for migrant labor, it was simultaneously becoming more porous for capital. 37 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994 is an agreement that was designed by transnational corporations to reduce tariffs to trade and investment; it has been very successful for big companies and the rich (Bigelow, 2006). But as soon as the policy took effect between Canada, the US, and Mexico, the minimum wage in Mexico dropped, manufacturing wages also went down, while the number of Mexicans fleeing poverty went up drastically (p. 19). Cheap imported corn from the US devastated local Mexican farmers, putting them out of business. Rural Mexicans had the choice of migrating to the border to work in a maquiladora or continuing their migration to the United States where they could earn considerably more. In 1996, Clinton signed the IIRIRA which increased border patrol operations and stipulated that undocumented family members of documented workers would have to leave the country in order to apply for residency. This process could have taken ten years, so the end result was that more migrants than ever were forced to remain in the country, living in the shadows, fearful of deportation. IIRIRA replicated the historical pattern of families with multiple statuses among their members (Gonzales-Berry & Mendoza, 2010). The border became increasingly militarized; however, political refugees fleeing from US sponsored wars in central America and economic refugees fleeing extreme poverty in rural Mexico did not stop coming into the United States along the border; they were forced to take more desperate measures to enter the country (Gonzáles, 2001). Migrants were willing to risk death crossing in the middle of the desert. Howard Zinn (1999) discusses the social climate in America in the 1990s toward Mexican immigrants. He explains, “Those holding power–whether Clinton or his Republican predecessors–had something in common. They sought to keep their power by diverting the anger of citizens 38 to groups without the resources to defend themselves” (p. 634). Zinn explains, immigrants are a convenient choice for attack by politicians, since they are nonvoters, their interests can be safely ignored (p. 634). After NAFTA took effect, American manufacturing jobs were shipped to Mexico where workers earned about eight dollars a day working in the maquiladoras along the border, often in very dangerous conditions. Maquiladora employment shot up from 550,000 in 1994 to 1.3 million workers in 2000. In more recent years, these numbers are in decline as multinational corporations are now moving from Mexico to China, where workers earn around two dollars per day (Bigelow, 2006). When Did Immigration Become Illegal in the US? It wasn’t until 1965 that entering the US from Mexico without a passport became an illegal act after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act (1965). The historical significance of this year can be viewed in its relation to the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964, which signified an end to legalized forms of apartheid in the US, outlawing discrimination based on color, race, religion, sex, and national origins, and an end to segregated public schools, public facilities and the workplace. As discussed above, controlling the freedom of movement of the other dates back to the origins of the modern nation itself, and in the United States criteria to control a person’s freedom was based on one’s religion, and then race. The dominant political rationale used by the state to restrict one’s movement today is nationality or country of origin which emerged alongside ideologies of race, and continue to be the dominant political justification used to exclude and marginalize poor people of color today. 39 Even after the Civil War, race determined who qualified to become a US citizen until the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868. Historically, private individuals or municipalities controlled the movement of enslaved and free blacks at the local level until the 1960s (Chomsky, 2014). Examples of this are who can sit where in a restaurant or on a bus as determined by color. In the late 19th century, control of movement on the national level emerged for the first time with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which “codified in immigration law the elision of racist and nationalist discourse” barring Chinese from becoming citizens based on race but it also excluded the Chinese from entering the US based on nationality (Miller, 2014, p. 284). Language used in the quota system that restricted immigration of southern and eastern Europeans in 1921 also refers to certain people, such as Italians, as a race and a nationality. During the 20th century, the legal category of national origins was linked to race as a legal identification to determine status originally to exclude undesirable Europeans such as Irish or Polish. “For the first time white Europeans were treated as legally other and subordinate, the way conquered and racially differentiated peoples- African and Indian- had been since the first days of British settlement” (Chomsky, 2014, p. 34). Immigration legislation in 1924 illustrates how national citizenship came to replace race for European immigrants. Initially, otherized Europeans, such as Italians or Irish, were still considered white, viewed as able to assimilate into US society and thus able to become citizens. However nationalities of Chinese and Mexican became grounds for exclusion, due to being legally defined as nonwhite races (Spring, 2010). However, after the defeat of German Nazism in World War II, race fell out of favor as an overt political rationale used to exclude people from voting, and seeking employment and 40 education in the US (Zinn, 1999). During the 1950s and 60s as African Americans demanded their constitutional rights as full citizens, the Johnson Administration eventually signed The Civil Rights Act (1964) into law. It was during this era, in 1965, immigration quotas were used for the first time to discriminate against Mexicans not based on race but on their illegality or lack of US Citizenship (Chomsky, 2014). Yet, just as one does not choose the color of one’s skin, one does not choose their birthplace. To restrict the free movement of people based on the arbitrary fact of one’s race or nationality are both ways of enforcing domination and perpetuating inequality. Aviva Chomsky (2014) quotes political scientist Jacqueline Stevens who insists that an immigration system that forces people to remain within the national borders in which they are born can be understood as “global apartheid” (p. 36). Increasingly militarized borders designed with the intent to keep the poor of the world separate from those born in wealthier countries are normalized to enforce global apartheid. Miller (2014) explains global apartheid uses the language of “illegality” and being “undocumented” to prevent the poor from escaping poverty by replacing the language of race with language based on one’s national origin which requires what geographer James Anderson and sociologist Liam O’Dowd refer to as “a paradox of origins” in the creation of borders around the world where there is a legacy of violent origins, “whether in national conflict, political revolution, or the slaughter of native populations” (p.185). The key to perpetuating this brutality requires it to be obliterated from memory; they call it the “politics of forgetting” where as the violent origins of boundaries “needs to be played down or concealed for territorial democracy to perform its legitimizing functions” (p. 41 185). To understand how the ideology of illegality functions today, we need to examine the enforcement arm of immigration policy. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) There are two divisions within DHS tasked with immigration enforcement: Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is responsible for enforcement at the border, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is responsible for immigration enforcement within the United States. According to Amnesty International (2009), people who have lived in the US for years can be subject to mandatory detention, meaning there is no hearing to determine whether he or she should be released, and they can be deported for minor crimes committed many years ago. Thousands of individuals are subject to mandatory detention on an annual basis while deportation proceedings take place. Amnesty International also states it is not known exactly how many individuals are subject to mandatory detention by DHS (p. 4). In the decade following 9/11 (September 11, 2001), ICE’s detention budget went from 864 million dollars to 2 billion dollars annually. Detention facilities expanded from 18,000 beds in 2003 to 34,000 beds in 2011 (Miller, 2014, p. 220). The US Government’s “criminal alien” enforcement programs began in the 1990’s and are now part of the Secure Communities program that links ICE, the Department of Justice, and local law enforcement. In 2013, secure communities program covered more than 97% of the territorial US (Miller, 2014). Secure Communities creates the most detainees for detention facilities by widening the enforcement and deportation capabilities even more by creating the category of “crimes of moral turpitude” which includes charges of fraud, 42 forgery, and possessing a controlled substance (p.222). Miller (2014) further explains, according to the Florence Immigrant and Refugees Rights Project, which provides legal services to detained immigrants in Arizona, DHS charges many undocumented people with crimes for using false documents and drug offenses (including possessing a marijuana pipe) making it difficult for any form of relief or even to post bond. 9/11 and the Immigration Gold Rush Since 9/11, the US Government has spent $791 billion to detain foreign-born people, compared to only $500 billion (adjusted for inflation) that was spent on the entire New Deal Programs under FDR (Miller, 2014). There is a strong desire for private detention facilities that contract with ICE to cash in on what has been called the immigration gold rush. For example, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) made 95 million dollars in 2005 by contracting with the Department of Homeland Security. In 2011, it was making 208 million dollars per year from these contracts (Miller, 2014). Increased Criminalization of Migration The Obama Administration has deported more than two million people, more than any previous administration. More than 5,000 children whose parents were removed from the country have ended up in foster care (Goodman & Gonzáles, 2014). The preferred approach to immigration by the US Government has increasingly become incarceration. “Non citizens are one of the fastest growing populations in the United States penal facilities” (Bosworth & Flavin, 2007, p. 134). They are held in local jails, state and federal prisons, and institutions administered by the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It is also becoming more common for ICE to contract with 43 private for profit detention facilities (Bosworth & Flavin, 2007, p. 134). Over the past several years, more laws have been passed that target immigrants for incarceration. These laws are the Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), and the USA Patriot Act of 2001. Each of these laws focuses on mandatory detention for non-citizens (Bosworth & Flavin, 2007). Prior to the enactment of these laws, those caught entering the country without proper documents were sent back; today they are routinely taken into custody. In 2002, non-citizens made up 25% of the total prison population. Eighty percent were held in the five states of California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Arizona. The number of prisoners doing time for immigration offenses, distinct from criminal offenses, grew 859% from 1985 to 2000 (Bosworth & Flavin, 2007, p. 138). Part of the militarization of the border has resulted in the expansion of the jurisdiction of ICE. One way this has been done is to partner with Sheriff’s departments, expanding the reach of the border patrol further inland (Goodman & González, 2014). Life in the “Constitution Free Zone” It is more than just a few Mexican people whose lives are affected by the mushrooming division of Homeland Security. The map in Figure 1.1 outlines the ACLU’s “Constitution Free Zone” where border patrol now claim to stop and search people without a warrant or probable cause on a normal basis. Roughly two-thirds of the US population currently lives within this zone. According to James Duff Lyall, a staff attorney from the ACLU, border patrol agents (CBP), now part of Homeland Security, can conduct a warrantless search on anyone not just on the border, they can search people 44 within 100 miles of land borders and of US coastlines. The ACLU attorney explains how border patrol has normalized the violation of the peoples’ right to be free from unwarranted search and seizure, “The rule, which now operates to roll back Fourth Amendment protections from roughly two thirds of the citizenry appears to have been adopted without any public debate or scrutiny” (Miller, 2014, p. 16). Figure 1.1 Constitution Free Zone (ACLU, 2015) Geographer Joseph Nevins (2008) reminds us that borderlines that criminalize the movements of certain people are social constructions that are a recent development in human history. And author of the book, Border Patrol Nation, Todd Miller (2014) adds, “Worldwide a very small percentage of people in the world are allowed to travel… a much larger percentage of people are prohibited from crossing borders” (p. 24). This side of the cultural narrative on immigration most often remains uncontested and begs the question: Who are the privileged class who are allowed to travel and who are the vast majority who are not allowed to travel? The minority who are permitted to travel are those who possess the necessary level of wealth to secure a visa or passport, those with capital. So-called free trade agreements, such as NAFTA (1994) have secured the right for capital to flow across borders. Who are the majority who are not permitted to travel? 45 The poor, those searching for work as a result of being dispossessed of a land base from which they were once able to grow enough food to subsist (Bigelow, 2006). Higher Education’s Role in the Surveillance Industry Complex Those involved with enforcing restrictions of the poor’s movement, or ability to move across borders to find work are part of a booming surveillance business. The NACLA report on the Americas (Miller, 2012) provides detailed documentation on the role of private contractors who compete for large sums of taxpayer money. The report also explains the separation between the private sector and the US Government is becoming more and more blurred in what has come to be known as the surveillance industry complex citing the global surveillance market was 13.5 billion dollars in 2012 and is projected to be a $40 billion a year industry in 2020 (Miller, 2014). The business of securing national borders has become a global enterprise, growing out of the for-profit climate established on the US border with Mexico. In fact, the US Government leads the way in providing the hardware and training for other nations to secure their borders around the world. Miller (2012) cites the marketing research firm, Marketsand/Markets, who project the global market for homeland security in 2018 to exceed $544 billion dollars per year. Higher education is playing a growing role in the exclusion of the poor from the affluent classes as several universities position themselves to lead the high tech surveillance industry. For example, the DHS Center for Border Security and Immigration known as BORDERS allocated a 17 million dollar grant to the university of Arizona in 2008 for research and development of border security technologies from surveillance to 46 “deception detection” (Miller, 2014). BORDERS leads a consortium made up of 14 other universities around the nation, the RAND Corporation, and the Migration policy institutea DC think tank (Miller, 2012). In 1994, the University of Arizona (UA) constructed the Science and Technology Park or “Tech Park” to house a growing number of military contractors competing for lucrative homeland security contracts. The university bought the 1,345-acre campus from IBM and is now home to 40 companies working in the field of border security. The border has become big business with several companies relocating their headquarters to the UA Tucson campus to get in on the merger between start-up companies and border enforcement agencies, like DHS, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US Coast Guard (Miller, 2012). The University of Texas-El Paso has been funded to create curricula, teach classes, and offer a variety of majors in the homeland security field. The BORDERS advisory board is made up of former Clinton and Bush administration officials, such as Michael Chertoff, former DHS secretary under George W. Bush, and Gary Shiffman, a professor at Georgetown University specializing in homeland security, counterinsurgency, and intelligence (Miller, 2012). The BORDERS curricula offer students courses in “Homeland Security-Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics” (HS-STEM) where “students will gain a deep knowledge in border, cyber or network security that will position them well for future careers in DHS” (Homeland Security, 2014). This is the “state-sanctioned violence and formative culture” that is making its way into higher education, and according to Giroux (2011) “creates the knowledge, values, and practices that enable human beings to work in the service of 47 violence and death” (p.8). This is the cultural context in which educators at the university and K-12 levels must become aware of to resist becoming complicit in the agenda of the state sponsored surveillance and detention industries that target our students and their families. Educational Policy: The Historical Landscape Mexican children attended legally segregated schools in the United States until the mid 20th century. Mexican children were targeted for deculturalization by programs “designed to strip away Mexican values and culture and replace the use of Spanish with English” (Spring 2011, p. 223). For example, in 1918, Texas made it a criminal offense to teach in any language other than English. Anglos believed Mexican culture discouraged “the exercise of economic entrepreneurship and cooperation required in an advanced corporate society” (p. 224). Implementation of Language Policy The 1960 Convention Against Discrimination in Education barred discrimination based on the language of a student. Despite this fact, in 1973 it was still “estimated that two thirds of the Mexican American children in Los Angeles attended segregated schools” (Spring, 2011, p. 402). Historically, the United States has favored programs that transition students to English as soon as possible, rather than supporting bilingualism and language rights for students (Banks & Banks, 2013). Banks and Banks (2013) point out the contentious nature of this debate by addressing vocal critics of bilingual education like Rossel and Baker who make claims that bilingual programs are no more effective than English only 48 programs (as cited in Banks & Banks, 2013). However, when claims by critics of bilingual educatin were examined, researchers found the opposite to be the case, and concluded that bilingual programs that develop reading skills in the student’s primary language are in fact more effective across several categories of measurement, including English reading (Banks & Banks, 2013). Language Programs In the schools where I have worked over the past dozen years, I have worked in English as Second Language (ESL) classrooms. Other acronyms for the same type of language program model are ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) and more common today, ENL (English as a New Language). There are a number of different language instructional program models being used by school districts across the nation with a wide range of the amount of primary language literacy that is provided alongside English Instruction. There are dual language programs (DL) where language minority and language majority students are instructed together with the goal of developing bilingualism and biliteracy. Maintenance bilingual programs are where students receive instruction in their primary language in their elementary years with the goal of developing bilingual academic proficiency. In Transitional Bilingual programs, students receive instruction in their primary language for a few years in elementary school with the goal of moving into instruction in English only as soon as possible (Banks & Banks, 2013). In ESL, instruction is provided in English often with little to no support in the student’s primary language. Generally, English instruction is provided in a pullout program, which consists of English lessons for thirty minutes to an hour per day. It is 49 also common today for ESL to be taught at the secondary level in a regular content classroom using sheltered instruction. Sheltered instruction consists of strategies or methods to simplify the level of language, while still teaching the content of a particular school subject. Finally, the model of submersion, are in English only with no support for language minority students. In the US, this approach is illegal as a result of Lau v. Nichols (1974). The reality is, however, that many students often find themselves in submersion settings (Banks & Banks, 2013). The political nature of bilingual education is often rooted in historical and cultural ideologies that go beyond what is found in the empirical data. For example, scholars on language policy draw parallels to the intolerance of the 1880s that intensified around the period of World War I and the current period of English only and anti-immigrant sentiments today (Hornberger, 2006). Both periods experienced an influx of immigrants that were seen as culturally deficient and poorer than previous waves of immigrants. Immigrants then and now are viewed with suspicion, as out to take away Americans’ jobs and “to have a disposition for crime” (p. 226). When the economy is bad and antiimmigrant rhetoric is commonplace, language policies tend to reflect hostilities toward immigrants who prefer to maintain their Spanish while learning English. Language and The Civil Rights Movement Brown v. Board of Education 1954 For my purposes, I discuss contemporary language policies that followed the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 (Title VII), and the 1974 Equal Educational 50 Opportunity Act (EEOA) that gave birth to language rights in the United States (Hornberger, 2006). Language rights, along with education, housing, and voting rights, were won in the fight for civil rights through decades of intense struggle (Del Valle, 2003 as cited in Hornberger, 2006). Brown v. Board of Education (1954) established, on the Constitutional basis of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, that segregation of students in public schools “solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities” (US Supreme Court, 1954). Hornberger (2006) quotes language from Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974, which established: 1. “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” (Section 601) and 2. “No state shall deny equal educational opportunity to an individual on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, by…the failure of an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instructional programs” (Section 1703 f ). Bilingual Education Act of 1968 (Title VII) The issue of bilingual education was to ignite the culture wars in American education perhaps like no other issue. In the 1960s, Mexican students in East Los Angeles staged boycotts and walkouts to protest an education that was seen as culturally irrelevant and discriminatory. Students engaged in grassroots organizing and nonviolent protest to demand to be taught in Spanish and for schools to employ more Mexican teachers. In 1967, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) was formed to represent students who were being excluded from school for participating 51 in civil rights activities (Spring, 2011). MALDEF took a leading role, mounting legal challenges to widespread discriminatory practices, and won significant court cases in California. However, it was political organizing by both Native Americans and Mexican Americans demanding bilingual and bicultural education, which eventually resulted in Congress passing the (Title VII) or 1968 Bilingual Education Act. This legislation promised that Native Americans’ and Mexican Americans’ language and culture would be preserved by the public schools. The goal of bilingual education is to develop bilingual and bi-literate students, fluent in both English and their native tongue. This was a drastic change to the long-standing approach of the common school movement, which had been firmly established since the 1830s. The common school movement sought to assimilate all students to Anglo Saxon culture by removing the burden of their native tongue and culture while providing a “moral” education in English (Spring, 2011). Lau v. Nichols (1974) On the precedents of the above-mentioned laws, the US Supreme court rendered the decision of Lau v. Nichols (1974). Kinney Kinmon Lau brought this lawsuit against the San Francisco Unified School District on behalf of the nearly 1800 Chinese-speaking students residing in the district. The students claimed that they were being denied access to a public education due to the lack of bilingual services. Both the district court and the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court turned down the claim. It was the US Supreme Court that rendered its decision based on the language of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, stopping short of granting constitutional language rights for minority languages. While expanding civil rights, Lau not only stopped short of granting language rights, it also failed to specify any programmatic remedy. Instead the court gave districts the options of 52 providing special English instruction to students, providing instruction in their primary language, or possibly pursuing other options (Hornberger, 2006). The significance of Lau was that it went beyond Brown v. Board of Education, which established that separate was not equal, by establishing that equal was not necessarily equitable. The Lau decision determined there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same school, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum, “for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education” (Hornberger, 2006, p. 228). In addition, it opened up a possibility for bilingual programs to be implemented. In 1975, the Lau Remedies task force of the Office of Civil Rights was authored and, in conjunction with the Bilingual Education Act (Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1968), created the space for bilingual programs to function for the next thirty years. Due to the requirement of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to be reauthorized every four years, with each presidential administration, it was subject to the political climate of the times. Bilingual programs often had an emphasis on transition to English and retained deficit language such as in the 1978 reauthorization that established the Limited English Proficient (LEP) terminology (Hornberger, 2006, p. 229). According to Hornberger (2006), under Reagan, the 1984 and 1988 reauthorizations provided increased support for maintenance and dual language bilingual programs. Bilingual programs increased in number with Clinton’s 1994 reauthorization, from about 30 districts in 1987 to 176 in 1994, and expanding to 261 in 1999 (Hornberger, 2006). Terminology used by the Federal government also indicated an ideological shift toward a language as resource orientation with ELLs (English language 53 learners) replacing prior LEP language (Limited English Proficient) that is clearly deficit oriented. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) The language supporting bilingual education programs created under Lau v. Nichols and the Bilingual Education Act was to be taken away virtually overnight with the passage of NCLB in December 2001. Changes in the vocabulary of US educational policy effectively erased ideological gains made over the preceding thirty years, and moved from the language as resource orientation back to a position of language as problem, discouraging maintenance bilingual programs and promoting English-only approaches (Hornberger, 2006, p. 230). The following changes in terminology that renamed bilingual education are an example of how language functions as an act of power (Foucault, Burchell, Gordan & Miller, 1991). Table 1.1 Changes in Language and Terminology English Language Learners became Limited English Proficient (again) Bilingual Education Act (Title VII) became Language Instruction for Limited English Proficient and Immigrant Students (Title III) Office for Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs became Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for limited English Proficient Students National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education became National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs (Adapted from Hornberger, 2006) 54 The accountability criteria specified under NCLB are entirely English oriented, with goals of English language proficiency and academic achievement measured only in English, which mandates LEP student participation to make adequate yearly progress (AYP). These requirements put financial pressure on districts to demonstrate LEP student progress and to redesignate, or to move as many students as possible out of language programs each year (Hornberger, 2006). The nature of a standardized curriculum centered on high stakes testing conducted in English, which characterizes most current school reform models, fails to address the challenges faced by Latino migrant families associated with an experience of marginalization. Critical scholars have documented the effects of this type of compulsory schooling, which has targeted the poor and minority populations for several decades (Gabbard, 2008). Schools play a substantial role in capitalist society to reproduce inequality by creating a pool of low skilled, low wage labor (Howard, 2010). Critical scholars contend, historically school curriculum was never intended to benefit all; its main function has been social control (Chomsky & Macedo, 2000; Gabbard, 2012). According to Apple (2004), not only do schools control people, they control knowledge by preserving and distributing “legitimate knowledge” (p. 61). Curricular discussions about how to reproduce the social classes for the types of future work and place students are meant to occupy within the capitalist structures once were more out in the open, less of a secret. Apple (2004) points to the conservative political agenda of early curriculum theorists Bobbit and Charters a century ago whose curriculum was overtly modeled around the factory and used as a means to teach students the hierarchical corporate structure as natural and the normal social arrangement. Apple (2004) states that these 55 systems are very much commonplace in schools today in the form of a postmodern hidden curriculum. Multicultural Education Reforms in the United States In The American School: A Global Context from the Puritans to the Obama Era, Spring (2011) explains the ambitious goals of the common school movement in postrevolutionary America, which sought to link mass schooling with the creation of the modern state. The ideology and politics of the common school movement would come to be replicated around the world. “Common school reformers believed that education could be used to ensure the dominance of Protestant Anglo American culture, reduce tensions between social classes, eliminate crime and poverty, stabilize the political system, and form patriotic citizens” (p. 79). From the beginning, the goal of schools was to turn a multicultural society into a single culture society, which led to Indian boarding schools and segregated schools for African Americans, Asians, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans until the mid 20th century. The history of the United States is often portrayed in Master narratives or official narratives that give preference to the actions of presidents, congressmen, and business leaders for shaping the course of the nation at the expense of acknowledging the actions of common people who have forced elected officials to make social reforms (Zinn, 1999). In reality, this underlying antagonism between the narrative of the state and the narratives of the people lies at the core of our nation’s history. Multicultural education illuminates this antagonism when understood as both a concept and a process (Manning & Baruth, 2009). Contemporary notions of multicultural education resulted from an historical 56 response to institutionalized deculturalization programs that lasted for nearly two centuries (Spring, 2011). Multicultural education and bilingual education came out of the struggles waged by African Americans, Mexican/Latinos, Asians, and American Indians during the height of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 70s. Nieto & Bode (2008) define multicultural education in the following manner: It is antiracist; should be part of the curriculum like reading and math; is important for all students; should be pervasive in all parts of the school and larger community; should be concerned with social justice; is a complex ongoing process; and is critical pedagogy. Banks & Banks (2013) define multicultural education as: A reform movement designed to change the total educational environment so that students from diverse racial and ethnic groups, students of both genders, exceptional students, and students from each social class group will experience equal educational opportunities in schools, colleges, and universities. A major assumption of multicultural education is that some students - because of their particular racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural characteristics - have a better chance of succeeding in educational institutions as they are currently structured than do students who belong to other groups or who have different cultural and gender characteristics. (p. 355) It is past time for a complete overhaul of the educational system to meet the needs of today’s diverse student population (Gay, 2010). Banks & Banks (2013) point to America’s changing demographics, “Ethnic minorities made up 92 percent of the growth of the U.S. population between 2000 and 2010” (p. iii). Gay (2010) stresses the importance for teachers to develop the skills necessary to utilize the cultures students bring with them to school; she describes the findings of teachers working with struggling minority students who eventually came to the realization that if they wanted to improve the writing performance of their students, the “masks and myths of cultural neutrality” in 57 teachers and “cultural invisibility” in students needed to be dismantled (p. 247). Teachers were forced to look at themselves, become reflective, and form new solutions; the plan required them to move out of their comfort zones. This came about through self-study, observing students, and constant reflection. Reflecting about ideology and belief systems has a direct impact on how teachers interact with culturally diverse students and their families, and in turn impacts students’ academic success. (Peralta-Nash & King, 2011; Gebhard, 2005). Reforms should focus on integrating multicultural concepts into all subjects and grades, and echo the importance for teachers to be aware through self-reflection of the manner in which culture is always changing (Tiedt & Tiedt, 2010). Becoming a multicultural educator requires ability and a willingness to cross culturally constructed borders. Schwartz (1995) explains how we go about living our lives without borders requires having discussions about multiculturalism that may often be difficult. Schwartz (1995) quotes Moraga and Anzaldua: “We must build bridges rather than walls… we will do this bridging by naming and telling our stories in our own words” (as cited by Schwartz, 1995, p. 9). Student Identity Multicultural education has the potential to create a space for young people from diverse ethnic and language origins to reach their potential as learners. However, when students feel unsafe at school they are less apt to focus on academics (Henz, Katz, Norte, Sather & Walker, 2002). According to Erikson (1968), one of the most important psychological tasks of adolescence is to develop a coherent and integrated ego identity. For members of ethnic minorities, a particularly important component of ego identity is 58 their ethnic identity (Phinney & Alipuria, 1990), which can be efined as, “including selfidentification, feelings of belongingness and commitment to a group, a sense of shared values, and attitudes toward one’s own ethnic group” (Phinney, Horenczyk, Liebkind & Vedder, 2001, p. 496). Phinney’s (1990) theory of ethnic identity development happens in stages. The first stage is the unexplored stage, which consists of the messages one receives about one’s ethnic identity by friends and family. The second stage is the moratorium or exploration stage, which consists of actively exploring what it means to be part of one’s ethnic group. The exploration stage is often triggered by an event or experience of discrimination that alters the person’s worldview making the person receptive to new interpretations of her identity. In this sense, acts of prejudice can serve as encounter events that spur the exploration of one’s ethnic heritage and identity. When the period of moratorium or exploration is completed, the person enters the achieved stage. This is the final stage of ethnic identity development. At this stage, the person has a deeper understanding of what it means to be a member of their ethnic group as well as a feeling of belonging to that group (Phinney, 1990). Public discourse over the immigration debate has an impact on students’ identity and has been shown to move eighth-grade Latino students from the undifferentiated stage of ethnic identity development to the exploration stage. This points to the need for culturally competent educators to be able to support student identity construction by engaging in dialogue. Bahruth (2008) further explains the need to practice a pedagogy of invitation with one’s students, which means inviting them to question the injustice of racism, classism, and sexism, stating: 59 It demonstrates a conscious recognition of the forces of hegemony and received culture that promote conformity to the status quo, normative thinking - what Foucault termed ‘governmentality,’ an internalization of the ‘secular gospel’ (Gabbard, 1997 as cited by Bahruth) that fosters well-behaved thinking and acting in the everyday. (Bahruth, 2008, p.177) To better understand the psychological affects of being visibly Mexican in a predominantly white rural community, Gonzales-Berry & Mendoza (2010) discuss the different way that migrants in Oregon experience borders from those living in the southwest. They state, “The border for mexicanos in Oregon is a socio-spatial line that mediates between the reality of their lives at home and that of the public space of mainstream culture” (p. 14). She further explains, “It is more intensely personal and psychological and it functions as a reminder of their isolation and of their separation from the dominant society” (p. 14). Teachers can support their students by learning to develop cultural awareness that rejects notions of color blindness and positions of cultural neutrality. Critical pedagogy offers a way for learners and teachers to connect on a meaningful level. Critical Pedagogy Critical pedagogy is a way of thinking about and changing unequal relationships between teachers and students, the production of knowledge, the structures of school, and the social and material relations of the community. McLaren (1999) explains the roots of Freirian pedagogy in North America having evolved from Latin American Liberation theology, critical literacy, the sociology of knowledge, the Frankfurt school of critical theory, feminist theory, bilingual and bicultural education, teacher education, and NeoMarxist cultural critique. In more recent years, multicultural education (Sleeter, 2011) has 60 drawn on critical pedagogy, and educators influenced by postmodernism and poststructuralism have debated it extensively. Giroux (1983) writes in Theory and Resistance, with critical pedagogy, The active nature of students’ participation must be stressed. This means that transmission modes of pedagogy must be replaced by social relationships in which students are able to challenge, engage, and question the form and the substance of the learning process. Hence, classroom relations must be structured to give students the opportunity to produce as well as criticize classroom meaning. (p. 202) McLaren (1999) points to the central importance of the work of Freire who views schools as places that are part of civil society where un-coerced interactions can be created. McLaren explains that Freire’s language of critique and language of hope have been useful to colonized peoples who struggle to liberate themselves throughout the Americas and Africa because Freire’s philosophy of teaching to the heart and mind are holistic, linking history, politics, economics, social class, and concepts of class and power (McLaren, 1999). It is Freire’s rejection of “banking education” and his use of dialogue in developing critical literacy in the pursuit of critical consciousness among the poor that has inspired countless educators (Freire, 1970). Central to the pedagogy of Freire and Freire (1997) is an unwavering hope that rejects determinism and insists upon solidarity in a manner that can create the relationships that McLaren (1999) calls for when writing: “The internationalization of the market and its border crossing dimensions strongly suggests that in order to halt the continuing assaults of the market on human subjectivity, cultural workers must create alliances across borders” (p. 53). Teachers required to implement such absurdities as subtractive English emersion programs or English Only 61 policies in schools are being coerced in to communicating to immigrant children whose language and culture is welcomed by the state and whose culture is not. Resisting the agenda of the state that forces teachers to become complicit in what Bahruth (2011) calls a dehumanizing pedagogy requires teachers to continually develop cultural literacies alongside one’s students. One way for isolated rural teachers to continually work toward developing a critically reflective pedagogy is to tap into funds of collective knowledge shared by scholars such as Gabbard (2000) in his classic narrative called, “The Prairie is Wide: Conrack comes to the Rez” which problematizes colonizing approaches to Indian education and becomes useful considering, “Most ESL teachers, even those with good intentions, fall prey to a paternalistic zeal to save their students from their non-English speaker status” (Macedo et al., 2003, p. 10). Macedo et al. (2003) reminds us, “Those in the field of sociolinguistics often dismiss factors tied to ideology and make the inherently political nature of language analysis invisible…what is needed is a rigorous class analysis that uses a Marxist framework” (p. 4). Coming to understand one’s own worldview is a pre-requisite to developing Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (Gay, 2000), also known as Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP; Ladson-Billings, 1995). According to LadsonBillings (1995) CRP has the following characteristics: • Holding high academic expectations while providing appropriate support, such as scaffolding • Acting on cultural competence to reshape the curriculum • Building on students’ funds of knowledge, and establishing relationships with students and their homes • Cultivating students’ critical consciousness regarding power relations. 62 An indigenous worldview can help teachers to construct CRP, which can be described as having a “strong sense of relatedness that leads to avoidance of dualistic thinking” (Jacobs, 2006, p. 279). Jacobs (2006) explains, “It prevents looking at the world as a detached observer” and “emphasizes cooperative engagement rather than competition” as well as a “focus on living in harmony with Nature” and is rooted in a “basic regard for reciprocity” as a cornerstone for decision making and building relationships (p. 279). These principles offer a framework for teachers and students to connect on a meaningful level and for students to locate themselves at the center of the curriculum. Further evidence of the effectiveness of developing CRP is found in reading data that suggests readers’ comprehension is greater when reading stories they identify as being more culturally relevant (Ebe, 2010). Furthermore, research conducted on reading assessments of third-grade English Language Learners indicate that culturally relevant text should be used to assess a reader’s ability level. Ebe (2010) offers a Cultural Relevance Rubric to help educators determine cultural relevance of texts. Jimenez (2009) addresses the responses of fifth-grade Mexican–American students who read about Mexican history in a US school setting. Her findings were that children embrace books that reflect their history and culture. Jimenez’s (2009) offers teachers topics of study that are of high interest to Mexican Americans living in the United States. Research also suggests migrants who experience a loss of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) have a need for instructional materials that go beyond the overly simplified prepackaged curriculum and invite students to develop voice for authentic selfexpression (Roberts & Cooke, 2009). In terms of teaching language, “Splitting 63 morphemes or memorizing verb conjugations in these times is a major distraction equivalent to rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic” (Bahruth, 2009, p.3) Teachers should consciously seize control over the means of classroom production (Gramsci, Hoare & Nowell-Smith, 1972); they can start with writing what Jim Cummins (2006) calls identity texts. The importance of creating identity texts as a means to develop literacy skills lies in the invitation to locate oneself at the center of the curriculum, to engage in identity negotiation and identity investment. Confronting Hegemony For the past two decades, culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP), including bilingual education, has been under assault by standardized curricula and pedagogy rooted in neoliberalism that sells business models of school reform (Sleeter, 2011). Educators need to replace simplified notions of CRP with more sophisticated understanding, Sleeter (2011) calls for strengthened research in the field of culturally responsive pedagogy and states that the political backlash from the work that seeks to empower marginalized communities must be addressed. Saltman and Gabbard (2008) confront “the authoritarian aspects of current school reform, such as scripted lessons, standardized curriculum, high stakes testing, and the myriad of privatization initiatives that undermine public schooling, [which] should be viewed as part of the broader crisis of democracy of which militarization is a central aspect” (p. 225). Fine (2001) describes the neoliberal assault on public education, “We may look back on this moment in history as the days of educational redlining: the exiling of the public from public education, the extraction of joy and the novelty of academic surprises from the teaching experience, the smothering of intellectual creativity and curiosity in the 64 name of standards” (Kamler, 2001, p. ix). Jacobs (2008) offers indigenous traditional values to counter hegemony in the classroom where, …cooperation is emphasized over competition; the arts are highly valued; people are viewed as more important than possessions; generosity and sharing are vital to human beings; mythology is as important as history; timelessness makes more sense than time; the group is a priority; information should be relevant; holistic perspectives come before related details; testing is a self-reflective process; authentic humility is valued; and discipline is internal. (Jacobs, 2008, p. 498) These values are rooted in traditional Native American philosophy and can be useful in most educational settings to guide teachers toward creating counterhegemonic and culturally relevant pedagogy for students of various backgrounds. A Vital Role for Teachers Teachers must take a more active role in questioning dominant ideologies by coming to understand how neoliberal and neoconservative policies threaten the existence of public education (Gabbard, 2008). To interrogate dominant ideologies in our social institutions requires teachers to address the myth of cultural neutrality in schools. To enter into cross-cultural dialogue, or to becoming a cultural worker, requires educators to build on the knowledge that Latino culture teaches respect for teachers. And regardless of the historical and sociolinguistic barriers erected, poor families often provide solid moral foundations and loving environments for their children against great odds (Hayes, Bahruth, & Kessler, 1991; Ada, 1988). Yet, the epistemological development of ESL teachers is given little attention by the research community. George (2008) demonstrates how narrative inquiry and reflexive ethnography can be used to highlight the voices of new teachers of English language learners and their students. By using the theoretical 65 orientation of political and ideological clarity and care, his research describes personal, contextual, and structural factors that influence the practices of first year ESL teachers. Educators need a deeper understanding of the relationship between power and knowledge in schools. “Those who control the means to disseminate belief systems usually control which ideologies become widespread within a society” (Allen, 2011, p. 32). Teacher education programs must address how ideology functions in the Marxist sense as the means to justify social stratification. Some of the dominant ideologies prevalent in schools and the larger society are the: ideology of organizational hierarchy, ideology of patriarchy, ideology of white supremacy, culture of poverty ideology, and heteronormativity (Allen, 2011). Educators working in ESL and/or bilingual programs in the United States must come to realize that this field of study is largely informed by colonial education models that legitimize Anglo-centric values and meaning, while negating the history and culture of linguistic minority students (Macedo, 2006). The process of second language acquisition is a process of “Americanization” that involves becoming racialized into a historically structured, rigid, social order primarily based on the color of one’s skin, resulting in unequal access to resources, opportunities, and education (Olsen & Edwards, 1997). In Literacies of Power, Macedo (2006) explains the attack on bilingual education as deeply rooted in power relations that “not only points to a xenophobic culture that blindly negates the multilingual and multicultural nature of US society but also falsifies the empirical evidence in support of bilingual education, which has been amply documented” (p. 125). “Small story” narrative inquiry holds promise for constructing ESOL teacher identity. The field of TESOL is lagging behind other fields such as sociology and 66 psychology in the study of situated social identities; it is time that the field recognizes the value that sociolinguistics “small story” analysis has to offer educators (Vasquez, 2011). Small stories are casual conversations told within an everyday context, whereas big stories are researcher-elicited narratives from interviews. This approach can foster pedagogy committed to the unique needs of students (Roxas, 2008). Cannon (2009) echoes these sentiments using heuristic inquiry to seek meaning of her experience as an African American Latina student in a predominantly white middle class school focusing on three stages of inquiry: Immersion, acquisition, and realization. Her research utilized narrative inquiry to tell her story both as a student and a teacher, highlighting the work of culturally responsive educators. Dominant themes that emerged from her research include: Using students’ culture to build self-concept, advocating for children, and revealing the value of all children and all cultures. “English-language literacy researchers and educators should consider the costs posed by the hegemony of English and its relationship to colonialism and exploitation, particularly in relationship to the problem of linguistic genocide and language loss” (Grant, Wong, & Osterling, 2007, p. 605). Dominant social and political systems of power are reinforced when “African-American, Latino, and children living in poverty are targeted by an aggressive standardized testing agenda and ‘back to basics’ instruction that treats literacy as if it is apolitical, acultural, and universal” (p. 605). Developing Multicultural Literacies The importance of continual critical reflection of one’s own pedagogy and the need to study one’s students to understand how to best teach them is key to teaching and learning (Freire, 1998). Freire spoke of literacy as reading the word and the world; he 67 described the transaction that takes place between reader and text as an active process where the reader “rewrites” the text in a way to capture the essence of the writer’s intentions (p.3). The group readings of text is a dialogic experience where group members negotiate meaning in a manner that brings about richer text comprehension through differing points of view (Freire, 1998). Through multicultural literature students and educators living in monoculture communities can expand their knowledge of other cultures (Steiner & Steiner, 2003). When literary characters differ culturally from pre-service teachers, participating in classroom book talks allows them to experience the world through a different perspective. Multicultural book talks in pre-service teacher’s education programs inform teachers on various pressing social issues such as racial bigotry and religious intolerance (Harlin, Murray, & Shea, 2007). In an essay titled, In Defense of Literacy, Berry (2012) writes, “We are dependent, for understanding, and for consolation and hope, upon what we learn of ourselves from songs and stories. This has always been so, and it will never change” (p.167). Some even acknowledge stories or narratives as sacred (King, 2003; Hendry, 2010). In Multicultural Literature for Children: Towards a Clarification of the Concept, Cai and Bishop (1994) argue for a wide range of literature representing many viewpoints, and they advocate for the literature of “parallel cultures” whose members bring the necessary “perspective of an insider.” Multicultural literature should serve the cause of multicultural education reform as defined by Nieto & Bode (2008): Multicultural education is a process of comprehensive school reform and basic education for all students. It challenges and rejects racism and other forms of discrimination in schools and society and accepts and affirms the pluralism (ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, economic, and gender, among others) that permeates the curriculum and instructional strategies used in schools, as well as 68 the interactions amongst teachers, students and parents, and the very way that schools conceptualize the nature of teaching and learning. Because it uses critical pedagogy as its underlying philosophy and focuses on knowledge, reflection, and action (praxis) as the basis for social change, multicultural education furthers the democratic principles of social justice. (p. 44) The purpose of multicultural literature should be to open the hearts and minds of teachers and students “so that they learn to understand and value both themselves and people, perspectives, and experiences different from their own”(Cai & Bishop,1994, p. 69). How we use multicultural literature in the classroom can be a complex issue (Ketter & Lewis, 2001). Parents of minority children contend that all too often multiculturalism can become a study of the “other” rather than the more appropriate reflection of self; when in reality, white middle class teachers need to focus on deeper understanding of forces shaping their own cultural values and ideologies (McIntosh, 1988). Teachers working with children need to be aware of the tendency to make whiteness the normal position that all “other” cultures are measured against. White privilege needs to be problematized and understood by classroom teachers who are overwhelmingly white and middle class, while student populations continue to become more and more culturally diverse (Ketter and Lewis, 2001). Ketter and Lewis (2001) identify two ways in which classroom teachers in their study approach the use or misuse of multicultural literature: Neutral texts, which conflict with critical multicultural approaches by continuing what Toni Morrison describes as ignoring race as a “graceful, even generous, liberal gesture” and by teaching universal themes (as cited in Ketter & Lewis, 2001, p. 178). The universal themes approach is also a neutral approach that seeks to find commonality in all human experience but often 69 ignores the historical context and institutional structure of racism, hiding and thus reproducing unequal relations of political power. The study suggests a strong need to consider context when contemplating the purposes of teaching about racism, and only through dialogue between all interested parties will much needed multicultural reform take place in a meaningful way. This dialogue can be initiated by using a Freirian theoretical framework of critical analysis and the praxis of conscientisation for marginalized youth to participate in critical reflection and take action toward empowering themselves (Loranger, 2007). By examining the voices of students in this study, through narrative inquiry and participative action research as scaffolding, students engaged in critical dialogue to negotiate individual and social changes. Freire & Macedo (1987) discusses the rich social interactions that take place around text in the culture circle. While the culture circle is generative in nature and cannot be reduced to a method, a method that can be useful if used in tandem with a critical approach is Daniels’ (2002) method of conducting book talks or literature circles. Social Interaction Around Text Literature circles have been described as a process of developing literacy to promote critical thinking, to encourage self-expression, and to enjoy the act of engaging in a book talk with one’s peers (Chia-Hui, 2004). Criteria for selecting texts to use should be: Comprehensible to students, responsive to students’ language skills, culturally relevant to students, and thought provoking (Chia-Hui, 2004, p. 2). The idea of the literature circle is to create a learning community in which students and teachers can learn from each other. At first, teachers should model appropriate behavior, but then step 70 back and allow students to become responsible for their own learning. The benefits of literature circles are: stronger reader to text relationships, improved classroom climates, promoting gender equity, and creating an environment conducive to the needs of students with varying language abilities (Chia-Hui, 2004; Daniels, 2006). Providing bilingual students with choice of language and the opportunity to read as a social interaction are the two key components to meaningful learning (Cummins, 2009; Peralta-Nash & King, 2011). Social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition and is central to understanding how cooperative learning in the context of a literature circle works (Vygotsky, 1978). Peer interactions in schools are especially important due to rigid social expectations between adults and children in institutional settings. Cognitive development is stifled by one-way exchanges of information, such as teacher talks - student listens. Often in schools, teachers give directions and students non-verbally carry them out; teachers ask questions and students often answer with a short phrase. These roles are seldom reversed. Children rarely give directions to teachers and rarely ask questions. The only context where children are able to give directions as well as follow them, and ask questions as well as answer them, is with other students (Forman & Cazden, 2006). Discussing text together in student-led literature circles is a successful strategy to increase academic achievement in various settings. Improved comprehension levels result from discussions taking place in literature circles. Furthermore, an increase in academic problem solving and practical decision-making skills are demonstrated results of participation in literature circles. (Haertling-Thein, Guise, & Long-Sloan, 2011). When kids are engaged in small, peer-led book discussions that are well-structured, 71 comprehension and students’ attitudes toward reading both show improvement (Daniels, 2002). Literature circles are a tool for literacy teachers but can have their limits when critical literacy is the goal (Haertling-Thein et al., 2011). Often times when students are left to run literature circles without the guidance of a teacher, students are prone to reinforce stereotypical notions of characters rather than challenge them (p. 19). The authors suggest providing students with tools based in scholarship on critical pedagogy and critical multiculturalism that take the readers beyond personal responses. Cai (2008) suggests that sometimes more teacher guidance is needed not less. Teachers should take part in literature discussions alongside students. Teachers can model productive participation, ask questions to prompt elaboration, encourage students to consider different perspectives, and challenge the use of status quo language (Haertling-Thein et al, 2011). Rosenblatt’s transactional theory can be used to foster critical reading (Cai, 2008). Aesthetic and efferent response combined with an analytical critical approach has been demonstrated in developing critical engagement. Although transactional theory does not promote a certain critical framework, the theory suggests that the individual reader must take into account that she brings a unique history, and certain abilities, to the meaning making process of reading the text. When teaching multicultural literature for the purpose of multicultural education, teachers often use a transact-to-transform approach. This is a combination of Rosenblatt’s transactional theory and Bank’s transformation theory (Cai, 2008). Rosenblatt encouraged readers to reflect on their 72 attitudes about people of other cultures, while Banks recommends restructuring the curriculum and seeks to alter students’ perspectives on cultural issues (Cai, 2008, p. 1). Collaborative interaction around text is vital to transactional pedagogy (Rosenblatt, 2004). The dialogue between teacher and students, or between student and student, “can foster growth and cross-fertilization in both reading and writing” (Rosenblatt, 2004, p. 1389). Group dialogue of texts can stimulate growth and critical thinking by creating metalinguistic awareness, which is valuable to readers and writers. Rosenblatt (2004) states, “Teaching becomes constructive, facilitating interchange, helping students to make their spontaneous responses the basis for raising questions and growing in the ability to handle increasingly complex reading transactions” (p. 1390). The need for the teacher to take an active role in challenging dominant discourses as they appear in stories of students must not be overlooked. Sometimes these themes may not become apparent until teachers and students enter into dialogue about them. Critical Literacies Critical literacies involve people using language to exercise power in everyday life in school and communities to problematize privilege and injustice (Comber, 2001). To define what is meant by critical literacy, Souto-Manning (2009) quotes Larson and Marsh (2005), • Learners are positioned as active agents in relation to texts and social practices. • Teachers facilitate the development of learners’ understandings of the ways in which they are positioned in relation to texts and social practices. • Texts are ideological constructions, informed by authorial intent and issues relating to power. 73 • Literary events involve deconstruction of the ideological content of texts that inform critical understanding. (Souto- Manning, 2009, p. 53) One approach to developing critical literacy is reading through the lens of critical race theory (CRT). CRT can be useful when reading young adult literature; this approach shifts racial significance from the margins to the center of the page (Franzak, 2003). CRT can be understood as a scholarly and activist movement dedicated to studying and transforming relationships among race, racism, and power (Franzak, 2003). This theory draws from the fields of law, sociology, history, ethnic studies, women’s studies, and education and argues that race matters, stating that racism is the usual way society does business in this country. Talking about race is not common classroom practice, but it is necessary if we are to create an inclusive learning environment. Critical reading perspectives invite students to make deeper connections with a text and with their peers (Franzak, 2003). Nothing should be more important in education than fostering knowledge of the self. Student centered education gives learners the tools necessary to consider who they are, where they came from, where they’re going, and how to proceed to get there (Hubbard, 2013). The use of critical literacies, and Gramsci’s concept of the organic intellectual can activate students’ cultural identities, providing a framework to critique ideologies that historically have dehumanized students of color (Campano, Ghiso, & Sánchez, 2013). Critical theory and critical pedagogy provide a textured analysis of cultural and historical dimensions of research. Carris (2008) integrates Freire’s (1970) emphasis on 74 conscientization, the process of becoming critically aware of power relations for self and social transformation, with Kincheloe and Pinar’s (1991) contemporary curriculum theory of place, a form of social psychoanalysis. This research focuses on critical reflection and on place to locate how historically based socio-economic political conditions play out in the lives of non-reader youth in New York City. This type of pedagogy is rooted in the students’ language, knowledge, and experiences to facilitate self-actualization and can be used to teach about social justice. Introducing the concept of social justice to young people can be done through developing critical literacies (Ciardiello, 2004). Critical literacy practices help readers to discover multiple interpretations of text. Teachers need models of critical literacy and to engage in dialogue with peers before they can implement aspects of critical literacy into their teaching (Ciardiello, 2004). Five literacy practices teach the reader how to interrogate text: Examining multiple perspectives, finding one’s authentic voice, recognizing social barriers or borders and crossing them, regaining one’s identity, and becoming engaged in the call of service (Ciardiello, 2004). Ciardiello (2004) references the importance of Freire and Macedo’s work (1987) when teaching learners the importance of “not divorcing the word from the world” (p. 144). Migrant students face overwhelming pressures to disavow themselves and the language of their parents and to assimilate into the mainstream white-middle class culture (Solomon, Levine-Rasky & Singer, 2003). When choosing multicultural children’s literature, the teacher must ask the following questions: What ideologies are embedded in the texts? And, how are the ideologies of assimilation or pluralism presented? (Yoon, Simpson, & Haag, 2010). Teachers need to be aware of the underlying messages in multicultural children’s 75 literature; some books contain assimilationist ideologies and others books promote cultural pluralism. “Teachers must be proactive in teaching students about ideological perspectives in order to reach the goal of promoting social justice” (Yoon et al., 2010, p. 117). In the course of a discussion on literature, teachers are not passive; they must help students grow and change their personal perspectives (Rosenblatt, 1995). Giroux explains, “The struggle over literacy is fundamentally about the ability of people to narrate their own histories and experiences within a politics of cultural difference and recognition” (Macedo & Bartolomé, 1999, p. 109). Hayes et al., (1991) contend that good teachers build on the life experience and cultural capital of their students when teaching academic skills and state, “students need not be aware when they are moving between reading and writing” (p. 154). Narrative Writing as Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Writing together with one’s students gives both the teacher and learners a chance to challenge “Master Narrative” that claim the United States was settled by European immigrants, and that Americans are white (Stefoff & Takaki, 2012). Developing literacy as a communal act helps one come to know the interconnectedness of language and reality when one perceives the relationship between text and context that comes about through critical reading of text (Freire & Macedo, 1987). Culturally relevant teaching of literacy is significant; educators should tap into the word universe of the learners; words should be from the experience of the learners, not only from the teacher. A critical reading of reality is a political act, what Antonio Gramsci calls “counterhegemony” (Freire & Macedo, 1987, p. 36). 76 Writing with students is a process of constructing multicultural literature by both reading and writing stories together and is informed by Freire’s (1970) belief that critical agency is nurtured in pedagogical spaces when learners work together cooperatively both in a social setting and on an introspective personal level (Freire, 1970). Sharing stories in a culture circle allows students to make sense of their own lives while learning to respect diverse experiences of others (Kilgore, 2011). The space provides opportunities to peer into diverse realities of others, encouraging participants to cross borders. Learning a second language requires social interaction that can be seen as building community and is important in the academic achievement of English language learners (Kim, 2009). Expressive writing leads not only to the mastery of the target language, but it also can lead to more sophisticated thinking. Through this process, students are encouraged to discover themselves through language (Bilton & Sivasubramaniam, 2009). Several prominent scholars have written on the importance of the narrative as a vehicle for self- growth for both educators and students to construct identity (Gay, 2003, 2010; hooks 1998; Freire, 1998). In The need for story: cultural diversity in classroom and community, Dyson and Genishi (1994) proclaim, “We collectively declare through vivid example the need for and power of story.” Further stating, “Stories are an important tool for proclaiming ourselves as cultural beings” (p. 6). In this seminal work, Dyson and Genishi (1994) explain, “The images and rhythms of our stories–not simply the literary equipment for framing them–are rooted in our experiences as cultural beings” (p. 4). Stories can empower, and they can also silence. If dominant stories are not challenged, what Bakhtin calls “dialogized,” they may become limiting or constraining to students. 77 “The official imaginative universe of the classroom must be a permeable one, for, in culturally diverse classrooms, students will collectively embody more ways with words, more lived worlds than their teacher” (Dyson & Genishi, 1994, p. 6). It is this realization that teachers can and should learn from their students that challenges traditional forms of banking education (Freire, 1970) and points to deeper implications for pedagogy. According to Bahruth, the purpose of our pedagogy should be teaching language in a manner that will benefit humanity. Bahruth (2000) asks, Will we continue to stand by and grade papers with our red pens, or will we recognize the futility and meaninglessness of these mechanical practices and begin to join our students in meaningful conversations whereby language is genuinely acquired through its designed purpose which is to make meaning of the world we live in as we explore the ways in which the words we choose can help shape the future in more human ways? (p. 5) Increasingly, teachers cannot look to the state for leadership to make the changes that need to be made to reach minority youth. Bordas (2007) writes, “The call to becoming a multicultural leader is setting your intentions to serve a purpose greater and nobler than yourself” (p. 185). Change will take the leadership of politically conscious educators, which requires teachers and learners to live storied lives in the way Gabbard (2013) explains in Education leadership or followship? He writes: I’ve always viewed educational leadership to be one of the great oxymorons of our time, at least in terms of how it’s actually been practiced by those in positions of authority. You must be the author of your own life’s narrative, which helps us identify the ultimate source of authority…this is where authentic leadership begins— in leading and authoring our lives. (p. 2) Bahruth (2004) confers stating, “Scholarship is a form of authorship, which is linked to authority” (p.509). Jacobs (2006) writes, “Ultimately, the only true authority comes from 78 personal reflection on experience in light of a spiritual awareness that all things are related” (p. 20). As educators, we can exercise leadership by moving towards Pinar’s (2004) concept of Currere, or moving curriculum to its verb form as we come to recognize autobiography as a potentially revolutionary act. Autobiography offers a way to reconstruct reality in a manner that improves on prior ways of interpreting reality and the world, or as Anzaldúa (1987) eloquently stated, we write to put the pieces of ourselves back together (as cited in Bahruth, 2004). Putting these pieces back together, the construction of teacher identity is directly related to the process of how students engage in constructing identities. The power of story is especially important in terms of locating oneself in an educational context and becomes an important avenue for conceptualizing teacher identity as a curriculum maker (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Conclusion The No Child Left Behind Act 2001 (NCLB) and Race To the Top (2008) are a continuation of the agenda set forth in the policy report of A Nation At Risk in 1983 to build a national culture based on a market driven rationale cloaked in the language of school reform (As cited by Gabbard, 2008). In many ways, these polices can be viewed as rooted in assimilationist policies spanning nearly 200 years with striking similarities to the common school reforms of Horace Mann dating back to the mid nineteenth century (Spring, 2011). The latest incarnation of school reform puts teachers in an extremely challenging position to contest dominant ideological norms as they are well hidden in the benevolent language of high standards. From a state policy standpoint, multicultural reforms that seek to challenge the status quo will not be given serious consideration in the 79 climate of high stakes testing and curriculum standardization in the immediate future (Nieto & Bode, 2008). The seeming contradiction of preparing workers in a globalized society with compulsory education that seeks to standardize students, driven by assessments conducted only in English must be understood as the manner in which the hegemony of neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies function in tandem (Gabbard, 2008). While multicultural education can provide educators with the ability to teach students in a manner that breaks with the colonial model of education, educators must remain vigilant not to tether their identities to the historical role the school plays for the state, what Althusser (1971) calls the dominant ideological state apparatus. To make the distinction between education and schooling provides educators the potential to construct multicultural forms of knowledge that benefit students and teachers. An understanding of education as inseparable from politics requires teachers to develop critical literacies to locate themselves in an historical context to challenge the normalized logic of the current school reform/standardization movement. Educators committed to social justice will need to exercise leadership at the personal grass roots level and lead by example. As Greene (1994) explains, multiculturalism has allowed us “to awaken to the potentials of perspectivism, to reject notions of a fixed authority objectivism” (p. 21). We can best reach students when we try to do so “against the background of their own life stories, their own narratives” (Greene, 1994; Freire & Macedo, 1987). Greene (1994) goes on to suggest teachers “break out of the confinements of monologism, open themselves to pluralism, become aware of more possible ways of being and attending to the world” (p. 21). Greene (1994) points to the centrality of Freire and his insight into heightened consciousness through critical 80 reflectiveness stating, “…a person’s culture ought always to be cherished and cultivated, but never absolutized” (p. 24). The historical record demonstrates the manner in which the state has utilized policy to contain and control minority students. However, multicultural approaches to education suggest teachers and learners should tell their stories together, seeking connection points; their dialogue should be informed by an outrage at injustice. To undertake such an endeavor, teachers would be well advised to consider Foucault, Martin, Gutman and Hutton’s (1988) technologies of the self, which he describes as “operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being” that people make by themselves or with the help of others to transform themselves to reach “a state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality” (Foucault, et al., 1988, p. 18). Making a difference in the lives of those we come into contact with on a daily basis means living an informed and ethical life. In the context of schools, making a commitment to the collective good in one’s own classroom and local school environment may be the most immediate approach for educators to promote social justice as historical agents. 81 CHAPTER 3: METHODS This research explores the way first generation and “one and a half generation” migrant students from Mexico make use of written and oral stories over a period of one decade to make meaning of their educational experiences and the acculturation process. One and a half generation refers to migrants that were born in Mexico and brought to the Northwestern United States as young children by their parents (Gonzales-Berry & Mendoza, 2010). Often such stories are offered spontaneously in interaction, and this certainly played a role in my sampling and data gathering. However, these stories are analyzed with reference to a range of narratological and rhetorical formalisms and categories, drawn from multiple disciplines ranging from literary criticism to psychology. This chapter accounts for the way select methods of narrative data gathering, interpretation, and analysis are used in this study to investigate the relationship between the individual and the social; the manner in which people interpret their experiences, construct their realities, and structure their personal and educational experiences. The main sections of this chapter will address the following: 1) An introduction to narrative inquiry, 2) How it is ideal for the study undertaken here, 3) The implications of the method for broad understandings of qualitative and quantitative research, 4) The implications of narrative inquiry in terms of data gathering, “sampling,” and analysis, 5) 82 How it enables the researcher to draw conclusions that have recognized validity, or in qualitative terms, trustworthiness, rigor, and quality. Introduction Stories are found in every culture around the world in oral and/or written form and share some basic components. In Poetics, Aristotle states that a narrative has a beginning, middle, and end. Polkinghorne (1988) discusses the manner in which cultures provide types of plots to members of a society in their constructions of self; he quotes Alasdair MacIntyre on the relationship between plots and life: Surely human life has a determinant form, the form of a certain kind of story. It is not just that poems and sagas narrate what happens to men and women, but in their narrative form poems and sagas capture a form that was already present in the lives which they relate. (p. 153) Polkinghorne (1988) offers examples of the way these plots are conveyed in North American culture as primarily through motion pictures, television dramas, comic books, and novels. As each individual constructs a unique plot, the plot can share the characteristics of a general plot outline or narrative structure. Narratives in Research In an informal sense, narrative is synonymous with story and often “story” and “narrative” are used interchangeably. Prince (1987) provides several definitions for a narrative in his Dictionary of Narratology. He explains that the term comes from the Latin Gnarus which means, “knowing,” or to be an “expert,” or “acquainted with” a thing (p. 39). Gnarus is derived from the Indo –European root gna (to know). Prince explains that, “a narrative always recounts one or more events; but, as etymology suggests, it also 83 represents a particular mode of knowledge.” It does not simply mirror what happened, “it explores and devises what can happen” (p. 60, emphasis added). In this study, I understand both lived and told stories as accounts of actual and possible experience (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). A person’s life is a unique creation, a story in process, not yet finished. By engaging in retelling or writing one’s story one actually engages in the act of reflection that offers possibilities for altering and changing the way one’s life story unfolds. Storytellers may not be able to see the significance of the underlying narrative clearly for themselves. Frank (2000) points to the difference between a story and narrative being where the data ends and the analysis begins, stating that people tell stories, but narrative comes from the analysis of those stories. Once the stories are gathered, the researcher is concerned with their interpretation as narratives and the broader social forces at work that shape the way they are told. The narrative researcher does not discover meaning rather it is viewed as being co-constructed by the researcher and the participants of the study (Merriam, 2002). Assumptions of Narrative Inquiry This research study will use narrative inquiry as method. Narrative is also viewed in terms of being an epistemology and thus provides both real and possible experiences and generalized forms of “knowledge” for analysis and interpretation. In Life as Narrative, Bruner (1987)–one of the most prominent proponents for the use of narrative methods in educational research–explains that how one constructs a personal narrative is really the act of how one constructs reality. He contends that linguistic patterns 84 articulated during the act of telling one’s life story are instrumental in shaping one’s present actions and have implications for how one chooses to live one’s life in the future. Bruner (1987) states, Eventually the culturally shaped cognitive and linguistic processes that guide the self-telling of life narratives achieve the power to structure perceptual experience, to organize memory, to segment and purpose-build the very ‘events’ of a life. In the end, we become the autobiographical narratives by which we ‘tell about’ our lives. (p. 694) A Narrative Mode of Knowing Narrative inquiry challenges traditional forms of knowledge by making the person in context the researcher’s prime interest; it is a by-product of narrative knowing (Kramp, 2004). Polkinghorne (1995) writes, …the linguistic form uniquely suited for displaying human existence [and experience] as situated…[and in particular that] storied narrative is the linguistic form that preserves the complexity of human action with its interrelationship of temporal sequence, human motivation, chance happenings, and changing interpersonal and environmental contexts” (pp. 5-6). The narrative mode of thought is described as having not only imprecise boundaries between data, method, and theory, but also crosses an array of disciplinary boundaries (Kirkman, 2002). Bruner, known as a pioneer of cognitive psychology, spent a great deal of his early research career studying various aspects of the mind. Early on, his approach to research proceeded from the premise that the mind is a logical information-processing device. Over the next decade, Bruner and Goodman’s (1947) research dealt with the internal mental processes of inference, hypotheses generation, and the concept of categorization. They advanced a view of perception as data that the mind was able to 85 organize into categories as a result of sensory stimulation. At this time, a cognitive approach to the study of mind was a radical departure from the dominant school of behaviorism, as behaviorism did not even view cognition as worthy of scientific study. During this time in Bruner’s career, his work with Miller and other leading researchers in the cognitive sciences blossomed at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto, California. In 1960, Bruner co-founded the Center for Cognitive Science at Harvard. The center attracted top thinkers of the day such as Chomsky, Jean Piaget, and Alexander Luria. In his later career, Bruner (1986) would expand on his earlier work on the “logico scientific mode” or paradigmatic mode of thinking. In Actual minds, possible worlds (1986), Bruner explains this in comparison and contrasts it with a second distinct mode of thought, the narrative mode. There are two modes of cognitive functioning, two modes of thought, each providing distinctive ways of ordering experience, of constructing reality. The two (though complimentary) are irreducible to one another. Efforts to reduce one mode to the other or to ignore one at the expense of the other inevitably fail to capture the rich diversity of thought. Here, Bruner breaks from his earlier work on the paradigmatic mode of thinking, making clearly defined differences in the way people come to know the world through the use of story. He proposes this fundamentally different mode of thought and the approach used for verification. Bruner (1986) describes the narrative mode: Each of the ways of knowing, moreover, has operating principles of its own and its own criteria of well-formedness. They differ radically in their procedure for verification. A good story and a well-formed argument are different natural kinds. Both can be used as a means of convincing another. Yet what they convince of is fundamentally different: arguments convince one of their truth, stories of their lifelikeness. The one verifies by eventual appeal to procedures for establishing 86 formal or empirical proof. The other establishes not truth but verisimilitude. (p. 11) Bruner (1991) describes the logico-scientific mode of thought as being regulated by requirements of consistency, and empirical truth that employ logical and scientific procedures to form theories or “constructs.” Due to what Bruner acknowledges as the generalizable power inherent in the use of logic, mathematics and science, this mode of knowing holds a privileged place in research and cognitive psychology. Fisher (1994) explains that in social science research, this “privileged place” of dominant notions about what constitutes knowledge come out of the legacy of positivism and “ill serves questions of justice, happiness, and humanity” stating, “objectivist knowledge has tended to drive out wisdom” (p. 25). Fisher (1994) is known for developing the narrative paradigm in the field of communications. Fisher sees human nature as being shaped by narrative, stating, “Humans are essentially storytellers” (p. 30). Jerome Bruner devoted his later career to the narrative mode of knowing in research as he came to the realization that the scientific mode of knowing was only “half of the story” so to speak; and that perhaps there are even multiple forms of knowledge. He used a metaphor to describe this very familiar, yet overlooked way of knowing by explaining: The last thing the fish discovers is the water in which it swims. To Bruner, the narrative mode of knowing was both an epistemology and research method that involved the sharing of oral and written stories. Narrative does not attempt to make universal claims through categorization of abstract concepts; rather narratives are interested in the personal aspects of specific characters and incidental circumstances. “Narrative is built upon a concern for the human condition” (Bruner, 1986, p. 14). It 87 involves the study of values like dignity and living in integrity rather than ordering reality into numerical categories. In this way of knowing, believability of the story replaces logical verification or falsifiability in the process of determining truth (Bruner, 1990, p. 122). Narratives are not viewed as empirical, or a literally true form of data. Didion (1961) described narrative as filling the space between what happened and what it means (As cited in Kramp, 2004, p. 107). Dominant methods in the social sciences have tended to view the motivations and predispositions of individuals and their actions through categories such as race, gender, social class, sexual identity, and citizenship, “that locate them in the ‘outside’ or the social world” (Maynes, Pierce, & Laslett, 2008, p. 16). When we rely solely on these categories to locate people in the social world, they can be reduced to groups of variables that dismiss the individuality of the person. Within this type of framework, “human agency is reduced to social position” and the relationship between the individual and social is overly simplistic (Maynes et al., 2008). This study will not attempt to treat individuals as separate from their feelings, experiences, contradictions, or selfknowledge. Yet sociologists have claimed for decades that human culture cannot exist without some force of human agency. And, while it is true people can be oblivious to the manner in which their perceptions are often shaped, “individuals are never mere dupes of their society and culture” (Garfinkel, 1967). This method offers the researcher an insight into the individual’s history, feelings, ambivalences, and self-knowledge, from the inside out. As a researcher, I use narrative inquiry to address this gap between outside positionalities and interior worlds. 88 The way that “believability” works in narrative research comes from the understanding that narrative data is not objective fact verifiable by experiment; rather it is concerned with the moral opinions of story characters and the ensuing interpretation of the audience. Friesen (2008) describes the process where meaning is negotiated between reader and text as the “art and science of interpretation” known as hermeneutics (Friesen, 2008, p. 1). We will turn our attention back to the way I employ hermeneutics in the analysis of data further along in this paper; first, I address the rationale for the use of this methodology for this particular study. Why Narrative Works as an Ideal Method “Issues that directly affect the ways in which learners experience immigration, settlement, and language learning are wrapped in the stories they hold. For these reasons, narrative seems a natural tool for the L2 (second language) researcher” (Bell, 2002, p. 211). Working from Bell’s (2002) assertion, the following section provides an overview of why narrative inquiry is a well-suited qualitative research method for addressing the research questions I have posed. Reflecting Bruner’s general notions of narrative knowing, Merriam (2002) argues that a defining characteristic of qualitative research is that individuals construct reality as they interact with their social worlds. Qualitative researchers in general strive to understand the meaning a phenomenon or experience has for those involved in it. As a qualitative research method, narrative inquiry is well suited for the researcher who wishes to understand a phenomenon or an experience rather than to formulate a logical or scientific explanation as in quantitative forms of research (Kramp, 2004; De Fina & 89 Georgakopoulou, 2012). As indicated briefly above, and as explained further below, this describes my research positionality rather precisely. Narrative analysis also provides for the possibility of understanding individual agency and social constraints, and the way these may be motivated as they operate and change through time (Maynes et al., 2008; Clandinin, 2006; Clandinin, Pushor, & Orr, 2007). The study of agency in the face of adversity is of particular importance in the connections to broader political, social and cultural developments made in this study. Questions about the degree to which the informants see themselves as acting and being acted upon by forces around them are paramount in developing some of this study’s conclusions. Narrative inquiry necessarily involves a narrator who articulates his or her own positionality through the tale (Clandinin & Murphy, 2009; Clandinin, Murphy, Huber, & Orr, 2010; Clandinin, 2007). This study will involve multiple narratives of former students and my own story in the form of a research narrative. The research text itself possesses a plot structure with a beginning and end, and adds to this a supporting cast, and sequencing of events illuminating various forms of tension. Because this research study is concerned with the relationship between the individual and the social, the manner in which people interpret their experiences, construct their realities, and attribute significance to personal experiences, Bruner’s ideas are central in my research. This brief summary of my research method and my research epistemology provides the context for the question (and sub-questions) addressed in this study. As a reminder, these are: 1) What are the personal and educational narratives of one and a half generation migrant students from Mexico? 90 2) How are these “micro-narratives tied to larger “macro-narratives”, and why is the intertwining of the two essential for teachers’ understandings of these students? Other questions that guide this research are: • What are the main themes found in these narrative accounts? • What is the significance for participants to have written personal narratives in an ESL class years earlier? Positionality of Researcher The epistemological assumptions that inform this research view inquiry as engaged in understanding the human world in a specific context that, “is always and at once historical, moral, and political” (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987, p. 14). This study evolved out of my experience working with migrant students, some of whom continue to live in the shadows; being undocumented, they face very real fears of being deported. My research is involved with the lives of participants and is supported by the position of Johnson-Bailey (2004) who states, There are sound reasons to employ narratives to investigate the lives of people who reside on the margins of general knowledge that are beneficial to the participants and the researchers. (p. 134) As I am the former teacher of participants in this study and traditionally educators are held in high esteem in Mexican culture, participants may feel obligated to participate in the study. This certainly is not the case, however, it is our personal relationship that allows me access to this vulnerable population of people. In what Clandinin and Connelly 91 (2000) refer to as being wakeful of these very real and present social dynamics, I have made every conscious effort to discuss the purposes of the study with participants in an open and honest manner and to explain the voluntary nature of the study. I have reassured participants of my personal commitment to protect their anonymity at all costs. In describing my positionality, I consciously avoid an insider-outsider dichotomy as I find it to be problematic on many levels. Context, culture, and social relations account for the basis of the relationships that I have with former students more so than prescribed categories of class, race, or gender can account for alone. And of course social constructions of race, class, and genders have historically rooted consequences in the present affecting dynamics of intrapersonal power relations (Foucault et al., 1991). Participants self identify as Mexican, Latina and/or Chicana. I identify as both EuroAmerican and Native American. In describing my identity, I privilege the aspects of my identity that are fluid and open to change. A significant part of my identity comes from being a bilingual educator who has worked for several years with Mexican children; these social relations play an important role in the context between researcher and participants. The reason why I avoid an insider outsider duality lies in the fact that I have identified as an outsider for most of my life as a result of growing up poor. When I started teaching ESL and working with Mexican people, I always felt accepted. Perhaps for the first time ever I was not made to feel as an outsider, just the opposite. The narrators or participants of this study have known me for years, although they refer to me as white they also lovingly refer to me as a “Mexican wannabe” a term that I have embraced as an act of solidarity with my students. I adopted this position from an 92 understanding and appreciation of the way humor and joking is used in Mexican culture. My primary language is English and the primary language of the participants is Spanish. However, it is my continual struggle as an adult to become bilingual, which has formed an important aspect of my identity; and has become another point of connection with my students. Perhaps the most relevant of the historically predetermined categories of race, class, gender, etc. mentioned above to describe the solidarity I have with my students involves our social class orientations. Research participants and I describe our roots in terms of coming from poor and working class backgrounds. We initially came to know one another in the ESL classroom over ten years ago through sharing personal stories of how our struggles as children have shaped our lives. My development of classconsciousness at a young age lies at the core of how I view life experiences and undoubtedly influences my analysis and the way I construct knowledge. This in turn has led me to a personal commitment to social justice, no doubt shaping my subjective position as a teacher, researcher, and human being. Narrative inquiry draws from multiple traditions beyond psychology such as those in literary, historical and cultural studies, from sociology and philosophy, and education. This being the case, there are a broad range of epistemological, ideological, and ontological understandings of phenomenon under study in the social sciences. It is from my experience of years of teaching in a bilingual environment that I have come to identify with the following quote by Stone-Mediatore (2000) who describes her understanding of experience as consisting of: 93 tensions between experience and language, tensions that are endured subjectively as contradictions within experience- contradictions between ideologically constituted perceptions of the world and reactions to these images endured on multiple psychological and bodily levels. (p. xiv) Experience of the Researcher Before I became a doctoral candidate in the college of education, I dedicated the last twenty years to teaching in a variety of contexts and landscapes spanning three western states. My professional preparation for teaching was interdisciplinary, as I have degrees in political science and secondary education with an emphasis on second language acquisition. My teaching experience began with my first job teaching preschool-aged children of teen parents in an inner-city program located in Denver, Colorado. This was followed by perhaps one of my more interesting life experiences, working with incarcerated youth in an alternative placement wilderness program in Colorado. This experience convinced me to become certified to teach in public schools. I cherished all twelve years of my K-12 teaching experience working with bilingual learners in ESL programs at both secondary and elementary levels. Before entering my doctoral program, I spent ten years working in the same school district where I came to know the research participants in this study. In this study, narrative inquiry is seen as both method and epistemology. The analysis of narratives that I am interested in conducting is focused directly on the dynamic “in process” nature of interpretation (Ezzy, 2002). Specifically how the interpretation of former student stories change to construct new meaning over time. Integration of time and context in the construction of meaning is a characteristic of narrative (Simms, 2003). This study does not seek to decontextualize the data to make 94 generalizable claims. An important methodological distinction to note about narrative analysis is that the focus of this study seeks to contextualize the individual’s meaningmaking process by focusing on providing rich descriptions of the person rather than focusing exclusively on a set of themes. Furthermore, the people in this research study are people living storied lives on storied landscapes (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000) meaning people are complex, always changing and moving forward. The experiences of the young people in this study, who have lived the hardships of migration and the ensuing acculturation process they encountered while attending public school, cannot be accurately represented by theories or categories alone. Due to its interdisciplinary uses and various purposes, the process of analyzing stories cannot consist of only one unifying method (Riessman, 1993). Before discussing how I collected the data for this study, I describe key concepts for how my analysis of narratives as qualitative data is conducted. A Socio-historical and Cultural Triangulated Analysis of Narrative This approach to analysis focuses mainly on two general aspects of stories, discourse and narration (Genette, 1980). Discourse is what is told in the story or what Russian formalists called fabula. Narration addresses how the story is told or what the Russian formalists called syuzhet (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012). To better understand what is told in the story, certain themes in the data are coded as they emerge using elements of grounded theory. After themes are identified I eleaborate on these themes to locate the stories in a larger socio-historical context using hermeneutics. Secondly, I have examined how the story is told by identifying certain structures of the 95 story such as plot, characters, and setting. The following concepts guided my approach to interpreting narrative data. Before addressing discourse and narration, the manner in which I interpreted data using hermeneutics is discussed. Concepts for Data Analysis Hermeneutics My approach to interpreting narrative data stems from Wilhelm Dilthey’s description of the development of modern hermeneutics in “Die Entstehung der Hemeneutik.” By employing a critical historical lens, I employ modern hermeneutics as “liberation from dogma”(as cited in Warnke, 1987, p. 5). This approach to interpreting text, which originated during the Reformation as a way for the individual to interpret Biblical text, involves what is known as the hermeneutic circle. The hermeneutic circle refers to the situation in which we encounter a text (or any cultural phenomenon) and how we attempt to understand it. Stated simply, we can only understand it (i.e., make sense of it) with reference to other texts, and in turn our understanding of these other texts is modified by our understanding of this text. As narrative themes emerge from narrative accounts of participants, I will contextualize the theme(s) by referring to similar studies that address this topic in history and the larger body of research. 96 Cultural context Historical context Narratives in mass media(news, film, books, video games) Immigration policy (national) Policy local & state Public High School, student narratives Figure 3.1 Layers of Narrative Context (Boyer, 2015) Thus, I use hermeneutics to interpret the themes found within each narrative account as well as themes found across the three narratives being analyzed. The manner in which I interpret data involves the dialogical process, known as the hermeneutic circle, which requires the reader to move between the part and the whole of the text, to move between the general and the particular. The reader also moves back and forth from the social and political realm to the individual circumstances of the narrator. This dynamic is key to my purpose for using narrative inquiry as a method. The importance of the 97 historical context in which the reader makes his/her interpretation is perhaps best articulated in Gadamer’s Truth and Method (1988): Understanding is never subjective behavior toward a given ‘object’, but towards its effective history- the history of its influence; in other words, understanding belongs to the being of that which is understood. (p. xix) By applying Gadamer’s approach to seeking to understand others, by confronting texts, and/or alterative perspectives, or worldviews we can better know our own prejudices and enjoy an enriched view of reality. The following diagram illustrates the active process that one must use when engaging in an interpretation of a text. Figure 3.2 Hermeneutic Circle (Forum: Qualitative Social Research) Gadamer (1988) views hermeneutics as a productive process, “an attempt to clarify the conditions in which understanding takes place” (p. 263). However, one’s understanding is not viewed in terms of one’s subjectivity, “but as the placing of oneself within a process of tradition, in which past and present are constantly fused” (p. 258). Gadamer (1988) states, [T]emporal distance is not something that must be overcome. This was, rather, the naïve assumption of historicism, namely that we must set ourselves within the 98 spirit of the age, and think with its ideas and its thoughts, not with our own, and thus advance towards historical objectivity. In fact the important thing is to recognize the distance in time as a positive and productive possibility of understanding. (p. 264) It is precisely this “distance in time” in which this study draws into focus. Participants will tell stories of how they understand their experiences in school from a retrospective vantage point that comes with an additional ten years of life experience. From the perspective of researcher, I interpret the narratives each participant shares through multiple lenses to examine cultural, historical and geographical contexts. Gadamer (1986) contends that reading a text is a matter of anticipating meaning and of correcting one’s anticipations, precisely because human living already has this kind of structure. In other words, our life stories can change and improve with each telling, and what they mean to us is re-evaluated; they are never final (Clandinin, 2007). With an understanding of my approach to interpreting data through the use of hermeneutics, I now turn to the two aspects of narratives that I focus on as data for this study, narration and discourse. Narration The Centrality of Plot: How the Story is Told Narrative researchers interpret written or told stories as data by identifying cultural markers or established narrative structures the researcher must attend to; the most central is the action in the story or the story’s plot. This is an elemental characteristic of a story that distinguishes it from a list of random events. The plot of a story revolves around a problem and then attempt(s) to resolve it. An individual narrator has a story, but her story is unique because it deviates from the broader collection of other stories known 99 in a particular culture. Bruner (1991) refers to this as a breach in the canonical script. In other words, for a story to be interesting to tell and hear, it needs to go beyond what is ordinarily expected, a deviation in the normal course of events. Bruner also acknowledges the recognizable breaches or problems in the western tradition. To gain a btter understanding of plot structure, I discuss the important work of the linguist William Labov. Labov (1972), working from a structural viewpoint, identified a pattern that a typical narrative tends to follow: introduction, orientation, complication, evaluation, resolution, conclusion, and coda. According to Labov, there is a brief introduction of the topic. Then narratives orient the reader to a particular space and time by describing the setting and providing background information. And, once this familiar space is created, a complication is introduced to disrupt the otherwise predictable progression of the original situation. Next, presented with this disruption, the narrator or agents are compelled to evaluate the complicating factors and find a resolution to the problem. Finally the narrative concludes by tying the events together, and often highlights the importance or reason for telling the story. A coda indicates closure; it brings the listener back to the present moment in time (Labov, 1972). Other terms in literature correlate with Labov’s linguistic terms. I provide examples of each term with a simple story. 1. Introduction: The storyteller may say something like; “You’ll never guess what happened to me on the way home from work.” 2. Orientation, also known as an “exposition” in literary terms, presents the circumstances of the story before the action begins (Prince, 1987, p. 28). For example, “I was driving along Hill Road in rush-hour traffic.” 100 3. Complication, or a “crisis” in literary terms (Prince, 1987, p. 17) or a “breach in canonicity” (Bruner, 1986) or simply meaning what is generally expected to happen is breached. For example, “Just then a bear stumbled out of the trees onto the road and just stood there looking at me; it wouldn’t move.” 4. Evaluation: establishes the meaning of the story. For example “So I’m wondering what to do, I had to get home to take the boys to soccer, I honked the horn, but that bear wouldn’t budge.” 5. Resolution: or result in Aristotelian terminology. This is an ending in success or failure to the mystery (Prince, 1987, p. 81). For example, “Just then two little cubs came out of the bushes; then they followed their mother across the road and down the hill, jumping back into the forest.” 6. Coda: indicates the story is over. An example would be, “And we made it home safe and sound.” The “canonical” coda would be: “And, they lived happily ever after” (Prince, 1987, p. 14). These characteristics of a narrative have been well established in literary criticism and linguistics. Although Labov’s approach has been criticized for its “western assumptions about time marching forward” (Riessman, 1993, p. 17), and time indeed is shown to pause and cycle back in some of my analyses, my intent is not to adopt Labov’s position on linear time, but rather to use Labov’s structural work to clarify the terminology used in my analysis. Also worth noting is that in this study I depart from Labov’s portrayal of the text as an object that could be studied separately from the context in which it was created between storyteller and listener. For my purposes, I focus on pragmatic aspects of analyzing narratives as embedded in interlocution (Horsdal, 101 2012). By this, I mean that not only the narrator relays these key elements of the story; rather they are distributed between both participants in the conversation or in the narrative interview (Mishler, 1986; Nair, 2001). The following definition of narrative by Polkinghorne (1988) is helpful not only in its structural precision, but also in that it brings together a number of concepts central to narrative analysis: meaning structure (genre), actions, events, a sense of wholeness, and temporality. Narrative is a meaning structure that organizes events and human action into a whole, thereby attributing significance to individual actions and events according to their effects on the whole…Narrative provides a symbolized account of actions that includes a temporal dimension. (p. 18) Furthermore, a narrative makes sense of how the parts function together, bringing together these events into a meaningful whole. Polkinghorne’s definition highlights the importance of time and change in narratives. It is the human experience of certain meaningful events that determines the sense of time and place in a story. Polkinghorne also implies that there is a narrator, agents or people in the narrative, and setting (when and where the events take place). When we combine Polkinghorne’s definition of narrative to Labov’s terms used to identify the properties of narratives, we are provided with the vocabulary necessary to study the plot components of nearly every type of narrative account (Friesen, 2008). Narrative Themes Polkinghorne speaks of the actions in a narrative or the plot, which simply stated is, “the main incidents of a narrative” (Prince, 1987, p. 71). However, another central concept that is not mentioned by Polkinghorne, but that is central to this study, is theme. 102 Riessman (2002) considers theme to be the glue that holds a narrative together. Prince (1987) provides the following definition of theme: A semantic macro-structural category or frame extractable from (or allowing for the unification of) distinct (and discontinuous) textual elements which (are taken to) illustrate it and expressing the more general and abstract entities (ideas, thoughts, etc.) that a text or part thereof is (or may be considered to be) about. (p. 97) I identify themes in the narrative accounts of research participants in this study to further explore how certain ideas that emerge are formed and how they fit or fail to fit within larger story structures. These themes will be explored as they emerge in a participant’s narrative and are to be understood in their own terms. A theme should be distinguished from other kinds of macro-structural categories or frames that also connect or allow for the connecting of textual elements and express what a text or segment thereof is (partly) about: it is an “idea” frame rather than, for example, an action frame (plot) or an existent frame (character, setting). (Prince, 1987, p. 97) In the following subsection, I discuss concepts of “Master/Grand narratives” and emplotment, which are important concepts to my analysis of “how” the story is told. Grand Narratives The concept of the Grand Narrative (Clandinin & Connellly, 2000), or metanarrative (Lyotard, 1984) will be examined as part of the cultural context in which participants’ narratives are located. Grand narratives can be understood in terms of seeking to offer legitimacy to society, told through historical accounts and other cultural forms of storytelling such as music, novels, the mass media, etc. These master narratives constitute structures of understanding that take on a universal explanation of knowledge. They also tend to engulf individuals and have the potential to define reality for people in 103 prescribed terms that often remain hidden and appear to be objective or considered common knowledge. One example of a master narrative that is pertinent to this study is that immigrants to the United States are white Europeans who passed through Ellis Island. Narrative inquiry has a potential to offer “undocumented” and/or historically silenced narrators to counter grand narratives with micro-narratives that focus on common people in specific places and situations. The narratives of Mexican immigrants in this study obviously will contest this grand narrative. Lyotard (1984) defined postmodern as an “incredulity toward metanarratives” (p. xxiv). It is this shared sense of incredulity that informs my choice of research method to challenge the legitimacy of deep seeded cultural narratives. Emplotment: Different Kinds of Stories Polkinghorne (1991) claims that emplotment is a basic sense making mechanism. He defines emplotment as: A procedure that configures temporal elements into a whole by ‘grasping them together’ and directing them towards a conclusion and ending. Emplotment transforms a list or sequence of disconnected events into a unified story with a point and theme. (p. 141) In Metahistory: The historical imagination in nineteenth century Europe, White (1973) explains how historians Michelot, Ranke, Tocqueville, and Burckhardt and philosophers of history Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Croce use different styles and narrative modes in their representation of past events. One of these tactics is emplotment, or “the way by which a sequence of events fashioned into a story is gradually revealed to be a story of a particular kind” (p.7). White’s (1973) use of emplotment refers to an interpretation of the “meaning” of each story by identifying the “kind of story” that is told (p. 7). I will use a 104 number of White’s (1973) four archetypal story forms to analyze stories told by the narrators in this research study; the four modes are romance, comedy, tragedy, and satire. The table below organizes data by providing a frame for comparison of different types of stories. Table 3.1 Frame for Comparison of Different Types of Stories Narrator Jesus Jael Chato Mode of Emplotment Theme Identity Agency Legal Status A Romance involves a drama of “self identification symbolized by the hero’s transcendence of the world of experience, [her] victory over it, and [her] final liberation from it.” The romance is a drama of the victory of good conquering evil, the triumph of light over darkness, or the redemption of man[kind] and “the ultimate transcendence of man over the world in which he was imprisoned by the Fall” (White, 1973, p. 8). (The Fall refers to original sin of Adam and Eve in Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythology found in the book of Genesis). The archetypal theme of Satire is the direct opposite of the Romance. The Satire is “a drama dominated by the apprehension of man, that man is ultimately a captive of the world rather than its master.” The Satire is a recognition that, “human consciousness and 105 will are always inadequate to the task of overcoming definitively the dark force of death, which is the unremitting enemy of mankind” (White, 1973, p. 9). The plot structures of Comedy and Tragedy “suggest the possibility of at least partial liberation from the condition of the Fall” (White, 1973, p. 9). In the plot structure of the Comedy, “hope is held out for the temporary triumph of man over his world by the prospect of occasional reconciliations of the forces at play in the social and natural worlds. Such reconciliations are symbolized in the festive occasions which the Comic writer traditionally uses to terminate his dramatic accounts of change and transformation” (p. 9). The reconciliations at the end of a comedy are “reconciliations of men with men, of men with their world and society.” Society is represented as being “purer, saner, and healthier as a result of the conflict among seemingly inalterably opposed elements in the world.” In the end, “these elements are revealed to be, in the long run, harmonizable with one another, unified, at one with themselves and the others” (p. 9). In the plot structure of the Tragedy, “there are no festive occasions except false or illusory ones; rather there are intimations of states of division among men more terrible than that which incited the tragic agon at the beginning of the drama.” At the end of the tragic play, the protagonist falls yet this shaking up of his world “are not regarded as totally threatening to those who survive the agonic test” (p. 9). The spectators of the play experience an enhanced consciousness. This enhanced consciousness “is thought to consist of the epiphany of the law governing human existence which the protagonist’s exertions against the world have brought to pass” (p. 9). The reconciliations at the end of a tragedy are somber; “they are more in the nature of resignations of men to the conditions under which they must labor in the world.” These conditions are seen as 106 unchangeable, eternal, man must work within these inalterable conditions. “They set the limits on what may be aspired to and what may be legitimately aimed at in the quest for security and sanity in the world” (p. 9). White (1973) explains, “Romance and Satire would appear to be mutually exclusive ways of emplotting the processes of reality. The idea of a Romantic Satire is a contradiction of terms. However, a Satirical Romance could be an Ironic representation of “the fatuity of a Romantic conception of the world” (p. 10). One can also speak of a Comic Satire and a Satirical Comedy, or a Satirical Tragedy and a Tragic Satire. But, “the relation between the genre (Tragedy or Comedy) and the mode in which it is cast (Satirical) is different from that which obtains between the genre of Romance and the modes (Comic and Tragic) in which it may be cast.” Comedy and Tragedy represent qualifications of the Romantic apprehension of the world, a process “in the interest of taking seriously the forces which oppose the effort at human redemption naively held up as a possibility for mankind in Romance” (p. 10). Both Comedy and Tragedy take conflict seriously, even if Comedy “eventuates in a vision of the ultimate reconciliation of opposed forces and [Tragedy] in a revelation of the nature of the forces opposing man on the other” (p. 10). The Romantic writer can “assimilate the truths of human existence revealed in Comedy and Tragedy respectively within the structure of the drama of redemption which he figures in his vision of the ultimate victory of man over the world of experience” (p. 10). Satire views the hopes, possibilities, and truths of human existence Ironically; there is an apprehension of the inadequacy of consciousness to comprehend the world or to find happiness in it. “Satire presupposes the ultimate inadequacy of the visions of the 107 world dramatically represented in the genres of Romance, Comedy, and Tragedy alike” (White, 1973, p. 10). The satirical mode of representation, like philosophy itself, demonstrates an awareness of “its own inadequacy as an image of reality; it therefore prepares consciousness for its repudiation of all sophisticated conceptualizations of the world and anticipates a return to a mythic apprehension of the world and its processes” (p. 10). It is these four archetypal story structures that provide me with an ability to characterize different kinds of explanatory affects a narrator can use on the level of narrative emplotment. These distinctions indicate a difference of emphasis in the way a story is relayed to explain the relationship between continuity and change in a specific story about one’s life experience. Each plot structure “has its implication for the cognitive operations by which the [narrator] seeks to ‘explain’ what was ‘really happening’ during the process of which it provides an image of its true form” (White, 1973, p. 11). Using History to Contextualize Themes in Discourse: Analyzing What is Told Clandinin and Connely (2000) explain that narrative inquiry involves studying phenomena, engaging in searching, re-searching, and searching again in a process of continual reformulation of one’s ideas about the chosen phenomena. This is accomplished by drawing on elements of phenomenology (imaging), ethnography (understanding the context), and grounded theory (identifying themes and categories in the data). In conducting an analysis of the narratives, I use the principles of hermeneutics as explained above to conduct an analysis of each narrative account located within an expanded socio-historical context as they emerge from the data using experience as my starting point rather than a comparative analysis of theoretical frameworks (Bold, 2012). 108 Narrative inquiry is, for the researcher, participants, and the public, a multistoried process (Olson, 2000) arising from a “nested set of stories-ours and theirs” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 93) Thus, my analysis will consist of using narratives and other field texts to inform my research texts (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). The content of research texts consist of my concluding analysis. However, I do not wish to reduce participant stories to only a set of themes or suggest that the themes lifted from their stories are solely a product of societal structures or history. Identity My analysis also focuses on the subjective realities of each person interviewed within the larger social context. To conduct this aspect of my analysis requires an examination of the concepts of self, subjectivity, and agency. An important aspect of conducting an analysis of narratives is to focus on the relationship between how one constructs a storied identity and the role it serves for each person. “Identity can be seen and defined as a property of the individual or as something that emerges through social interaction; it can be regarded as residing in the mind or in concrete social behavior; or it can be anchored to the individual or group” (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012, p. 155). The approach I adopted in this research is articulated by De Fina and Georgakopoulou (2012) who explain that more recent views of identity in psychology have moved away from an essentialist view of the individual self and have moved toward a view of self firmly grounded in social interaction. The move toward a view of identity within interactional processes stresses the social nature of identity, its plurality and interdependence on contextualization. 109 The evidence presented in personal narratives is subjective, yet this insight can be crucial in making meaningful connections between “outside positionalities and interior worlds, between the individual and the social” (Maynes, Pierce, & Laslett, 2008, p. 16 ). Personal narrative research, especially that based on in-depth life stories extending over a considerable period of the life course, is able to offer a far more complex view of the subject- a subject constructed through social relations, embodied in individuals with histories and psyches, living and changing through time. (Maynes et al., 2008, p. 26) My analysis will draw upon Schiffrin’s (1996) examination of self-presentation in narrative. Her research suggests that while engaged in the process, storytellers construct and negotiate certain aspects of their selves. She drew upon the difference between epistemic and agentive selves proposed by Bruner (1990) to explain that tellers emphasize different aspects of themselves depending on whether they are reporting on actions or feelings and beliefs. Schiffrin (1996) explains: We present ourselves epistemically when we state our beliefs, feelings and wants; agentive aspects of self are revealed when we report actions directed towards goals, including actions that have an effect on others. (p. 194) Narrators usually display both aspects of self, sometimes in coherent and sometimes in conflicting ways. The concept of position illustrates this “dialectical relationship between epistemic and agentive selves on the one hand and the self that emerges in interactional negotiations on the other” (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012, p. 168). It is within this framework, which emphasizes relationality as a central characteristic to identity construction, that will be a focus of this study, mainly how participants use story to negotiate identity. 110 Agency, Selfhood Two Sides of the Debate To study identity requires an examination of agency and its motivations as it functions and changes through time (Clandinin, 2006). Data analysis for this study will examine agency and subjectivity in the construction of the self-narrative. I will use the term agency to refer to the manner in which a human being initiates an action (Prince, 1987, p. 4). I use the term self to refer to the way an individual interacts with a social group. However, it is important to keep in mind that concepts of self vary between cultures, and understandings of the self are never monolithic within a culture. For example, in some Native American cultures fluid and communalistic understandings of the relationship between an individual and society are typical and stand in stark contrast with the “self-society demarcation that came to predominate in hegemonic European cultures” (Maynes et al., 2008, p. 17). The subject can be understood as an actant or the protagonist in fiction (Prince, 1987, p. 93). In nonfictional narratives accounting for the subject become more problematic and require considerable discussion of the historical context from which a modern understanding of subjectivity emerged. Modern Western concepts of subjectivity have historical roots with Descartes and other Enlightenment thinkers like Kant, Rousseau, and Adam Smith who emphasized the individual’s capacity to reason and to act accordingly; claims about human subjectivity tended toward the universal (Maynes et al., 2008). Historicizing these notions of subjectivity and agency, locating them in the historical context of the time they were produced, has been the focus of critical traditions in Western philosophy. 111 Michel Foucault (1978) demonstrates the manner in which Enlightenment sciences and modern institutions have disciplined modern subjects even as subjects believe themselves to be free agents. Foucault sees the illusion of autonomy as concealing a deeper bondage that begins at a very early age. Through the “means of correct training” the state utilizes schools, hospitals, prisons, the military, etc. to develop techniques leading to an institutionalized disciplining of the self. Foucault et al.’s (1988) discussion of technologies of production, explains how technologies of power “determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject:” Foucault challenges the agency of the self (Foucault et al., 1988, p. 18). Foucauldian critique of the hegemonic western self is critical for discussing narrative analysis; however, for the purposes of this analysis, historicizing the self does not make individuals or their sense of self disappear. Rather it requires further critical considerations to the origins of, and the importance of this social construction. A critical historical account not only brings into question the manner in which the self functions as an ideology, and whose history is told, more importantly it advocates for a platform for self expression of voices excluded from history, namely the poor, women, and minorities (Maynes et al., 2008). Expanding on notions of self, Paul John Eakin’s (1999) in How our lives become stories: Making selves, combines findings from neuroscience and psychology to explain the making of the autobiographical self (‘the I who speaks in self narrations and the I who is spoken about’, p. ix). Eakins claims the roots of a sense of self are located in the active construction through time of an individual’s neurological system; in his view “the bios of 112 autobiography and biography- the course of life, a lifetime- expands to include the life of the body and especially the nervous system” (p. 18). Eakin’s evidence from psychological research argues that the key mechanism that creates continuity through time for the embodied self is self-narrative stories about the self that locate the body as a location and make connections between present and past selves. Eakin (1999) echoes Jerome Bruner in arguing, “self narration is the defining act of the human subject, an act which is not only ‘descriptive of the self’ but fundamental to the emergence and reality of that subject” (p. 21). Eakin’s analysis of autobiography draws heavily from Ian Burkitt’s critique of the social constructivism of Foucault and Derrida for its emphasis on discourse ‘at the expense of understanding humans as embodied social beings’ (p. 65). Eakin’s analysis points to understanding acts of selfnarration as simultaneously embodied in an individual and intrinsically social, based as they are on culturally learned behaviors that begin as an infant. This understanding of the self can also be understood in terms of expanding the philosophical concept of habitus. The concept of habitus as expressed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977) has been criticized for focusing too heavily on social class and culture at the expense of a consideration for an individual’s feelings and emotions. Yet the concept of habitus is useful to understanding a historicized, psychologically informed, and embodied notion of the self. Primarily, because it problematizes the false dichotomies of the individual versus society. Bourdieu’s habitus emphasizes actions that unfold in particular cultural contexts. He explains habitus as a system of internalized predispositions that mediate between abstract and unseen social structures and a person’s everyday activities; habitus is, at the same time, shaped by structures and regulates one’s actions. 113 In Bourdieu’s (1977) A false dilemma: mechanism and finalism, his discussion of habitus becomes particularly useful in this study because it provides a temporal depth that can be understood as a lifelong learning process commencing in childhood and extending throughout one’s life (Outline for a theory of practice, 1977, p. 72). Through the use of personal narrative analysis, the researcher is able to observe both the material and discursive construction of self by focusing on how individual agency is dependent on a particular social context and involves an embodied self that changes over the course of the individual’s life. An expanded understanding of self can also be found in Foucault’s (1988) later work, which supports the position that a person’s life is a narrative in process and remains unfinished. One of Foucault et al.’s (1988) four inter-related technologies of production is the technologies of the self, which are “operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being” that people make by themselves or with the help of others to transform themselves to reach “ a state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality” (Foucault, Martin, Gutman & Hutton, 1988, p. 18). Foucault echoes Nietzsche’s view that the self is not a stable or constant entity; rather it is something one constructs and becomes. Polkinghorne (1988) explains that the self can only know itself through signs and symbols of self-interpretation. The figured ego “comes into being through the configuration it gives itself” (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 154). So it is through conducting a socio-historical analysis that I draw upon theories of social action and human agency, recognizing the complex processes involved in the construction of the individual self and ideas about selfhood and human agency that inform this collection of personal narratives. I examine the stories for evidence of how 114 each narrator or protagonist exercises individual agency within the structures of the institutions that have an undeniable effect on shaping one’s reality (Foucault, 1978). I am interested in both the developmental and temporal aspects of telling and retelling life stories in the sense that, “Identity is a life story. A life story is a personal myth that an individual begins working on in late adolescence and young adulthood in order to provide his or her life with a purpose” (McAdams, 1993, p. 5). My concern is the manner in which the narrators in this study demonstrate unity and coherence to create a sense of self across time and space, which I link back to genre. For example, no sense of agency constitutes a tragedy; full agency a romance, a mixture of the two a satire. My analysis shows this. Tensions of Time, Space, and Relationships As discussed above in some detail, this analysis involves an examination of tensions of time, space and social relations. As such, another useful concept that I employ in my analysis is Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) metaphor of a three dimensional space for inquiry with its central features being temporality, personal and social interactions, and place to explore the tensions of research participants around these three features. The narrators of these stories are immigrant people who came to the United States to begin a new life in a new country amongst new and strange people. Therefore the exploration of time, place, and social interactions are important areas to investigate in conducting an analysis of the stories told as patterns in these constitute themes. Space is a key element in the analysis of narratives in this study. For example, the border between the United States and Mexico literally draws a line in the sand, which could indicate an ending to one way of life and a beginning to a new way of living in a 115 literal sense. But the border takes on a lasting psychological component even once a migrant creates physical space between herself and the border by migrating to the Pacific Northwest. Gonzales-Berry & Mendoza (2010) discuss the different way that migrants in Oregon experience reality from those living in the southwest. She states, “The border for mexicanos in Oregon is a socio-spatial line that mediates between the reality of their lives at home and that of the public space of mainstream culture.” She explains, “It is more intensely personal and psychological and it functions as a reminder of their isolation and of their separation from the dominant society” (p. 14). Time is another aspect of narratives that is analyzed in this study for the simple fact that the study is retrospective. It asks adult participants to reflect back on their experiences as children to describe their experiences around migration and schooling. The act of engaging in this form of critical reflection will bring to the surface tensions surrounding past experiences and how they shape present realities while offering new and perhaps undiscovered possibilities for the future, or in the words of Giroux (1985), narratives do not only deal with aspects of the past, they reveal the language of possibility. Relationships are a central part of this study as the participants are my former students. A central reason for using these methods are that “Narrative inquiry assumes ‘personal involvement’ as the very condition that makes it possible for you, as researcher, to gather and interpret narratives of participants in your study” (Kramp, 2004, p. 114). The participants are now in their mid twenties. I, as the researcher, have known these former students for many years and consider them to be friends, as happens when living in a small isolated community. 116 I have formed personal relationships with the participants and their families, attending quincineras, first communions, weddings and our children’s soccer matches. It is these relationships that were initially formed within the context of school that have expanded my understanding of teaching and learning as a process that extends well beyond the school, and into the larger community. Relationships that have been built over years, and a sense of caring about participants is at the heart of why I have a continued interest in the lives of former students, ten years after I came to know them in a classroom context. Data Collection In this study, I construct various field texts (such as interviews), my research journals, historical documents, and various forms of artifacts to tell a story; these field texts will then inform a storied process of the researcher referred to as research texts (Clandinin & Connely, 2000). Interviews will be loosely structured to allow follow-up questions in a conversational style that should last for about one hour each in length. Narratives told in these interviews are viewed in terms of being a co-construction, where interviewer and interviewee take turns speaking (Mishler, 1986). Transcribed interviews will be edited and member checked for accuracy to construct narrative texts to be included in my research texts. Context of Interviews The epistemology informing the interviews I conducted is constructionist with a view of participants as active meaning makers. My decision to approach the qualitative interview was to guide the conversation and to carefully listen for meaning (Warren, 117 2002). I combined elements of ethnography with qualitative methods to highlight both the culture and biographical particularities of the participants. By this, I mean the Mexican culture of interviewees are not ignored, rather are explored in a manner that both acknowledges the participants group identity and yet seeks to understand who each participant is as an individual. Participants were given the choice to speak in English or Spanish. From the recorded interviews, I looked for common patterns or themes, which is common in qualitative interviewing (Kvale, 1996). The interviews were conducted at the local public library in a meeting room. Creswell (1998) suggests that interviews should consist of between five and seven questions. The interviews were semi-structured with five questions pertaining to both how students are doing today, years after taking my ESL class as adolescents and/or teenagers, and to how they remember their school experiences. (See interview protocol in the following subsection.) Procedures Former students were shown copies of the classroom published books to which they contributed personal stories many years ago. Participants were asked to study their essays, ghost stories, and photographs of themselves taken a decade ago. As they became familiar with their prior work, they were asked to talk about the importance of sharing stories of their lives then and what it means to them now. As suggested by Creswell (1998), these interviews will be audio recorded and later transcribed. The interviews will take on the form of a casual conversation between friends in what will become another telling of lived stories. 118 Using interview techniques commonly associated with phenomenology as well as narrative inquiry, I asked research participants to reflect retrospectively on the experiences they had previously lived (Van Manen, 1990). Both phenomenology and narrative inquiry attempt to understand experience and the meaning people make of their lived experiences (deMarrais & Lapan, 2004). The goal of phenomenological interviews is for the researcher to record first person descriptions of some specified aspect of the participant’s experience so as to capture key elements of the experience (Van Manen, 1990; Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962). According to Kramp (2004), using phenomenological interviewing techniques in conducting interviews enhances narrative inquiry because “the informality of the discourse lends itself to telling stories” (p. 114). My goal as the researcher was to learn as much as I could from the experiences of each of these people about how they came to the US and what it was like attending public school in a rural community consisting primarily of English speakers. I attempt to get the conversation started by asking the participants about their families and then follow these ice breaker questions by asking the participant to think about a memorable time from his/her schooling experience and to tell me about it. I follow up with short questions that use the language of the participant asking her to elaborate when necessary. The goal was to obtain uninterrupted descriptions of the experience being told (deMarris & Lapan, 2004). I also wanted to keep the conversation moving forward in an informal conversational manner (Friesen, 2008). Another important aspect of this type of interviewing is that the researcher attempts to establish equality between the researcher and participant. In the course of our recorded conversation, I also share similar life 119 experiences and stories, when appropriate. Developing relationships between researcher and participant are ongoing; I share my interpretations of narrative data collected as well as the final manuscript with the interviewees (deMarrais & Lapan, 2004). Interviews as Field Texts The interviews consisted of five main questions with sub-questions: • How have you been, what are you currently doing? How is your family? How frequently do you speak with family back in Mexico? Do you have children? How would you characterize their educational experience? • Take me back through the history of when we first met one another at school. What do you remember about your early experiences in school? Can you talk about your educational experiences before coming to the US? How were these experiences similar? / Different? • Can you talk in general terms about how and when you came to the US? Why did you/your family decide to migrate north? How long have you lived in the US now? Is it like you thought it would be? Why or why not? • Do you remember writing together about our personal stories in ESL Class? (I show former student a copy of the books). Do you remember what you wrote about? Why do you suppose you wrote about that? • What were the challenges you faced in school? What were some of the things that helped you adapt to a new culture and language in school? What are some memorable moments? If you could give advice to migrant students or their teachers today, what would your advice be? In all, I conducted several semi-structured interviews consisting of five general questions. The informants were former emergent bilingual students that were in my ESL class several years ago. I recorded audio of the interviews and transcribed each one for coding and further analysis. Secondary Forms of Field Texts Secondary forms of field texts that I analyzed consisted of field notes written in the course of conducting research. As I conducted interviews, I took notes of participants’ 120 body language and nonverbal forms of communication. Field notes were also my personal thoughts during the interviews and a written reflection after each interview. Additional artifacts, such as previously written classroom published books containing stories written by research participants and myself, were used to recreate layers of temporal context. The classroom published books referred to in this study consist of stories about students’ life experiences. These stories were written in both English and Spanish nearly ten years ago. Some stories were translated with the goal of developing English curriculum from the language of stories told. The lived experiences of each student’s world became the focus of our studies of the written word. The generative approach to making ESL curriculum was inspired by the work of the great Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire (1970). Other artifacts or field texts consist of policy documents collected from the school district where the study takes place. I also used historical accounts from history texts and documentary films as field texts. These field texts can be viewed as memory signposts and memory transformers (Clandinin & Connely, 2000). The way I used secondary documents was to tell of my experience alongside the stories of the participants. These field texts are used to analyze stories when writing research texts (Clandinin & Connely, 2000) or a “storied analysis” to bring order and meaningfulness to the stories (Kramp, 2004). I looked for individual and shared themes, emploting them into the larger story told from my perspective as researcher. 121 Participants In the 1970’s, psychologists Harre and Secord (1972) proposed a radical approach to discovering why people act in certain ways or do the things they do: Why not ask them? (As cited in Kirkman, 2002). I will employ this approach to gain insight into the realities of several young people who have endured the hardships of migration and the ensuing acculturation process encountered while attending public school. Participants in this study are adults who once were students in an ESL class that I taught in a rural school district located in the Pacific Northwest from 2002-2012, for which I used the pseudonym “Washington County.” When the participants were my students, some were in middle school and others were in high school, ranging in age from 11-18 years. Today, participants are in their mid twenties and still live in the small community of Washington where I came to know them years ago. All of the participants migrated to the Pacific Northwestern United States when they were young children or teenagers. Participants that came to the US on their own are known as first generation immigrants. The other participants are known as “one and a half” generation immigrants in the literature to differentiate the manner in which they came to the United States (Gonzales-Berry & Mendoza, 2010). The one and a half generation are immigrants that were brought to this country by their parents at a young age. They were born in Mexico but have spent their formative years in the US, thus being raised in a foreign country by no choice of their own. They were brought here and often times were not asked if they wanted to come. Perhaps the most pressing and underlying issue for the one and a half generation is their legal status. Some of the participants now have legal documentation, either residency or citizenship, while others remain 122 undocumented. The ramifications this has on a student attending public school are many, as oftentimes the child’s family members may have different legal statuses, consisting of both documented and undocumented members (Gonzáles, 2001). Obtaining legal documentation has been and continues to be an ongoing challenge for the 1.5 generation, which has given rise to a social movement of young political activists seeking amnesty or legalization. The young people who continue to lobby congress to pass The Dream Act have come to be known as “The Dreamers.” Sampling Sampling procedures consisted of both a set criteria for participation and a snowballing approach. Snowball sampling simply asks participants to help recruit other participants ”through the grapevine” (Warren, 2002, p. 87). A’ priori sampling requires that participants meet a predetermined criteria for the study. The criteria I set is that each participant had to have been a former student in my ESL classes and had to have contributed a story to the classroom published books we made several years ago. The manner in which I conducted sampling or selection of narrators for the conversational interviews relied on a combination of a’ priori sampling and a snowball sampling approach (p. 87). Once I found out where other potential narrators work, I visited them at their places of business or homes and left them with my phone number and a brief description of the nature of the research study. I asked all participants to sign a consent form (see appendix) agreeing to participate in the study. 123 Drawing Conclusions as a Researcher There are two ways I drew conclusions from the data. First, I used concepts derived from literary theory, as discussed above, to shed light on the manner in which participants make meaning from telling their stories. The second part of my analysis looked for central themes in the stories of all people interviewed. I coded interview transcripts to look for possible threads to follow. I followed up with secondary coding looking for overlap, consistencies, as well as differences in the experiences as told by my informants. From the coded transcripts, I developed themes. Through the use of the hermeneutic circle, my analysis expanded the social and historical context around these themes exploring the larger landscape that can shape the stories told by participants. Trustworthiness of Narrative Data Quantitative data uses numbers to underscore the static, atemporal, knowable, and controllable aspects of research that is informed by positivism. The assumptions of positivism are reliability, validity, and scientific objectivity between the researcher and researched. Bruner’s (1986) distinction between this type of paradigmatic knowing and narrative knowing, calls the findings of paradigmatic knowing “actual” and the findings of narrative knowing as “possible.” According to Bruner (1986), researchers working from a paradigmatic knowing define the phenomenon and develop instruments that provide numbers to account for relationships that emerge. However, when one attempts to understand kindness or hopefulness beyond a numerical category, this approach restricts the researcher’s opportunities for reaching a meaningful understanding of such concepts. 124 The purpose of qualitative research is not prediction and control; it is the attempt to understand a particular phenomenon (Merriam, 2002). The phenomenon under study in this case involves complex, interwoven variables that are difficult to measure. For this reason, using narrative data to conduct qualitative research is a good fit as it is a method tailored to the task of peeling back layers of the onion to understand the complex details of lived experience. This qualitative method views reality as socially constructed and relies on the following assumptions, “The acceptance of the relational and interactive nature of human science research, the use of story, and a focus on careful accounting of the particular are hallmarks of knowing in narrative inquiry” (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007, p. 25). The study of experience as storied lived phenomenon is grounded in the acceptance that there are multiple ways of knowing the world. This form of qualitative research is a turn toward establishing findings through authenticity, resonance, or trustworthiness (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). Glesne (2011) cites Creswell’s (1998) list of procedures that can be used in qualitative research to develop trustworthiness. They include prolonged engagement in the field, triangulation, peer review, negative case analysis, clarification of researcher bias, member checking, rich, thick description, and external audit. Glesne (2011) also adds that all of these procedures cannot usually be done in one study. The procedures I used are: Prolonged Engagement in the Field The reasoning for spending an extended time in the field is so the researcher is able to “develop trust, learn the culture, and check out one’s hunches” (Glesne, 2011, p. 49). I have developed ongoing relationships with research participants that I interviewed; 125 we have known one another for several years. A sense of trust between participants and myself was of extreme importance considering the fact that some are “undocumented” and try to avoid bringing attention to themselves in any manner that could jeopardize their current ability to work and live in the United States. The personal relationships I have developed over several years with the narrators has led to a sense of trust between us, which makes this research recognizable as a coconstruction of meaning. The trust between former students and myself has come about as a result of working together both in school and in the larger community around issues that affect migrant students and their families. Secondly persistent observation in this study adds depth in addition to the scope provided by prolonged engagement with research participants (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Triangulation This calls for the use of multiple data collection methods, and/or multiple sources of information. I used various forms of data or in my study “field texts” that included historical documents, data from the school district where the study takes place, and other artifacts such as formerly produced student work. While I did not use this data in a manner that tried to make generalizable claims, I used multiple sources of data to create a multilayered context to better understand themes as they surfaced from the data. In terms of triangulation of the narrative data I used three different perspectives to ensure a rich, robust and well-developed interpretation of the data. I employ aspects of three distinct forms of narrative analysis: narrative representation, thematic analysis, and structural analysis. Because my narrative analysis is somewhat experimental, drawing on 126 three different methods, I engaged in frequent peer debriefing sessions to consult with my methods professor to explore my biases and to ensure the plausibility of my analysis. Peer review and Debriefing External reflection and input on researcher’s work, I worked with Dr. Friesen to develop methods throughout the study and shared collected data in the analysis stage of writing “research texts.” Weekly meetings with committee members were conducted to discuss the progress of data collection and interpretations. Clarification of Researcher Bias Requires reflection upon one’s own subjectivity. This issue was present throughout the research process. My awareness of my own positionality was something that is ongoing and was addressed in my research journal as part of my research reflections. My approach was clearly an interpretivist one that acknowledged and valued the personal relationships between researcher and study participants. Member Checking In addition to peer debriefing, the most vital aspect of ensuring validity in this study involved conducting member checks. After transcribing interviews I formed the data into a narrative representation, which I submitted by email to each narrator to check for accuracy of the information presented. Narrators were given the opportunity to correct any errors or misunderstandings that may have resulted from the recording, transcription, or of my interpretation as researcher. This aspect was valuable in the research to summarize initial findings, and to co-create our understandings of each oral account given in order to shape interviews into written narrative form. 127 Rich, Thick Description Described by Geertz (1973) as “description that goes beyond the mere or bare reporting of an act (thin description), but describes and probes the intentions, motives, meanings, contexts, situations, and circumstances of action” (as cited in Glesne, 2011, p. 35). This type of writing also provided a window for the reader to peer into the research context. The point of using a narrative inquiry as a method in this study came from my desire to write a well-told story that shared the multiple voices of participants in a cohesive and artful manner. External Audit An outside person examines the research process and product through auditing field notes, journal, coding scheme. Throughout my data collection and analysis I continually worked with Dr. Friesen, my methodology consultant and dissertation committee member, to identify codes and themes in the data. I provided Dr. Friesen with audio recordings of all interviews. Weekly meetings allowed for discussion on various field texts. To be clear, this study did not attempt to know “objective reality.” Rather, it serves to contextualize stories of experience to better understand subjective realities of participants. This method departs with positivist assumptions of validity; it relies on interpretations of the researcher and larger audience to make meaning. The research made no claims of generalizability, however, a textured or multilayered focus on using careful description of the specific setting and people involved provided the foundation for using what was learned in narrative inquiry in various other contexts. 128 The transparent manner that I collected and presented data invited the reader to question the trustworthiness of the data and invited the readers’ interpretations throughout the process of conducting the study. I used Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) three dimensional narrative inquiry space as a guiding framework to conducting this research which required me to question explanations and meaning and provide the reader with accounts that uncover and reveal questions of value, meaning, and integrity (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007). My role as researcher involved personal relationships with the research participants; the value of this research, the journey as well as in the final research text, was an empathetic understanding of the manner in which migrant children use stories to make meaning of their lives in the context of public school experiences. While the findings in qualitative research may not be easily generalizable, the findings in this research may be understood to have applicability in other contexts or to have transferability. For an inquirer to make a judgment of transferability from one study to another, the inquirer must know the context of both studies well (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). As I do not know all the contexts to which someone may want to transfer the meanings found in this study to research of their own, I attempt to provide a base of information about the context in which this inquiry has been carried out known as “thick description” which attempts to provide the reader with everything the reader needs to know to understand the findings presented in chapter four and thus to make the decision to whether or not our research contexts may be adequately similar (Geertz, 1973). In providing a thick description I have provided a detailed account of my field experiences, making patterns of cultural and social relationships explicit for readers. 129 To analyze narrative data, this research model draws from three approaches; narrative representation, thematic analyses, and structural analyses to interpret stories told by participants. This inquiry involves reflection on personal landscapes and the connection to social landscapes of young migrant students. This research model is relational in nature; by sharing the stories of Jesus, Jael, and Chato I share my own story in an attempt to make sense of our shared lived experiences. As I move back and forth between involvement and distance with the three narrators I have developed an increased awareness of myself as participant rather than a detached observer and feel honored to have taught these students. 130 CHAPTER 4: BECOMING THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES WE TELL: PRESENTATION OF DATA AND ANALYSIS Introduction As mentioned in the previous chapter, I collected nine interviews, transcribed them and shaped each one into narrative form. However, for this study, I focused on three of the narratives told by Jesus, Jael, and Chato, which involved aspects of their schooling experiences and general life stories. The six remaining narratives will be part of my future research agenda. As with all of the narratives used in this study, the full text of each narrative is included in the appendix section. In this chapter, I present narrative data for each story in terms of how the story is told primarily by focusing on Labov’s (1972) linguistic research to discuss the basic plot structure of each story. Through my analysis using Labov’s categories, I follow with a discussion of emplotment, using Hayden White’s (1973) research on archetypal genres, or different kinds of stories told in western cultures, specifically in an historical context. We view the three narratives as follows: Jesus’ Tragedy, Jael’s Romance and Chato’s Tragi-comedy. To further develop themes that are found in each story as well as themes that cut across the collection of narratives I will contextualize themes in terms of what is told by employing the art of interpretation known as hermeneutics to continually move 131 from part to whole, or forward and back in the narrative to make meaning from the author’s narrative. identity Plot voice Characters Agency of Narrator Theme Setting Figure 4.1 Parts to Whole to Part Jesus: Pushed Out Jesus struck me as a bright student; he was quiet and shy when I met him his ninth grade year. He was always respectful and willing to engage; the kind of student any teacher loves to have. I also knew his family fairly well because I had taught his siblings at the elementary school. On the surface, Jesus came across as fluent in English, which is often the case with emergent bilingual students who have been in US schools for a few years. He had learned quickly considering he received minimal help, a half hour a day in an ESL pullout program in elementary, the least effective program model for long-term second language development (Thomas & Collier, 2002). He spoke fluently, yet he struggled with academic reading and writing at the secondary level. Research on second language acquisition indicates an average of seven years is needed to develop academic language proficiency (Cummins, 2000). Jesus asked me for help to improve his writing skills because he was struggling in content area courses where teachers were unaware or 132 unwilling to make accommodations in their teaching to address the needs of students learning English. He made a great addition to the ESL class. Jesus was a computer wiz and I counted on him to help me keep the classroom technology functioning. In short, he was a very likable young man. He was in my class for a year, but when I was transferred to another school we gradually lost track of one another. When I decided to conduct this retrospective research and tracked him down, he was enthusiastic to help me out. I knew part of his story and I thought it was an important story to share with other educators; especially teachers that may not understand how Mexican students are treated in this rural community. Jesus was still afraid to bring attention to himself or his family, and initially he didn’t want me to record our conversation. But, after I convinced him I would protect his identity, he finally agreed. I had my interview questions prepared, but as soon as we sat down to talk he launched into an emotional account of how his school career and hopes of obtaining an athletic scholarship were derailed by a school administrator that made it his goal to rid the school of Spanish speakers. This is the basic plot line as told by Jesus in his narrative called “Pushed Out.” My analysis follows. (Jesus’ entire narrative can be found in Appendix D). Jesus’ story begins as follows: I was in third grade when I came to the US; I think I was nine. I didn’t know English, but I had a bilingual tutor that sat with me in class and helped me follow what was happening. It took me no longer than half a year and I already knew what everybody was saying. In elementary school I felt welcomed by the other kids and the teachers. My teachers cared about me. Jesus’ introduction establishes an important characteristic of narrative, his voice. The reader understands immediately that Jesus is speaking from a personal perspective in his 133 own words. Jesus draws our attention to the subject position or social location in which he speaks (Chase, 2005). Of course, in speaking from his personal perspective, Jesus describes coming to the United States as a young child and indicates he will discuss his experience with school. Jesus’ voice articulates a position as an individual tied to the process of how he came to learn English in elementary school. It is from this position that his identity of an emergent bilingual student emerges as he affirms the importance of learning English and indicates a positive self-concept of a quick learner. Jesus’ voice, which he establishes early in the narrative, takes on a particular significance in regard to how agency or a lack of agency is expressed later in the narrative. The dramatic change in the manner Jesus articulates a sense of self in relation to the larger social group in elementary school contrasts sharply with the way he relates to school staff and his peers in middle school. While Jesus felt as though he “fit in” in elementary school, he struggles to make meaning of the cultural context or find how he fits into the secondary school landscape. His inability to successfully function or resist structural barriers, to bridge the social and psychological realms becomes apparent in his later use of voice, becoming the key to understanding Jesus’ narrative as a tragedy. At the beginning of Jesus’ story, he goes on to explain the manner in which school staff supported him; he further indicates that he felt welcomed by his peers and that “My teachers cared about me.” In the following passage Jesus effectively provides the listener with the first element of plot, the orientation. He provides background information related to his story’s setting, background or situation. In this case, he setting is a public school in Washington County, initially at the elementary and then he begins to talk about his transition to secondary school. In the following passage, he indicates a 134 feeling of continuity initially, specifically mentioning the ESL classroom as a place where he felt safe. Throughout my years in elementary and secondary, ESL class is the place I felt like I could go and where I didn’t have to be afraid. This was the only place where I could talk to somebody that I knew was going to understand me. Just as soon as Jesus orients the reader to the setting of his story, he indicates a complication or a crisis in his narrative, stating that the place where he felt safe and understood “changed once I got to middle school.” Jesus explains a change in school culture when he moved from elementary to middle school, stating that he began to feel bullied by other students and by school staff. This feeling of a complete lack of connection to the larger social group at the secondary level begins to emerge and shape the manner in which Jesus constructs his plotline. As Jesus explains, this disruption of the canonical script changes the way he views school in general and the ESL classroom specifically. No longer feeling safe at school represents a complication or breach in this canonical school setting and corresponds to the crisis in Jesus’ narrative. As Jesus’ account makes clear, the problems arising from this complication were significant to him as a student. Once he felt “cared for” by his teachers, but now at the middle school he felt like school staff viewed him as suspect, stating: The ESL teacher was always after me; he wouldn’t leave me alone. They were always investigating me. They were focused more on busting people than trying to teach people. This is how they acted towards Mexicans. Through the years, I was pulled from class, and a few fellow students, to have field tests done on us. In one year, I got maybe 5 to 6 field [drug] tests done to me. 135 He indicates that he didn’t understand why he was being singled out, attributing his treatment to racial discrimination, “This is just how they acted toward Mexicans.” After the second time being pulled from class, Jesus told his parents what had happened at school. But, he felt like his parents, who did not attend school in the US, were unable to understand the serious nature of his problems. Jesus’ parents told him maybe he was just, “hanging around the wrong group.” But Jesus clarifies, “All I was doing was sitting down to eat with Hispanic kids.” He continues to explain that he wasn’t trying to do anything wrong but, “When I would sit down to eat, a bunch of my friends would sit with me…it’s just that we feel like all we have is each other because nobody else will understand us.” As Jesus continues his narrative, a pattern of suspicious and punitive behavior on the part of school staff emerge which left Jesus feeling vulnerable at school. His feelings of alienation became compounded by the advice of his parents, who are undocumented; as they caution him to “not bring attention to the family.” Once again, the audience gains insight into the manner Jesus feels trapped; he becomes frustrated by a lack of support, mentorship or guidance, experiencing a stifled sense of personal agency or to act in a different manner. Jesus describes repeatedly being subjected to “field tests” performed by Principal Lugosi and Officer White (pseudonyms) which were similar to a road-side sobriety test. “It would start by them stating, ‘We have information from various people that you might be under the influence.’” Although he was always found to be “clean,” Lugosi and White would keep him out of class for an hour or more at a time, repeatedly asking him to “rat on other people”, or to tell on his peers. His account soon presents a turning point, as he describes being pulled from class for drug testing as becoming a routine occurrence. 136 The final time Jesus was pulled from class, he assumes he would be given another “field test” by the principal or resource officer like before, but this time the principal’s office was full of police officers. “They said I was under investigation and arrested me.” The treatment Jesus was being subjected to before was viewed as an annoying harassment but usually ended in him being sent back to class without further actions being taken. Jesus gives a detailed explanation of the crisis as it unfolds: The officer and Mr. Lugosi said they had me on camera giving something wrapped in a napkin to a girl [allegedly drugs] who got busted. They said, ‘A few people say you are the main guy.’ I told them I had no clue what they were talking about. The cops said they had evidence, ‘now we just need you to admit to it.’ As I was being arrested, he searched my pockets, ‘Alright you have the right to remain silent…’ I was done you know. At this point we see school officials silencing Jesus’ voice. The principal and police officers treat Jesus in a manner that disrupts any sense of continuity or sense of selfidentity as a student; he now becomes the object of investigation, caste as a criminal rather than being seen as worthy of being treated with dignity. Jesus struggles to articulate his own subject position stating they had done this to him so often he didn’t feel like he could say no to the searches, “It’s like you have no power. Even when you try to say no, it’s a yes, you have to say yes.” He continues to describe a lack of agency when he shares feelings of being defenseless insisting he was at school to learn and “They [staff] were there to do whatever they wanted to do to me.” He describes the indignity of police searching his cell phone, his laptop computer, and even forcing him to remove his clothing, They made me take everything off, my shoes, coat, everything. They made me take it off. And they kept trying to still have me confess. So by the time my mom 137 got there I was in the principal’s office handcuffed with my pockets turned out and my pants undone hanging down under my waist. Police strip Jesus of his clothing and also of any sense of agency as a person. While Jesus remains aware that it his body is being manipulated by others, he has lost any sense of being in control of his own bodily actions. Jesus does not see any other viable options, he feels completely disempowered, he states, “I was done,” meaning he had given up any hope of resisting physically or mentally. He becomes emotional while describing the humiliation of his mother seeing him in the principal’s office disrobed and vulnerable. To summarize the events, Jesus was called into the principal’s office, searched, handcuffed, read his Miranda Rights, and was about to be taken away to jail. In narrative terms, it appears the “problem, crisis, or conflict” appears to be moving toward a “resolution.” However, at the last moment, Jesus’ mom appeared on the scene and the police made Jesus and his mom a deal. He explains: My mom was crying. The cops said, “If you sign this confession you can go with your mom, we'll take these handcuffs off of you, you can go home.” Jesus’ mom told him, “If you did wrong you need to admit to it.” Jesus refused, pleading his innocence. After discussing the situation with his mother, the problem comes to a head as Jesus explains: “My mom wanted me to be free, she said, “Yea, sign for it.” My mom made the decision.” With his description of his mother’s decision, Jesus’ story moves toward its “ denouement, conclusion, or result” in which its “complication” or action is “resolved,” ending either “in success or failure.” In the case of Jesus’ story, the conclusion can be deemed as a tragic failure. This is indicated not only by his description, 138 above, of his feelings of powerlessness, but also as indicated in Jesus’ reflections on the ultimate results of signing a confession to selling drugs at school. I ended up with probation, kicked out of school. I never graduated; I am still onehalf credit short from receiving my high school diploma. This kept me from being able to apply for my papers [temporary work visa and reprieve from deportation] under Obama’s deal. (DACA 2012, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) Jesus’ reflection that follows can be understood as corresponding to a narrative’s evaluation in which commentary is provided on “the meaning or consequences of the crisis or complicating action.” He explains: My mom doesn't speak English. She had no clue what was going on, she was just going along with what was happening. My probation officer told me, “These people are after you. They think they have you good.” I wouldn’t rat on anybody so they made an example out of me. Jesus’ reflection indicates a change in the way he viewed school as a young child and his perception of the way school staff viewed him as a teenaged Mexican student. His identity changes from the beginning of his narrative of being a “fast learner” with teachers that “cared about him” to being suspected of being involved with drugs and eventually to “ being on probation and kicked out of school.” Ultimately, this is the action that contributes to his inability to improve his legal status under Obama’s executive order known as DACA that could have protected him, at least temporarily, from deportation as well as providing him an avenue to attend college. This kind of knowledge or lessons that can be learned from this particular narrative for research in the way minority youth can be “pushed out” of school is situated and personal in nature. Jesus’ story provides valuable knowledge of the manner in which undocumented students and their parents can be excluded from education and 139 marginalized by social institutions for lack of possessing cultural capital, or the ability to advocate for oneself and/or for one’s child. Jesus’ final evaluation describes his mother’s lack of legal and cultural capital as an undocumented laborer and the manner in which the school and police took advantage of this fact: [She] doesn't speak English and is not [formally] educated. She has no understanding of the whole American concept of "rights" at all. She is from rural Mexico where there are no rights for poor people. Jesus’ description of how he was treated in secondary school have profoundly affected his personal identity and continues to affect his life options articulated in what can be interpreted as the coda of his narrative. In bringing his account into connection with the present and drawing it to its final conclusion, Jesus explains, “Now I’m working odd jobs, just making ends meet, mowing lawns.” This coda in Jesus’ first person narrative brings his account to a conclusion and relates it to his present moment by again emphasizing his struggle to survive economically. At the same time, by indicating how the secondary school pushed him out, he also shows how schools can be complicit in social reproduction that relegates undocumented Mexican youth to a future of menial labor and social marginalization. The tragedy of Jesus’ story illuminates the manner in which schools can function to create a permanent underclass of noncitizens of students like Jesus who has lived nearly his entire life in the United States. Jesus ends his story defeated by forces beyond his control. Jesus’ Tragedy In Metahistory: The historical imagination in nineteenth century Europe, White (1973) explains how historians Michelot, Ranke, Tocqueville, and Burckhardt and 140 philosophers of history Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Croce use different styles and narrative modes in their representation of past events. One of these tactics is emplotment, or “the way by which a sequence of events fashioned into a story is gradually revealed to be a story of a particular kind” (p.7). I employ White’s notion of the tragedy to illustrate the lack of personal agency or ability to take control of one’s destiny as told in the following narrative account by Jesus. In the narrative account by Jesus, we see a plot line determined by a failure to navigate beyond structural barriers erected in his path by the school principal and resource officer, which can be seen to shape his very perceptions of himself. The tragedy of Jesus’ story lies in the fact he was brought to the US as a young boy and has lived in the US for most of his life, yet as American as he has become, he still must live in the shadows of society unable to work legally, study or even drive a vehicle without risk of being detained and deported to a country, Mexico, which has become largely unfamiliar to him. Jesus emplots his story in a manner that portrays his life trajectory as being heavily shaped by the social institutions he has come into contact with. Specifically, he describes his public high school as the place that derailed his dreams of going to college and playing professional soccer. As an audience, we feel for Jesus as his story provides a heightened insight into the manner in which the school system pushes this young man out of school and into the criminal justice system. In the end, Jesus feels beaten by the school, “resigned to the conditions under which he must labor in the world” (White, 1973, p. 9); his story can clearly be seen as a tragedy. According to White (1973), in the plot structure of the Tragedy “there are no festive occasions except false or illusory ones; rather there are intimations of states of 141 division among men more terrible than that which incited the tragic agon at the beginning of the drama.” At the end of the tragic play, the protagonist falls, yet this shaking up of his world “are not regarded as totally threatening to those who survive the agonic test” (p. 9). The spectators of the play, or the readers of this study, experience an enhanced consciousness by gaining an insight into how the institution functions to marginalize Jesus. This enhanced consciousness “is thought to consist of the epiphany of the law governing human existence which the protagonist’s exertions against the world have brought to pass”(White, 1973, p. 9). As we see in Jesus’ narrative, the school uses legal rationale to provide justification for his mistreatment. The reconciliations at the end of a tragedy are somber; “they are more in the nature of resignations of men to the conditions under which they must labor in the world.” These conditions are seen as unchangeable, eternal, man must work within these inalterable conditions. “They set the limits on what may be aspired to and what may be legitimately aimed at in the quest for security and sanity in the world”(p. 9). Sadly, White’s (1973) description of the tragic plot accurately describes the way this young man perceives his lack of choices and options in his life story and implicates the manner emergent bilinguals are often pushed out of school at the secondary level due to pressure to raise test scores or face sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law (Lukes, 2012). The social repercussions of being pushed out are devastating. Sum, Khatiwada, & McLaughlin’s (2009) research prepared for The Center for Labor Market Studies reports an average joblessness rate during 2008 of 54% nationwide for youth who fail to complete high school (p. 12). Young men who fail to graduate from high school, of all races, were 47 times more likely to be incarcerated than 142 their peers of a similar age who had graduated from a four-year college or university (Sum et al., 2009). Jael: Hybrid Culture Jael had just returned home for the summer after recently graduating from a major four-year university with her degree in psychology and linguistics. She is a young woman from the rural southern state of Oaxaca who is a one and a half generation youth who has recently become a citizen of the United States. As Jael’s story indicates, she came to the US the second time as a legal resident and recently became a citizen of the US. The fact she has been able to secure legal documentation to be in the US has afforded her the opportunity to attend university, indicating she would also like to seek an advanced degree. In high school, Jael was the President of her high school’s MEChA chapter. She became involved with the international students club in college. Jael speaks of her plans to travel to Asia where she would like to teach English in Japan. Jael majored in linguistics, speaks Spanish and English and is learning Mixteca from her grandparents. The overall continuous theme throughout the life narrative articulated by Jael is a strong sense of her personal identity. Jael emplots her story exercising (nearly) full agency, or the ability to make choices in her life that drive her story and her life forward. Her stories speak of experiencing racism as a newcomer to Washington County, but she indicates that since Barack Obama became President of the US, race relations are getting better between Whites and Mexicans in her community. Emplots her narrative as a Romance. 143 As we began the interview, Jael starts to examine the classroom published book from our ESL class in 2005. In the introduction of her story, she starts to talk about how she and I came to know one another: I think we met probably when I was in middle school. You were an ESL teacher and I had you for fifth or sixth period when I was in sixth grade. I remember you telling us you were Mexican on the inside and we were like, “Yea Mr. B!” You taught us some in Spanish and we used to read in English as well. We read bilingual stories. In this brief statement, Jael re-establishes our relationship as teacher and student while sharing a humorous memory about the way we connected with one another around the theme of Mexican identity. Jael even remembers the class period, the time of day we would meet to read and write bilingual stories. Similar to the introduction in Jesus’ story, Jael reflects back to a time in her elementary school experience where she felt connected to her teacher, a place where her identity as a bilingual Mexican girl was supported. She continues to describe the ESL classroom, again confirming the importance of a learning space characterized by caring relationships and a collaborative environment. It was learning from each other, and it wasn't structured like the other classes were, there was a little more freedom. I thought it was great to see someone who isn't Mexican understand and feel for the Mexican community and be like, “I want to do something about it, you know.” You were a very nice white guy for sure. It was a fun class. As I look back now at the bilingual books we made in your class, I see my picture and I think, “Yes! I know her! I’ve gotten so old.” From the introduction and leading into the orientation of Jael’s reflective account, she establishes her voice around her strong sense of Mexican identity. In the interview, she begins to confirm the value of having had bilingual support at school as a child, which 144 she further elaborates later in her narrative when speaking of the importance her Spanish has played in her university education. When we compare the introduction of Jesus and Jael, we see both narrators initially describing a positive sense of self during their early years of schooling. Unlike Jesus, when Jael initially arrived to school, her elementary did not have bilingual supports in place. Jesus describes having a bilingual tutor; as we will see with Jael’s account, she had a more difficult time acculturating to the English speaking environment when she first arrived in fifth grade. But, before Jael discusses how she experienced her initial arrival to the US, she continues to build background information to orient the audience by discussing her work writing stories in our ESL class. She establishes the setting early on as our ESL class during her sixth grade year. The subject matter of her stories as a child is firmly rooted in her strong ties to Oaxaca. During our conversation, she also indicates her current knowledge of linguistics by pointing out the ancient indigenous roots of the stories she wrote in sixth grade. As she articulates below, her motivation to write these stories as part of her English literacy in ESL class are driven by the relevance they have to her past experience, stating these two stories are well known in Mexico. I remember writing La Matlazihua because it is a well-known story everywhere in Mexico. La Matlazihua and La Llorona are very old stories. I think Matlazihua is a Nahuatl word. It is one that is always fun to tell. I remember hearing about it when I was like seven or eight. I remember writing this one cause its from Oaxaca where I'm from. La Matlazihua, a lot of people still talk about it. Jael’s voice and identity come through as solidly grounded as she makes personal connections to her learning process as a child. She demonstrates personal knowledge of 145 cultural stories and the value of life experience as the focus of her literacy development. She takes advantage of this opportunity for self-expression as a sixth grade student that can be seen throughout her life story that follows. Jael indicates the importance of having written these stories as a child, indicating she may still have a copy of the book stored away at home. It brings back memories of school when I didn't know English, when I didn't get it. It seems so long ago. I feel like I still have this book somewhere; it is very cool. So far, Jael has indicated the importance of the social relations established with her teacher. However, she also mentions a painful time in her life, before she could understand English, giving the audience a clue that she may address this topic later in the story. Through revisiting her writing as a young girl, she actively engages in the temporal dimensions of developing a sense of self, moving between her memories of writing stories then while trying to learn English and now revisiting them as an adult who has studied linguistics at the university. She states: The memories these books bring back, writing these stories bring back a lot, it's intense! It is fun to see these books again. It is so crazy because it just makes me realize how much we have all grown. It is precisely this temporal distance that gives Jael a positive and productive possibility of understanding the past and present as continually fused (Gadamer, 1988). She admits that she never imagined having this conversation about her stories ten years later but seems to relish the opportunity. Jael has provided the audience with a substantial amount of context above for her story as she begins to move into the active plot line transitioning into a story of when she 146 first arrived to this country. Her descriptions below further illuminate her sense of selfgrowth. I came here the second time when I was eleven in fifth grade. When I came here, I went to Quinault Elementary and it was just my brother and I in a classroom with no other kids that spoke Spanish. There was no bilingual teacher. Jael moves toward the complication of her story by indicating a lack of bilingual teachers. However, before she continues to explore this crisis or feeling that nobody understood her, she needs to clarify the complex problems in plotline that lead to how she came to live in the US. She continues: But, the first time I came to the United States, I was only one year old. We came illegally the first time with my parents and we stayed for five years. It was hard, my parents decided they couldn't work and take care of us at the same time so they took us back to Mexico. They left us there with our grandparents and our aunt. They came back here to work and send money back to the family in Oaxaca. Jael describes being separated from her parents; a traumatic scenario that is personally painful yet is not uncommon in the stories of Mexican migrant youth as we will also see in the third narrative by Chato. The second time Jael returns to the US, she came as a legal resident. She explains, “By the time I was eleven, my mother had become a resident of the US so she was eventually able to help us get residency.” Yet, Jael was not happy about coming to the US initially, indicating that she was content living in Mexico, “I wasn’t happy about coming here because we were living a comfortable life with pretty good money in Mexico while my parents were working here. However, the fact that she came back to the US as a legal resident changes the nature of her story line in a significant manner, as we will see when we compare the stories of Jesus and Chato who continue to remain in the country without legal documentation. Jael 147 explains how she returns to the US, “My dad went and got us in the summer of my fifth grade year and we moved here. I came back to the US when I was eleven with papers, a resident of the United States.” In the description above, Jael does not have a choice to come to the US; as a child, she was not actively involved in the decision made by her parents. However, the decisions made by her parents to bring her here with legal documentation the second time provide Jael with options later in life to make the choices necessary to take control of her future in ways that are absent in the manner Jesus and Chato emplot their narratives. Jael’s describes this as a time in her life where she lacks voice and is torn from her identity as Oaxacan, providing the audience with valuable insight into the personal significance of her identity construction as an adolescent. The complication in Jael’s narrative seems to come from the manner she experienced racism for being Mexican and was discriminated against for speaking Spanish; this represents a “breach in canonicity.” She describes the culture shock of her first encounter with racism at the age of eleven years old. The most difficult things about coming here was not understanding the language and not understanding about racism. When I came to the US and I saw this separation of color where people treated each other differently because of whatever color they were or because of the language they spoke. I became aware of this probably when I was eleven or twelve when I had just arrived here. They would say mean things at school because I'm Mexican. The racism intensified in middle school. When I came in 5th grade, it was still elementary school and there wasn't a lot of racial stuff: It was before the kids learned to be racist. With a hermeneutic vantage point, we are able compare the crisis in the stories of Jesus and Jael and we notice an important aspect described by both narrators, they felt safe in elementary school, but the transition to middle school was where the feelings of being the 148 target of racism intensified. For Jesus, being a young Mexican male, he describes being bullied by peers and school staff. However, Jael does not indicate that school staff directly discriminated against her, rather she describes being made to feel like an outsider by her middle and high school peers who would say mean things. (Her middle school was grades 6–8.) She describes the complication in her narrative and life story in terms of this contrast between schools in a telling manner stating at elementary school, “It was before kids learned to be racist.” Jael continues to describe the problem of being subjected to racism before she moves to address how she ultimately learns to deal with hatred. She states: And, at the beginning of high school, I remember it being worse than at the end of high school. I think it was because when I came here there wasn't a lot of Mexican kids in school. And the Mexican kids that just came in, they didn't grow up with the Americans, so it was hard for them to be together. I guess in a way, it was rough for my brother and me... and a lot of the Mexican kids that went to school. Reflecting on it now brings a lot of memories of how hard it was. It was painful. You didn't know why it was happening, so the only way you could react to it was with hatefulness. I remember I kind of hated the white kids and people. They were so mean. Jael also portrays the experience of her younger brother who currently goes to the same high school in Washington County. She describes a more integrated experience for her brother that has “best friends who are American.” She indicates that things are moving forward, progress being made, adding this rural community has become less hostile toward Mexican people. She attributes this social progress to the fact that a man of color has moved into the White House, stating, “It has gotten better ever since Barak Obama became President.” This final statement best represents Jael’s romantic mode of emplotting her narrative by suggesting that human consciousness and will are adequate to 149 the task of overcoming the dark forces of humanity; she echoes Hegel’s view of western civilization as one great progressive movement from mere existence, through alienation, to reconciliation of the self (White, 1973). Jael holds out hope for good to win out over evil, which she articulates in the resolution of her narrative, describing the role of higher education and a strong sense of personal identity as her path toward change and transformation. When we compare the resolution in the narratives of Jesus and Jael, we see them in contrast—Jesus’ emplots his narrative as a tragedy—ultimately succumbing to forces beyond his control, ending in failure. Jesus describes not having an ability to make choices, he can be said to lack a sense of agency. However, Jael emplots her life story much differently: The way I got through this time was largely due to the support I got from being the President of MEChA in high school. A lot of people admired me for being a club president. We would raise money to host community events and attend conferences. MEChA meant a lot to me and is what kept me on this path of pursuing education. It was through her decisions to engage in the social world created around her ethnic identity that we see Jael’s character gain the acceptance that ultimately transcends her feelings of being an outsider, now she describes being admired by her high school peers. Her Mexican identity and Spanish that once made her a target for racist comments in her school become her source of strength to overcome racial bigotry and marginalization. Here we see Jael’s high level of reflexivity, or the dialectical relationship between cause and effect of her self-identity as she engages in actively shaping her place in the social 150 structure of high school. Jael emerges with a stronger sense of self by steadily building community around and an emerging hybrid identity. The result of Jael’s crisis is deemed a success as she explains that her parents really didn’t know how to support her dreams of going to college because nobody in her family had ever undertaken such an endeavor, yet through the student organization and the support of her MEChA club advisor the school counselor, Jael graduates, attends community college and eventually goes on to graduate from university. She describes the importance of having the support of her school counselor Tami: My parents didn’t believe I was going to make it. It was a strange concept for them to understand why I wanted to take on debt rather than just working after high school to earn money. It was my counselor, Tami, she was our MEChA sponsor who took us to university campuses and she pushed me to take SATs. Jael’s determination and strong will pushed her forward in a manner that we fail to find in the narrative of our undocumented narrators, Jesus and Chato. When Jael reflects back on the meaning of her public school experience in Washington County she shares the following evaluation or consequences of the complicating action. She provides the following summary: Like many Mexicans, economic reasons brought my family here. We are from the state of Oaxaca, one of the poorest states in Mexico. Now, I have lived here at least half of my lifetime, but I still identify myself as Mexican even though I became a US citizen last summer. After studying linguistics, I realized the benefit of learning both languages for a child. Retaining my bilingualism has been so important for me to reach my goals. The coda in Jael’s account which underscores the importance of her story’s meaning and brings her account to the present moment also gives the audience a hint that she may take 151 future action from a position of an empowered and educated subject to address a problem in the community. She ends our conversation in the following manner: Recently, I was talking to some kids from Salishan and they said they study in English and Spanish in a dual immersion program. That is awesome. I hear administrators cut our bilingual program here and replaced it with a tired old English only model. They blame it on budget cuts, but that can’t be all that it is. Parents should have a voice in the decision, but I know from experience when you don’t know English and you are undocumented, you don’t know what to do about it. (See Appendix E for Jael’s complete narrative.) Jael’s Romance In the second narrative account, Jael emplots her story as a romance, giving her account of overcoming barriers in life such as being transplanted to another country, facing racism and discrimination, struggling to learn English, and pursuing higher education. The romance can be understood in this sense as a drama of redemption. Jael’s life has undoubtedly been shaped by the tragedies around her, but the manner in which she emplots her story is decidedly different from the other two stories in this study. Jael has her American citizenship and has been able to obtain a Bachelor’s degree, travel internationally, and work a legitimate job. She speaks of her future plans in a different manner than Jesus and Chato; her future seems much more certain, she has earned her degree and now she looks forward making plans to travel and work as an English teacher in Japan. Jael can “assimilate the truths of human existence revealed in Comedy and Tragedy respectively within the structure of the drama of redemption which [s]he figures in her vision of the ultimate victory of man[kind] over the world of experience” (White, 1973, p. 10). Jael has made decisions in her life that indicate she is in control of her future; a strong spirituality drives her forward. 152 Jael’s optimistic worldview can be found in her statement, “Things are getting better for Mexican people now that Barack Obama has become President.” This outlook is consistent with White’s (1973) description of a romance as involving a drama of “self identification symbolized by the hero’s transcendence of the world of experience, [her] victory over it, and [her] final liberation from it” (p. 8). The romance is a drama of the victory of good conquering evil, the triumph of light over darkness, or the redemption of man[kind] and “the ultimate transcendence of man[kind] over the world in which [s]he was imprisoned by the Fall” (p. 8). As we see in Jael’s narrative, she views higher education and a strong sense of personal identity as key to her transcendence. Jael emplots her narrative in a similar manner as the 19th century historian, Michelot, who wrote histories of the French Revolution as romantic dramas and conceived of history as resurrection (as cited in White, 1973). Michelot also characterized the Revolution as a process of birth. He said the Revolution is the “reaction of equity, the tardy advent of Eternal Justice; in its essence it is truly Love, and identical with Grace”(p. 157). He found the macro historical point of resolution to be during the Revolution in 1789 at the exact point when the French people “attain perfect solidarity and freedom” (p. 152). Likewise, Jael emplots her life story with a belief in the unitary nature of the parts and her story reveals a conscious sense of divisions between people to be forms of oppression, which she strives to dissolve. Jael’s emplotment of her life story as a Romance involves socially constructing a hybrid identity. The theory of hybrid identity involves individuals who are able to define and express their ethnicity, referred to as “ethnic actors.” Social construction theory sees ethnicity and hybrid identity as changing, fluid, and situational. Ethnic boundaries, 153 identities, and cultures are negotiated through social interaction where individuals define and express their own identity (Nagal, 1994). Identity is tied to culture, or the way we give meaning to our identity. Hybrid culture is a tale of human agency and internal group processes of cultural renewal, innovation, and preservation (Nagel, 1994). Jael’s culture provides her the vehicle for shaping a new hybrid identity. Her identity can be understood as the basket, her ethnic culture can be understood as the things she puts in the basket, such as art, music, religion, customs, norms, and beliefs. The theory of hybridity rejects the notion of culture being simply historical legacy; rather, we construct culture by picking and choosing from the past and present. Her story of constructing an identity in relation to the social provides a window into the acculturation process. Portes and Rumbaut (2001) describe three types of acculturation for immigrants in the US, dissonant, consonant, and selective acculturation. Jael’s acculturation process can be seen as selective. Selective acculturation occurs when migrants have a strong ethnic community and the second generation is able to preserve at least some customs and language of the first generation. Evidence of this scenario can be seen in the strong familial ties between Jael, her siblings, her parents and grandparents in Oaxaca. According to Portes and Rumbaut (2001), in today’s de-industrialized economy, “There is no second-generation group for which selective acculturation is more necessary than for Mexican Americans” (p. 279). In our current economy, jobs are mainly in two sectors: information technologies, which require education, and service industry jobs requiring little education. Mexican immigrants from rural places, in Jael’s case Oaxaca, commonly lack high-tech forms of social capital. In this economic climate, if children of migrants are going to obtain professional careers, exceeding the social class of parents 154 with low forms of this type of capital, they must overcome the education gap in one generation (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). We see in Jael’s narrative that her parents are “unable to support her” college endeavors because it was unfamiliar and beyond their level of dominant culture capital. Jael’s story implicates the vital role teachers, her guidance counselor, and involvement in student organizations play in supporting her desire to attend college. Jael’s determination to make it can be seen as largely dependent on her successful construction of a hybrid identity to create a space for her in the social realm. When we compare the stories of Jesus and Jael in terms of the theme of documentation, we see an obvious contrast. Jesus tells the story of being pushed out of school by principal Lugosi and feeling as if he has no recourse to this injustice partially due to his parent’s fears of bringing attention to their undocumented status. Jael, on the other hand, tends to take structural barriers in stride, working hard to ensure a bright future. The following story by Chato deals with the theme of documentation quite differently from the tragic and romantic modes of the prior two narratives. Chato: Undocumented As discussed previously, all the participants in this study were brought to the United States from Mexico as children by their parents or other family members. Chato’s story differs from accounts told by other narrators in that Chato was a few years older than others when he attempted to cross the border with his father. During his first attempt to enter the US, in the chaos that ensued, Chato and his father became separated, and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) captured and deported Chato back to Mexico. On his 155 second attempt, he eventually made it across by himself. When I met Chato a decade ago, he told me he had already finished school in Puebla, Mexico but wanted to come to school to learn English and attend college. I did not know all the details at the time, but he had arrived in the United States and in my classroom just one month earlier from crossing the border on foot. His narrative describes what it was like to come into the United States, like so many others, without a passport. While both Jesus and Jael came into the country on an airplane, Chato’s story entails walking for two weeks in the desert with other migrants, running out of food and water, and risking his life to be turned back at the last moment by border patrol. He tells of a dangerous journey that he was able to make because he was eighteen years old and in strong physical condition. Like Jael, Chato tells of being separated from his father for years, but after he turned eighteen, he makes a decision to come north in search of his father. In this way, Chato chose to come to the US at eighteen and may not be technically of the one and a half generation, however, I chose to include his story because he did attend school in the US before entering the workforce (Zhou, 1999). The lessons learned by Chato have allowed him to make adaptions and push forward in life, unlike the tragic story told by Jesus. The clear difference between the stories of Jesus and Chato exists in the manner Chato continues to struggle to transcend his immediate environment rather than succumbing to structural barriers erected around his legal status. My motivation for sharing this story lies in the potentially valuable knowledge it provides for educators who may not understand what it means to come to the US as a migrant without the means to secure official travel documents. Today, Chato has remained in the country for well over a decade as an “undocumented” migrant. In the 156 following story, Chato tells of a difficult journey to the US, yet he assures me that stories he has heard from people he works with attest to the fact they have had an even more difficult time migrating north from Mexico. As with the previous two other narratives, I use Labov’s (1972) terminology in the analysis of the plot. As a reminder, the plot of a story indicates action, or simply stated the plot is, “the main incidents of a narrative” (Prince, 1987, p. 71). The following preview provides an example of how narrative analysis can be used to analyze both a small part of a participant’s story as well as the larger life narrative. First, I provide an overview of the following narrative told by Chato then follow with an analysis of the parts. When I Came to the US This is a story about when I first came to the US. My father came to the US when I was eleven. He came home to visit his dying father when I was 18. This is when I decided to come to the US with him. We were turned back the first time when we attempted to come here. As we prepared for our trip, there was this guy from another town whose family was talking to us. "OK just please take care of him", I don't remember who he was. He became ill and could not continue. We couldn’t leave this person to die; we had to do something about it. Our only option to save this man’s life was to attract the border patrol’s attention and to be captured. Border patrol stopped, they detained us, put us in the cage in the desert. We were kept like that for a couple of days, then processed and deported back to Mexico. My next attempt trying to cross I made it. (Chato’s entire narrative can be found in Appendix E.) Chato’s story begins as follows: My father came to the US when I was eleven. Then when I was eighteen, there was a chance for me to come here. My father went back to Puebla that year because his dad died and he wanted to at least say goodbye. I think that's the reason why he came back home the last time. 157 Chato’s introduction is brief; he starts off by explaining, “I want to tell you about how I came to the United States.” As with the other two narratives, his short introduction establishes a number of important characteristics of personal narratives and their analysis, first referred to as voice in narrative terms . The reader understands immediately that Chato is speaking from his perspective in his own words. Chato’s voice directs our attention to what he is going to communicate and how he will go about it; he also draws our attention to the subject position or social location from which he speaks (Chase, 2005). Chato’s voice articulates a position of a young man from Puebla, Mexico whose identity is directly tied to his family members, father and grandfather. (As in all three narratives we understand the centrality of family to each narrator.) By situating his particular circumstance for coming to the US, Chato also introduces the first character in his story, his father. We view the father as a round character, a likeable person that likewise values family; Chato explains in his introduction that his father made his final journey back to Mexico because his father’s dad, Chato’s grandfather, was dying and “he wanted to at least say goodbye.” As we see in Jael’s story, Chato is from a southern state in Mexico where poverty exists as commonplace. Economic necessity brought the families of each narrator to the US. It is from this position and identity of a man from Puebla, which Chato establishes at the beginning of his story that he continues with the following passage providing the reader with the first element of plot. Chato orients the reader by describing the situation or context of the story before the action begins. The reader becomes aware of Chato’s personal values as we learn of the way “this guy,” who is a stranger to Chato will play an important role in the action as the plot unfolds. 158 As we prepared for our trip, there was this guy from another town whose family was talking to us. "OK just please take care of him", I don't remember who he was. As soon as Chato orients the audience to the circumstances of his story, a complication or a breach in canonicity arises. While Chato’s story tells of events before Chato arrives to school, different from the content of the stories told by Jael and Jesus, Chato’s “crisis” also differs in that the conflict deals with a life and death scenario. Chato explains, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. His group of travelers was not prepared for what was to come next. He explains: We were walking for two weeks in the desert. The people who were supposed to pick us up didn’t come. We didn’t have any food or water. One of the guys, the one we were asked to take care of, started fainting, he couldn’t continue. This provided a disruption in the way Chato envisioned the final stages of his journey north. He had started his migration north with his two cousins and his father. The three of them were able to continue, however, the stranger whose family asked Chato and his relatives to watch over could not complete the final stage of the exhausting ordeal. When the van eventually did show up to take Chato’s party north to a safe house, there was only room for thirty people to fit into the van. He was faced with the dilemma of going ahead with his father and leaving the stranger there in the desert, likely to die, or sacrifice himself to help this man. It was this unforeseen complication of the stranger that presents a turning point in his narrative. Chato explains that after this stranger started fainting more frequently, “We were like, OK we can't just leave this person to die. We gotta do something about it.” This is the evaluation that takes place; he is forced to weigh his 159 options and decide how to proceed. This is the aspect of the story dealing with why it is worth telling or the story’s “tellability” that established the meaning of the story. At the beginning of the story, crossing the border on foot depended on evading border patrol. Chato describes walking for two weeks only stopping to rest for one or two hours at a time because they knew that security was tight and that border patrol would be tracking them. Now the border patrol may be the only chance to save the life of the man who has fallen ill. The antagonists in Chato’s account, the border patrol, take on a complexity that we do not see in Jael’s account of racist community members as flat characters, or the one-dimensional police officers intent on arresting Jesus at any cost. While we identify with Chato and hope he makes it, we do not wish the border agents harm, rather we empathize with them as being put in the middle of a tragic situation by policy makers driven by ideology. Or, as Bandura (2006) explains, through selective moral disengagement “people who are considerate and compassionate in other areas of their lives can get themselves to support detrimental social policies, carry out harmful organizational and social practices, and perpetuate large scale inhumanities” (p. 171). Chato articulates the challenges of crossing the border in this manner in terms of several factors, which include: 1) his own identity, subject position, and personal values as a man of his word (he tacitly agreed when the parents of the stranger who asked him to watch over their son); 2) Chato wants to continue moving forward to safety but he cannot leave a comrade behind to die. Chato must make a life and death decision. Any discussion on the agent or protagonist must acknowledge that the narrative “is played out on a dual landscape”(Bruner, 2004, p. 698). There is a landscape of action, on which the events described in the plot line, such as in Chato’s story of walking for two weeks in the 160 desert. But there is a second landscape, a landscape of consciousness, Chato’s inner world as an agent involved in the action. This duality of landscapes is the essential ingredient of narrative accounts. We see the morality in Chato’ character in his personal account of migrating to the US and how it does not match up with daily media portrayals of “criminals” who cross the border without documentation. It is at this point we see an aspect of Chato’s personal identity as a proactive “moral agent” committed to social obligations and righteous causes (Bandura, 2006). Chato invests his self-worth in his principles and values, even sacrificing his self-interest and submitting himself “to prolonged maltreatment rather than accede to what he regards as unjust or immoral” (p. 171). In narrative terms, the story approaches the result or resolution, in which the complication is resolved with Chato’s decision to stay behind and flag down border patrol agents knowing that he will be sent back to the other side of the border. In terms of the story’s resolution ending in success or failure,I believe it is both. He describes a traumatic ordeal of being captured: Border Patrol put us in the pen. They fingerprinted us and processed us. They kept us in a cage in the desert, the size of, like ten or twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide. You have 100 people there. I don't know if you have seen chickens that are in cages. We were kept like that for a couple of days. Then we were cuffed and shackled while being transported by bus. Every time immigration arrests you they do that, hands and feet. Once I was taken across the border [back to Mexico] my thinking returned to here [the US], it is always focused on coming here. 161 Figure 4.2 Cage on the Border Outside Douglas, Arizona (Photo by Rob Hunt). He failed in his attempt to make it across the border, but after weighing his options, he decided he would rather sacrifice his journey to save the life of a fellow traveler. In the bigger picture, Chato succeeds; he is able to live with himself knowing that he did the right thing by being a man of his word and considering the well being of others even at the expense of being captured and deported. Again, we see a more complex resolution in this account than in Jesus’ tragic failure or in the sense of success found in Jael’s story. The coda or Chato’s indication that the story is over is, “On my next attempt trying to cross, I made it.” He brings us back to the present moment of being here now and telling me this story. As Chato finishes his first story about not making it the first time, it leads into another account of his second attempt to cross the border: Coming here was like an action movie, running around, it was scary, the whole experience. On my next attempt trying to cross, I made it. This was the wild one, that's when it seemed like a movie because we were chased by a helicopter. We were running in a little, mini truck with thirty people on it being chased by a helicopter. We were just trying to escape, and at some point we had to drop the 162 pickup truck and everyone started spreading around, that was the plan, to never get into a group or a bunch of people, everyone had to go on their own. That was the scary part because if you get lost, you are on your own and there is like nothing there. I don't know how we got out of there; I don't remember that part. But we made it. It was scary. (See appendix E for complete narrative account.) Chato again tells a “scary” story but ends the story by providing a comic image for the audience: We were running in a little mini truck with thirty people on it. There we were, this very large family, on this bumpy road in the desert, being chased by a helicopter. An important lesson to be learned from this narrative account relates to Bruner’s (1987) assertion that “the culturally shaped cognitive and linguistic processes that guide the selftelling of life narratives achieve the power to structure perceptual experience, to organize memory, to segment and purpose-build the very ‘events’ of a life” (p. 694). Chato’s narrative is not a story of being defeated; rather, it connects past events with how he chooses to live in the world today. Immediately after Chato shared his story, we engaged in a reflection on the meaning of his story or the narrative’s evaluation. Chato indicates that his decision to become a political activist, helping other migrant people in the community settle, is rooted in his personal struggles. He enthusiastically shares this knowledge with the hope that it may help other newcomers avoid the kinds of problems he encountered. We see the effects on Chato’s identity to also be a form of hybrid identity construction similar to the description of Jael, but markedly different as he describes living a “schizophrenic life.” While being forced to remain living in the shadows as an undocumented man, this has led him to channel his creative energy into non-violent 163 direct action working on various community projects in Washington County. He hosts a Spanish radio show where he advocates for fair labor practices, housing, and education for the Spanish speaking community. He describes his work helping others to develop social capital to prevent them from being exploited at work or by the legal system. Chato’s legal status has been a barrier, limiting his options to join the economic and social mainstream, yet he roots his activism to living through the tragic events he describes. Chato has now been in the United States for several years. He works two jobs to support his two children and spouse. He and his spouse have recently become homeowners; he is, in a sense, a typical working class Mexican-American; however, he is not allowed to get too comfortable with his life as he lives with the reality that between 2010 and 2012 over 200,000 children had to face the trauma of having one or both parents captured and detained by ICE (Miller, 2014). The following short narrative by Chato describes how he was detained and deported the second time. The basic plot structure follows: I got a DUI; it’s a funny one too. It was my 21st birthday. I was literally covered in alcohol down at the bar. This is the way we celebrate birthdays. So we got kicked out of the bar. I decided to move my car from the lot to park it overnight on the street. But here came a policeman just walking by. They took me to jail. I could have been bailed out, but since I had a previous deportation, I was flagged, held automatically. I got deported again. My girlfriend was pregnant. I had come back. Here Chato tells of another traumatic life event, being incarcerated and deported, faced with the situation of needing to return to care for his spouse and child. Yet, he appears to say, “When something tragic happens in life, such as being arrested, deported, you get 164 through it and then tell a funny story about it and laugh.” It is a remarkable display of human agency and speaks to the resiliency of the migrant spirit (Parra-Cardona et al., 2006). Chato remains a contributor to his life circumstances not just a product of them (Bandura, 2006). Although the subject matter of Chato’s narratives, crossing the border and being deported, are very serious topics, I believe the manner in which Chato “emplots” his larger story, as defined by White (1973) and following Hegel’s theory of historical emplotment, can be viewed as a combination of both a tragedy and comedy. Chato’s Tragicomedy Chato describes himself as a political activist working to serve other migrant newcomers by assisting them in the acculturation process. Ten years have passed since we first met, and he remains living in Washington County. Regardless of the challenges faced, Chato tells his story in a comical manner to make sense of the past by laughing at the adversity he has overcome, thus propelling himself forward refusing to portray himself as a victim of the legal apparatus that continues to target the undocumented. Chato’s perseverance in the face of tragic circumstance is why I interpret his story as a tragi-comedy. As previously mentioned, White’s (1973) use of emplotment refers to an interpretation of the ”meaning” of each story by identifying the “kind of story” that is told (p. 7). The plot structures of Comedy and Tragedy “suggest the possibility of at least partial liberation from the condition of the Fall” (p. 9). (The Fall refers to original sin of Adam and Eve in Judeo-Islamic-Christian mythology found in the book of Genesis). In the plot structure of the Comedy, “hope is held out for the temporary triumph of man over his world by the prospect of occasional reconciliations of the forces at play in the social 165 and natural worlds. Such reconciliations are symbolized in the festive occasions which the Comic writer traditionally uses to terminate his dramatic accounts of change and transformation” (p. 9). It is White’s (1973) version of the comedy to which I reference Chato’s mode of emplotting his narrative, which differs substantially from traditional notions of a comedy. To be clear, I am not suggesting these events themselves to be comical, rather I am using this mode to illustrate how Chato finds strength and moves the plotline of his life forward through surveying his inner landscape. White (1973) elaborates on Hegel’s understanding of histories to be written in the four modes of the epic, comedy, tragedy, and satire, or a combination of these modes. The modern Tragic Comedy seeks to bridge the comic and tragic views of the world, but only on a surface level, as they never combine, rather they remain separate entities. Hegel’s notion of the comedy and tragedy being different sides of the same coin become a good way to understand how Chato emplots his narrative as a Tragi-comedy. The manner in which Chato emplots his narrative can be understood as expressing different stages of self-conscious reflection on his role in the world. Hegel’s theory of historical emplotment views the highest sort of truths found in historical narratives to be truths of Tragedy. These truths are understood as poetic forms or representations of the actual dramas lived by individuals in specific places during specific times (White, 1973). In Chato’s narrative, we also see Hegel’s view that as in history and philosophy, “comedy is the form which reflection takes after it has assimilated the truths of Tragedy to itself” (p. 95). Chato describes the terrifying ordeal of his second attempt to enter the US in the moment as a Tragedy. He does not want to become lost in the desert by himself when he and his companions are forced to abandon the truck to elude border patrol and scatter 166 about. Yet, in hindsight, Chato tells this story by presenting a comic illustration of his experience, “There we were, this very large family, on this bumpy road in the desert, being chased by a helicopter.” It is at the end of Chato’s story arc that he identifies his motivation to become a political activist as rooted in his personal experience. His reflection drives his decision to portray these events in a comic mode and give hope to the audience for transformation to occur as White explains as “reconciliations of men with men, of men with their world and society.” Chato articulates the desire for a society that can be represented as being “purer, saner, and healthier as a result of the conflict among seemingly inalterably opposed elements in the world” (White, 1973, p. 9). The immigration system that Chato struggles against is not likely to change for the better any time soon, yet Chato chooses to make the world a little better or more sane for other migrants who face similar challenges. In the end, “these elements are revealed to be, in the long run, harmonizable with one another, unified, at one with themselves and the others” (p. 9). And, in the end, Chato is at peace and resolves to work creatively for social change. While Chato has been legally excluded from pursuing his dream of higher education, he has educated himself. He has been able to develop social capital in a manner that many migrants living in the shadows have not. We see Chato exercise agency, which provides direction, coherence, and meaning to his life in his description of the last time he was deported (Bandura, 2006). It is his forethought combined with cultural capital and financial means that he is able to retain a lawyer, he explains: When you get deported, you get all of these charges; that's one of the reasons why you have to come back right away. It's because once you get those charges and get deported, there is no one to respond to those charges, and then you get in even 167 more trouble because you didn't show up for a hearing. So, I hired a lawyer to represent me because I wasn't going to be able to show for the first hearing. Because once you don't show up for the first one, you get a warrant. Then, for whatever reason if the police officer ever stops you for anything, once you have a warrant, you get arrested and deported again. Chato told me about the stress he must deal with when he considers the future. His daughters are three and four years old; they depend on him. He describes the day-to-day things that many take for granted, such as driving a car, which could get him deported once again. Fortunately, in the business where he works, his employers understand his legal situation and value his commitment to the quality of his work. Without going into detail, he tells me they support him yet he has to be vigilant when it comes to anything dealing with paperwork. At this point, unless the laws change, I can't get any change in my status at all. For many years, that has been the most stressful thing in my life. In the case, for any reason, I happen to just get stopped by officers and I get arrested, everything goes...all my life, not just my life, but all my family's life is like BAM! My work is here; my children depend on me here. While there are similarities in the manner each narrator in this collection emplot their stories, Chato’s story contrasts with both Jesus’ and Jael’s narratives. Comedy and tragedy represent qualifications of the Romantic apprehension of the world, a process “in the interest of taking seriously the forces which oppose the effort at human redemption naively held up as a possibility for mankind in Romance”(White, 1973, p. 10). Both Comedy and Tragedy take conflict seriously, even if Comedy “eventuates in a vision of the ultimate reconciliation of opposed forces and [Tragedy] in a revelation of the nature of the forces opposing man on the other” (p. 10). Chato educates himself, reading everything he can on immigration and does not share the viewpoint that all is well under 168 Obama that we see in Jael’s Romance. (More migrants have been deported under the Obama Administration than any previous administration; Chomsky, 2014.) Chato continues to live his life and emerges from the other side of tragic events, while limited by structural barriers, he has a strong sense of personal agency in a manner that is quite different from the way Jesus ends his story. In the following section I summarize my analysis of narrative emplotment and address how documentation or one’s legal status affects the identity of each narrator in terms of how they are understood to exercise personal agency as reflected in the manner in which they emplot their life stories. Table 4.1 Summary of Findings Narrator Jesus Jael Chato Emplotment Tragedy Romance Tragicomedy Theme Pushed-Out Hybrid-culture Illegal Personhood Identity Disrupted Intact Self-reflected Agency Low High High Legal Status Undocumented Dual citizenship Undocumented 169 Jesus Jesus is the first narrator who is undocumented in this collection. In terms of identity construction as portrayed in his story, I classify Jesus’ identity as being disrupted or stifled by the antagonists in his story–the police and the principal. He becomes effectively stripped of a sense of agency or feelings of being in charge of his own life. His story clearly represents a classic tragedy. His acculturation process can be understood in some ways in terms of dissonant acculturation (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). He has been marginalized from mainstream culture and likely will face irregular employment and struggle financially. Years after school, he still attempts to make sense of his future options, however, as Bruner (1991) reminds us, it is the telling of his story that creates the possibility of a retelling. Since conducting the initial interviews for this study, I have been in touch with Jesus, and he has informed me that he is working with the Catholic Church to gather documentation and attempt to improve his immigration status. Sharing this narrative illuminates the kinds of tension that this type of research brings to light as a friend of this young man; the nature of narrative presents the audience with a moral dilemma. Once we become aware of the manner in which the social structure of the school can harm individuals like Jesus, we must collectively resolve to counteract this injustice. As educators, we are confronted with an ethical imperative to act to ensure that we do not remain silently complicit in pushing out minority students who historically have been targeted for social marginalization (Spring, 2010). Jael Jael’s life story also gives the audience hope but in a strikingly different manner. We see that having legal documentation, or in her case citizenship, Jael has more options 170 and choices for creating her future. Jael demonstrates the possibility for young migrants who are able to obtain documentation (Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco & Todorova, 2010). Jael can also be understood to possess a very strong sense of personal agency. We see the connection between her inner strength and being able to keep her ethnic identity intact throughout her narrative account. She has developed a hybrid identity that allows her to remain true to her Oaxacan roots while also creating a space for her to flourish in American society. Jael attributes her ability to acculturate to her ability to retain her first language–Spanish. Characterizing Jael’s story as a romance signifies her sense of being in control of her future. She chooses to take charge of her destiny by pursuing higher education, international travel, and maintaining her culture through membership to multiple social groups. Jael remains optimistic about the future of Mexican people in her community as she expresses a sense of things getting better under the Obama Administration. Chato Chato’s identity can also be seen as being shaped by his undocumented status. However, as a political activist, his identity can be viewed as a self-reflected identity. He has also created a hybrid identity, but it requires him to remain outside the main stream. We are left with an image of how his identity differs from Jesus mainly because Chato consciously resists being defined by social institutions (i.e. laws) seeking to determine his life prospects. In both accounts, the tragedy and the tragicomedy, the audience is left to contemplate the psychological motives- the agency or lack of agency driving the action forward in an attempt to resolve a harsh material world where both Jesus and Chato live. 171 Chato emplots his story as a tragicomedy which can be understood in terms of his character exercising personal agency even though his choices to act are limited by the legal system. In this mode of emplotment, tragedy and comedy find a mutual accommodation, dulling the misery inflicted by the conflict (White, 1973). We can view Chato’s story in the manner that Hegel speaks of tragic conflict, as in historical conflict, to involve the common man’s life or his personality. Similar to the conflicts that arise in Jesus’ Tragedy, conflict is found in Chato’s substantive world, the world of family, social, and political life. However, in the midst of tragic actions Chato searches out a sense of self-reliance, articulating a position that draws into question the laws and morality of the collective. It is the comedy of the tragicomedy that provides a vision of a victorious reconciliation of the soul with life where laughter irons out the conflict, as Hegel states, “through the medium and into the medium of such life” (p .96). The comic vision expressed in Chato’s narrative can be understood as philosophical reflection on the tragic events of life in an “infinite geniality and confidence capable of rising superior to its own contradiction and experiencing therein no taint of bitterness or sense of misfortune” (p. 96). We end Chapter Four with an understanding of Hegel’s view of the tragedy and comedy not being opposite ways to view reality, but as we see with Jesus and Chato, rather as perceptions of the crisis from different sides of the action. From the comic side of the conflict, Chato maintains a sense of identity and agency that Jesus has lost, not to a disembodied structural system, but rather taken from him by familiar faces of school staff that were entrusted with his well being. The three stories presented in Chapter Four as a tragedy, a romance, and a tragicomedy can be seen as a storied representation of how each narrator emplots his/her life 172 story, constructs a narrative sense of self and how one perceives her life choices in terms of exercising personal agency. The way emergent bilingual students in this collection of stories construct identity and exercise agency correspond to their success or lack of success in negotiating the socio-economic, cultural, and legal barriers they encounter at school and in society in general. While it should be apparent that the identities and perceived level of personal empowerment can not be viewed in terms of an internal scenario alone, personal agency has a correlation to one’s environment and the social interactions that transpire in and outside of school, between students, peers, family and school staff. Just as the narratives told by the three participants above are influenced by the interaction between the narrator and myself as a researcher, exposure to other cultural narratives also shape and influence the stories told by each person. All stories are indeed located on a wider landscape that should be taken into account to comprehend the value of this research. In fact, I believe it essential for educators to develop a deeper understanding of the way the micro narratives told here intertwine, conflict, and indeed resist master narratives and common sense notions about emergent bilingual students of Mexican origins (Lachuk & Gomez, 2011). 173 CHAPTER 5: CONNECTING MICRO AND MACRO NARRATIVES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING Introduction Working from Bruner’s (1991) notion that we indeed become the stories we tell, identity construction of each narrator in this study seems to be shaped by one overarching theme, the legal status of each participant. The way individual narrators frame their stories about their school experiences, construct their identities, and narrate past, present and future lives in the United States, seem to pivot, to some degree, on whether or not the narrator has been able to secure legal documentation to be in the US. In addition to living in fear of being deported or to living a “schizophrenic existence” as Jesus and Chato describe, one’s legal status also determines the kind of work each person sees as a viable option, and limits one’s ability to pursue higher education. Through the account of each narrator, we develop a sense of how this factor continually affects the overall life story of each narrator. In the following chapter, I weave together themes from the micro-narratives found in chapter four with macro level contextual structures to connect personal (micro) and historical (macro) narratives, which is critical for educators to develop the ability to challenge and dismantle Grand narratives. 174 Cultural & historical contexts Figure 5.1 Personal narrative Weaving Macro and Micro (Boyer, 2015) Discussion In the following discussion, I critically examine the macro structures that surround the micro-narrative themes identified in this study; identity, being undocumented, and being pushed out of school. As I have discussed in terms of emplotment in Chapter Four, all three narrators are dealing with these themes in their lives, but play them out differently in each individual scenario. I present the following themes in an order that demonstrates the importance of constructing a bicultural or hybrid sense of self and the role that having legal documentation plays in this process. Just as Jael and Chato’s stories offer hope and resistance to the legal apparatus, the last theme of being pushed out of school and in to the criminal justice system, Jesus’ story, demonstrates what can happen when identity and agency are stripped from him by school staff who fail to understand the historical context of society’s grand narratives and operate from the ideological assumptions that interpolate Mexican teenagers as other and as criminals. Theme 1: Hybrid Identity, and Selective Acculturation The ideology and politics of the common school movement in post revolutionary America has come to be the model for other nations to replicate around the world. 175 “Common school reformers believed that education could be used to ensure the dominance of Protestant Anglo American culture, reduce tensions between social classes, eliminate crime and poverty, stabilize the political system, and form patriotic citizens” (Spring, 2011, p. 79). From the beginning the goal of public schools was to turn a multicultural society into a single culture society, which led to Indian boarding schools and segregated schools for African Americans, Asians, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans until the mid twentieth century. In Jael’s micro-narrative, she attributes her ability to construct a hybrid identity to being able to retain her first language- Spanish. Her story gives the audience hope as we are provided with possibilities for young migrants who are able to obtain documentation. We see that having legal documentation, or in her case citizenship, provides Jael with more options and choices for creating her future. Jael also can be understood to possess a strong sense of personal agency. We see the connection between her inner strength and being able to keep her ethnic identity intact throughout her narrative account. She has developed a hybrid identity that allows her to remain true to her Oaxacan roots while also creating a space to flourish in mainstream American society. Characterizing Jael’s story as a romance signifies her sense of being in control of her future, she chooses to take charge of her destiny by pursuing higher education, international travel, and maintaining her culture through membership in multiple social groups. Jael remains optimistic about the future of Mexican people in her community as she expresses a sense of things getting better under the Obama Administration. Jael’s account provides an alternative to the tragedies presented by Chato and Jesus. Her micro narrative illustrates the possibilities for migrant students who gain 176 access to social institutions when given the opportunity to step out of the shadows. Jael’s life story, emploted as a romance, correlates to the manner she exercises nearly full agency, being able to set goals, and make choices to ensure a bright future. Her university education provides her with an ability to further develop a hybrid identity and to practice selective acculturation in a manner that the other two narrators are not afforded. Constructing Self The stories we are told by our parents and family members are our first source from which we construct a personal identity. We are part of the stories family members tell and they are part of our stories (Ada & Zubizarreta, 2001). Defining oneself through narrative cannot happen outside of these social interactions. The philosopher, Charles Taylor (1989) describes the significance between identity and one’s name, My name is what I am ‘called’. A human being has to have a name, because he or she has to be called, i.e. addressed. Being called into conversation is a precondition of developing human identity, and so my name is (usually) given me by my earliest interlocutors. (p. 525) Symbolic reality, language and culture, exist before one is born. As we live in the world we come to develop a narrative self-identity. The primacy of the family should be apparent in the construction of self, but through Jesus’ narrative we see what can happen to a student’s sense of continuity when he enters school with a developed cultural and linguistic identity different from the majority of students and school staff. American history clearly demonstrates the destructive tendencies of compulsive schooling when schools attempt to assimilate minority youth by disregarding their identity, forbidding their home language, and often times going so far as to replace the name one’s parents 177 have given them (Spring, 2010). Additive forms of acculturation that build from bicultural students first language can be seen as a hybrid form of identity construction. The theory of hybridity can be understood to have cross-disciplinary roots in cultural-historical theory (Vygotsky, 1978) and cultural studies, as in Anzaldúa’s (1987) notion of borderlands for people living on the margins of discourse communities. While all cultures can be understood to be a result of borrowing and mixing through contact over time, Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez & Alvarez (2001) conceptualize hybridity as a third discursive space where conflicting and competing discourses become rich zones of collaboration and learning. Gonzales-Berry & Mendoza (2010) contends that migrant youth living in Oregon experience the connection of self and social reality differently from those living in the southwest, building from Anzaldúa’s (1987) border metaphor she states, The border for Mexicanos in Oregon is a socio-spatial line that mediates between the reality of their lives at home and that of the public space of mainstream culture. It is more intensely personal and psychological and it functions as a reminder of their isolation and of their separation from the dominant society (p. 14) To support healthy identity construction and to mitigate this form of social and psychological marginalization, migrant students need support in developing hybrid identities to engage in selective acculturation which is additive in nature (GonzalesBerry, Mendoza & Plaza, 2006). For educators to begin to scaffold a foundation to build relationships with migrant students they must critically examine the historical context that operates in a dialectical relationship with individual students and to link the manner hegemony operates in schools through the actions or inactions of teachers (Gabbard, 178 2008). To move beyond the Master narratives about immigrants, educators need to a deeper understanding of the social construction of illegality that remains a central theme in the lives of our students. Theme 2: Being Undocumented or an Illegal Person Geographer Joseph Nevins explains that borderlines that criminalize the movements of certain people are a recent development in human history (Nevins, 2008). And author of the book, Border Patrol Nation, Miller (2014) adds, “Worldwide a very small percentage of people in the world are allowed to travel… a much larger percentage of people are prohibited from crossing borders” (p. 24). Who are the privileged class who are allowed to travel and who are not allowed to travel? The minority who are permitted to travel are those who possess the necessary level of wealth to secure a visa or passport, those with capital. So-called free trade agreements, such as NAFTA (1994) have secured the right for capital to flow across borders. Who are the majority who are not permitted to travel? The poor, those searching for work as a result of being dispossessed of a land base from which they were once able to grow enough food to subsist (Bigelow, 2006). Chato’s story contextualizes the scenario of having to cross the border with a coyote to find work to survive. His story also describes his ongoing struggle to create a life in Washington County for himself as he works to support his family and assist other migrants to settle. His identity formation comes out of this struggle to make a life in the face of the continual threat of deportation, which he has experienced on more than one occasion. Although his story can also be viewed as tragic, Chato’s self reflection and hunger to educate himself provide him the means to laugh rather than cry in the aftermath of experiencing traumatic adversity and provide him, at least for the time being, a path 179 forward that avoids the kind of tragedy recounted by Jesus. In the end, Chato’s resistance to being written upon displays a resiliency requiring innovative acts of personal agency. Illegality: a History Europeans have used religion, race, and nationality- one’s citizenship- to divide people into categories for more than one thousand years. Over the centuries each of these categories has been used to create social hierarchies used to justify inequality and differential legal treatment. Once social status becomes written into law it becomes a justification for inequality. Historically, social caste has been used as justification for forcing the other to work for those defined as superior, doing society’s most undesirable and dangerous jobs (Chomsky, 2014). In the US, race originally determined who qualified to become a US citizen until the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in1868. Historically private individuals or municipalities controlled the movement of enslaved and free blacks at the local level until the 1960’s (Chomsky, 2014). In the late nineteenth century control of movement on the national level emerged for the first time with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which “codified in immigration law the elision of racist and nationalist discourse” barring Chinese from becoming citizens based on race but it also excluded the Chinese from entering the US based on nationality (Miller, 2014, p. 284). Language used in the quota system that restricted immigration of southern and eastern Europeans in 1921 also viewed people such as Italians as a race and a nationality. During the twentieth century the legal category of national origins was linked to race as a legal identification to determine status originally to exclude undesirable Europeans. “For the first time white Europeans were treated as legally other and subordinate, the way conquered and racially 180 differentiated peoples—African and Indian—had been since the first days of British settlement” (Chomsky, 2014, p. 34). From a more recent historical perspective, when we look at the social construction of what it means to be undocumented in the US, we realize this is a fairly recent phenomenon. For the first time in 1965 immigration quotas were used to discriminate against Mexicans not based on race but on their illegality or lack of US Citizenship (Chomsky, 2014). Since 1965, nationality has remained the rationale used to restrict movement of people into the US who are of Mexican origins. Just as one does not choose the religion of one’s parents, or color of one’s skin, one does not choose their birthplace. To restrict the free movement of people based on the arbitrary fact of one’s race or nationality is a way of enforcing domination and perpetuating inequality. Political scientist Jacqueline Stevens insists that an immigration system that forces people to remain within the national borders in which they are born is in fact “global apartheid” (As cited in Chomsky, 2014, p. 36). Increasingly militarized borders designed with the intent to keep the poor of the world separate from those born in wealthier countries are normalized to enforce global apartheid. Global apartheid relies on the language of “illegality” and being “undocumented” to prevent the poor from escaping poverty by replacing the language of race with language based on one’s national origin. Geographer James Anderson and sociologist Liam O’Dowd refer to “a paradox of origins” in the creation of borders around the world where there is a legacy of violent origins, “whether in national conflict, political revolution, or the slaughter of native populations”. The key is that this brutality must be obliterated from memory; they call it the “politics of forgetting” where as the 181 violent origins of boundaries “needs to be played down or concealed for territorial democracy to perform its legitimizing functions” (as cited in Miller, 2014, p. 185). As Chato’s story demonstrates, migrants who manage to enter the country remain vulnerable to another aspect of global apartheid, the growing detention facilities industry. Since September 11, 2001 the US Government has spent 791 billion dollars to detain foreign-born people, compared to only 500 billion (adjusted for inflation) that was spent on the entire New Deal Programs (Miller, 2014). There is a strong desire for private detention facilities that contract with ICE to cash in on what has been called “the immigration gold rush”. For example the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) made 95 million dollars in 2005 by contracting with the Department of Homeland Security. In 2011 it was making 208 million dollars per year from these contracts (Miller, 2014). Master narratives about migrants in the media distract attention from private companies who have economic incentives to further criminalize youth of color. Theme 3: Pushed Out Jesus’ status as an undocumented migrant teen incites hostility, originating from the master narrative of the larger political context internalized by the building principal, who re-enacts the macro-political context at the local or micro-level through his efforts to push Jesus out of school and into the criminal justice system. Owing to their own undocumented status and their related fear of deportation, Jesus’ parents who are undocumented advise him not to bring attention to the family, and Jesus is left without an adult to intervene and advocate to put a halt to the harassing behavior at school. The long-term effect on Jesus has been one of marginalization, as he remains living in the shadows, struggling economically and socially. 182 Jesus’ story provides a textured account of what lies behind economic indicators for students pushed out of school. Sum, Khatiwada and McLaughlin’s (2009) research conducted for The Center for Labor Market Studies indicates an average joblessness rate during 2008 of 54% nationwide for young high school dropouts. Across ethnic groups and genders, the general employment rate was 22 percentage points below that of high school graduates, 33 percentage points below that of young adults who had completed 13 years of post-secondary schooling, and 41 percentage points below that of their peers who held a Bachelor’s degree (as cited in Sum, et al, 2009, p. 12). The tragedy of Jesus’ situation lays in the manner in which these macro culturalhistorical forces are played out on a localized personal level. The dominant cultural narratives about immigrants from Mexico that frame them in terms of being criminal, alien, other, can be seen as shaping the perceptions of the school principal that pushes Jesus out of school and into the criminal justice system. Being pushed out of school is not uncommon for emergent bilinguals under the federal No Child Left Behind law because schools are under pressure to raise graduation rates and test scores or else face sanctions (Lukes, 2012). While state laws make school compulsory, it is at the local level that Jesus and students like him get pushed out. Jesus’ narrative provides a first-hand perspective of Principal Lugosi and officer White’s actions of hailing him, demonstrating Althusser’s (1971) concept of interpellation. Lugosi and White can be seen as shaping Jesus’ identity to fit their preconceived mold that views young Mexican men as criminals. This law enforcement officer and school principal’s mold corresponds with Master narratives/dominant ideologies that they have internalized. 183 The criminalization of Mexican migrant youth, in the manner Jesus was excluded from school resembles the manner in which prisons are more frequently being conceived as borders or, “places of exclusion and seclusion wherein we confine those judged undeserving of liberty, sympathy, treatment, or trust” (Bosworth & Flavin, 2007, p. 137). On the local landscape, the school district where Jesus went to high school had a racial makeup of 15% Latino and 85% White. Sum et al. (2009) reports that “dropouts” become incarcerated at a shocking rate; “Male dropouts of all races were 47 times more likely to be incarcerated than their peers of a similar age who had graduated from a fouryear college or university” (Sum et al., 2009, p. 1). To understand the contribution of Jesus’ story, we must see it as situated on a larger landscape in the Pacific Northwest region where in Oregon 20% of the total youth population consist of migrant origin students, and in Washington State 24% of the total youth population are of migrant origins (Batalova & Fix, 2011). However, one of two emergent bilingual students living in the Pacific Northwest region, currently do not graduate from high school (Scott, 2012). We can view the way Jesus was pushed into the criminal justice system as part of the Master narrative which increasingly relies on an incarceration ideology that disproportionately targets poor Brown and Black people who make up the majority of a growing population that is currently either incarcerated, on parole, or probation (Alexander, 2011). We can trace the genealogy of incarceration as a preferred means to deal with surplus population back at least four hundred years to the advent of the modern nation state itself in Western Europe (Foucault &Khalfa, 2006). The incarceration narrative in contemporary America largely results from the “War on Drugs” which 184 expanded under the Reagan Administration in the 1980’s (Alexander, 2011). The War on Drugs has been an ideological campaign, which has increasingly become more violent; blurring the distinction Althusser (1971) makes between the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) and the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA). The War on Drugs manifests itself in the form of racialized policing dependent on militarized tactics in communities of color. Jesus’ narrative illustrates how youth of color are targeted using the War on drugs rationale within the dominant Ideological State Apparatus, the school (Althusser, 1971). As we see in Jesus’ account the school cannot legitimately be viewed as a culturally neutral site. We see how racism in the era of colorblindness is no longer socially permissible, so as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt we use our criminal justice system to label people of color criminals and then engage in the same practices we claim to have left behind (Alexander, 2011). Conclusion Grand or Master narratives provide internal justification for a society or culture by attempting to legitimize knowledge (Lyotard, 1984). The stories presented by the three narrators, Jesus, Jael, and Chato are significant because they stand in diametric opposition to the modernist metanarrative of historical progress. Narratives such as the ones presented here have come to be known as micro-narratives. They offer educators and/or researchers the ability to zoom in and examine details provided by research participants themselves who actually live the experiences being described in this research account. It is the non-generalizability of micro-narratives that allow them to be referred to in the plural because they exist simultaneously rather than being engulfed to form a single 185 narrative account (Friesen, 2008). The situated narratives are local, contingent not to be viewed as empirically verifiable truth. The potential that the micro-narratives of Jesus, Jael, and Chato present are a form of knowledge and research, with their own operating principles, that may be better suited for the situated nature of teaching and learning with a specific group of students (Bruner, 1991). Scaffolding Personal Relationships with Students The relationships I have constructed with the participants of this study were initiated in dialogue around our personal life stories. To have a space with caring relationships where you are free to be yourself is a basic existential need. To begin to understand why students choose to engage academically or to withdraw from learning is to acknowledge that human relationships are at the heart of learning (Cummins, 2000). Supporting hybrid identity construction and selective acculturation requires knowing about prior life experience and attempting to learn about where our students come from. Critical agency is nurtured in pedagogical spaces when both teacher and student learn together cooperatively and on an introspective personal level (Freire, 1970; Hayes et al., 1991). Writing autobiographical accounts alongside our students has the potential to become an act of solidarity (McLaren, 2007) and a means to better understand our changing sense of who we are as educators and human beings (Lyle, 2009; Lyons, 2010; Macintyre & Kim, 2010; Ritchie & Wilson, 2000). In addition to the importance of writing autobiographical narratives with our students to understand their personal histories, for educators to appreciate their students as individuals they must also critically examine history. Many years of experience working in public schools have forced me to see that educators fail to critically examine 186 society’s master narratives. An “official” historical narrative that focuses on presidents, wars, and industry leaders has embedded these master narratives in every student who has attended public school in the US. On the issue of immigration, the corporate media continuously saturates the public daily with ideological justification for the exclusion and criminalization of migrants from Mexico and Latin America. Society’s grand narratives certainly influence the micro-narratives told by Chato, Jael, and Jesus in this study. Being labeled illegal or undocumented can be seen to affect the identity formation of each participant and can be directly related to how each narrator exercises personal agency. In reality the underlying antagonism between the narrative of the state and the narratives of the people lie at the core of our nation’s history. Critical multicultural education, with an emphasis on connecting the school to the larger social order, illuminates this antagonism when understood as both a concept and a process (Manning & Baruth, 2009). Central to the process of developing critical awareness is Freire’s (1970) notion of conscientisation, or the process of becoming aware of the political, cultural, and socioeconomic contradictions at the root of social inequality. To dismantle the master narratives and the “masks and myths of cultural neutrality” in teachers and “cultural invisibility” in students, teachers must look at themselves, become reflective, and form new solutions, which requires moving out of one’s comfort zone; this can only come about through self-study, observing students, and constant reflection (Gay, 2010, p. 247). As teachers of conscience we have an ethical and moral obligation to dismantle grand narratives and reveal how they function to preserve the status quo. We must be able to see our students for the individuals they are, to strive to know their families and 187 cultures as separate from the media portrayals, the legal terms, the normalized racial hierarchy that few want to acknowledge, yet lies just beneath the surface and reveals itself in terms like “illegal aliens” which clearly depict some as sub-human without a clear right to even exist. Becoming conscious of the reality our students and their parents constitutes the first step. Once this is achieved we cannot turn a blind eye to the way students and their families are mistreated by schools, scapegoated in the media, and targeted by the legal apparatus of the state, we must act to change it. Closing the Circle To bring this research narrative to a close I would like to reflect on the process and my findings. As I journey into the world to find my former students, I am struck by another level of tragic sadness, a sorrow for the way the world has treated the students who I came to know and love in the ESL classroom. So many had dreams of going to college only to experience, as one participant describes, “having their wings clipped” because they could not find a path toward legalizing their immigration status. I was struck by just how profoundly this affects students’ lives ten years later as I hope this comes through in my research. Historically undocumented migrants have taken refuge from deportation in churches. In addition to churches, schools and hospitals have also been respected as off limits to ICE agents. When I worked at the high school I reassured students that ICE doesn’t come to schools so you are safe from deportation here. Now I am forced to confront what happens to students after school. These stories remind us that once students graduate from high school, they no longer protected from the legal 188 apparatus that targets them. Chato was deported on his twenty-first birthday, just three years after graduation. As I close the circle and finish this research project, my motivations for conducting this research are rooted in a desire to illuminate the current reality of migrant students and their families who continue to live in the shadows, sharing firsthand stories that have largely gone “undocumented” in the literature. To address the question posed to me by colleagues about why personal narrative pedagogy and research matters, I would like to acknowledge that the personal is pedagogical and the pedagogical is always political (Freire, 1998). Through my initial research process I have reconnected with old friends, and created a discursive space to retell our life stories, hopefully improving upon them with each retelling. And, by retelling my story I connect past, present and future rediscovering a young teacher I almost forgot existed. In the process of creating continuity through this narrative I have started a new chapter in my life, renewing my commitment to social justice, as researcher. Recommendations Teacher Education Must Prepare Teachers to Dismantle Master Narratives Master narratives found in traditional curriculum, mass media, and public policy tend to filter interpretations of ourselves, leaving many of us out of history and America itself (Takaki, 2008). For educators to develop dispositions to reach all students they must expand their notions of the manner the past present and future intersects and relate. As we see in Jesus’ narrative account, schools can/do in fact treat students of color 189 differently. Dialogue around our personal stories also allow Master narrative’s to be problematized, challenged, and dismantled (Dyson & Genishi, 1994). This study supports the urgency for educators to challenge and dismantle color-blind approaches to teaching and learning in colleges of education and in turn in public school contexts to avoid pushing Mexican students out of school and to support students to develop personal agency. Educators must develop an ability to situate students’ micro narratives as part of complex socio-historical landscapes. Teachers who fail to acknowledge diverse student characteristics and perspectives also tend to fail to acknowledge structural inequality (Nieto & Bode, 2008). By failing to recognize social inequality teachers are doomed to perpetuate a status quo that currently fails to graduate fifty percent of emergent bilinguals from high school. Teacher education course work should teach Critical Race Theory (CRT) which begins with the premise that our society is far from being a “post-racial” society and in fact race still matters (West, 1993; Wise, 2008). Making an attempt to understand the reality of diverse students also means understanding structural racism and how power functions through individuals in social institutions (Foucault et al., 1991). Educators have to move away from notions of cultural neutrality and toward race consciousness. Only then will students/teachers be able to move on to understand other forms of oppression beyond racism. The value of teaching CRT lies in its direct challenge to color blindness. Expand Diversity Requirements and Integrate Critical Theory Throughout Teacher Preparation Programs Currently at my university, teacher candidates are only required to take one class on cultural diversity. Teacher candidates need more than one semester to examine 190 concepts likely to challenge their worldview on issue of race, class, gender, religion, ability, etc. In addition to offering more courses on critical theory, course work should integrate critical literacy and democratic principles program-wide. Teacher preparation programs should model culturally responsive pedagogy to assist candidates to better understand their own culture(s) before proceeding to study cultures that differ from their own. Teacher preparation must demonstrate the centrality of both the teachers’ and students’ cultural backgrounds as a primary consideration for developing meaningful approaches for educating students (Gay, 2000, 2010; Hayes et al., 1991; Ladson-Billings, 1995). Add Second Language Requirement for Teacher Candidates Constructing meaning is the point of writing narratives, to analyze events when they deviate from a canonical pattern (Bruner, 1987). It is precisely our narrative resources, or the cultural plotline from which we draw from that constitute the tools we use to interact in the world. Moving from monoculture to a bicultural or multicultural approach to teaching requires teachers to expand their linguistic skills. By 2020, estimates indicate that half of all public school students will have a home language other than English (Batalova & Fix, 2011). Reality dictates that every teacher candidate needs to have a strong desire to learn a second language and an increased understanding of second language acquisition as a field of study. Courses should cover theory, methods, program models, learners’ stages, and the sociocultural nature of learning languages. Incentives for Districts to Add More Dual Immersion Language Programs The trend to increase dual immersion programs across the Pacific Northwest should be accelerated. Oregon currently has about seventy dual immersion programs 191 across the state and is on the right path seeking to expand its number of dual immersion programs. The empirical research demonstrates benefits from dual language programs for both ELL students and native English speakers; both benefit from the natural language acquisition process of interacting with grade-level peers (Thomas and Collier, 2002; Reyes & Crawford, 2012). The benefits for migrant students and ALL students are increased sense of self and agency, increased cognitive abilities, culturally competent students, and skills needed for the next generation to live in a globalized society. Passage of the Dream Act The students in this study attended school in the United States and have been in the country since they were children. They have now come of age and are “American” in a very real sense. An undocumented legal status has limited future opportunities for Jesus and Chato to attend university and to work legally. Students like Jesus and Chato are needlessly relegated to a path of downward assimilation. Yet Jael’s story suggests when provided the opportunity to attend college, migrant students are highly motivated and flourish. For these reasons I recommend that Congress pass the Dream Act. The DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) was a legislative proposal first introduced in the senate in 2001 by Dick Durbin and Orin Hatch that would alleviate the suffering of migrant students who graduate from high school only to have the door to higher education slammed shut (Dream Act Portal, 2015). Under the Dream Act, qualifying youth would have six years to qualify for citizenship that would require them to complete a college degree or serve for two years in the military. 192 Immediate Expansion of DACA In response to Congress’ inability to address immigration reform, President Obama issued by Executive Order, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and (DAPA) the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents of 2012/2014. The action currently provides a three-year temporary work visa and protection from deportation for those who qualify; it does not grant amnesty to migrants who came into the country as children such as the narrators in this research study. Although it is a small step in the right direction, guidelines to qualify for DACA are stringent and do not go far enough to provide the kind of relief that Jesus and Chato as well as millions of other undocumented migrants desperately need. (See Chapter 2 for guidelines). In the current political climate, with both houses of the US congress controlled by Republicans, my recommendation would be for the Obama Administration to expand DACA to cover more than the limited number of people it currently affects and to make the temporary reprieve from deportation permanent as President Reagan did with IRCA of 1986. (See http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/consideration-deferred-actionchildhood-arrivals-daca). (*As an addendum, during the course of writing this paper, on February 15th, 2015, a federal judge in Texas blocked Obama’s executive orders known as DACA and DAPA. The Department of Homeland Security has indicated it will not process new applicants for these programs. The ruling does not affect applicants who qualified in 2012, while the White House appeals the decision, the fate of the 2014 program remains uncertain at this time.) 193 Future Research Directions When I was in the field I collected nine interviews, transcribed them, and shaped them to narrative form; they will provide an ample future research agenda. Though I only conducted a structural analysis of three in this study, all of the stories have a high level of tellability and deserve to be told. Thus, I will use the remaining narratives for future research. Additionally, the findings from this study shed light on additional research opportunities in the fields of bilingual education, teacher education, and policy studies. Further research should be directed to improve teaching and learning with emergent bilinguals and migrant children. 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New York: HarperCollins. 216 APPENDIX A Consentimiento Informado 217 CONSENTIMIENTO INFORMADO Título del estudio: Escribir el mundo: una investigación sobre la construcción de narrativas Investigador Principal: Dennis Michael Boyer Patrocinador: Boise State, Departamento de Educación Bilingüe Este formulario de consentimiento le dará la información que necesita para entender por qué este estudio de investigación se está haciendo y por qué está invitado a participar. También describirá lo que usted tendrá que hacer para participar, también los riesgos, inconvenientes o molestias que pueda tener durante su participación. Le sugerimos que haga sus preguntas en cualquier momento. Si decide participar, se le pedirá que firme este formulario y será un registro de su acuerdo en participar. Se le dará una copia de este formulario para usted.  PROPÓSITO Y ANTECEDENTES Como instructor de ESL a menudo me he preguntado sobre el significado de la escritura narrativa para los estudiantes que están aprendiendo un nuevo idioma. Este estudio incluirá historias contadas anteriormente, así como otras nuevas que se registrarán en las entrevistas.  PROCEDIMIENTOS Le pediré a usted (el participante) para ver los libros en el aula con anterioridad por escrito por las narrativas de los estudiantes y obras de arte. Voy a pedirle discutir las razones para escribir o dibujar lo que hiciste. Le voy a preguntar que comparta cómo te hizo sentir y si usted cree que es una manera importante de aprender un nuevo idioma y cultura.  Riesgos / Molestias Hay riesgos mínimos asociados con este estudio. Voy a utilizar historias previamente escritas sólo con la bendición del escritor y voy a utilizar un seudónimo para proteger su identidad. Si por alguna razón usted no desea continuar como participante en el estudio o desea que sus historias sean eliminadas del registro, respetaré sus deseos.  MEDIDA DE CONFIDENCIALIDAD Se realizarán esfuerzos razonables para mantener la información personal en su registro de la investigación privada y confidencial. Cualquier información de identificación obtenida en relación con este estudio se mantendrá confidencial y será compartida 218 solamente con su permiso o de lo requerido por la ley. Su nombre no será utilizado en ningún informe o publicaciones que se derivan de esta investigación. Los datos se conservarán durante tres años (según las regulaciones federales) después de que el estudio se complete y luego será destruido.  BENEFICIOS No habrá ningún beneficio directo para usted participar en este estudio. Sin embargo, la información obtenida en esta investigación puede ayudar a profesionales de la educación a comprender mejor lo que los estudiantes aprenden a través de la participación en proyectos de escritura narrativa junto a su maestro.  PAGO No habrá ningún pago a usted como resultado de su participación en este estudio.  PREGUNTAS Si usted tiene alguna pregunta o inquietud acerca de la participación en este estudio, primero debe hablar con el investigador principal Dennis Michael Boyer al (541) 2705529 o Dr. Stan Steiner (208) 426-3962 Si tiene alguna pregunta sobre sus derechos como participante en una investigación, puede comunicarse con la Junta de Revisión Institucional de la Universidad Estatal de Boise (IRB), que se ocupa de la protección de los voluntarios en proyectos de investigación. Usted puede llegar a la oficina entre 08 a.m.-5:00 PM, de lunes a viernes, llamando al (208) 426-5401 o escribiendo a: Institutional Review Board, Office of Research Compliance, Boise State University, 1910 University Dr., Boise, ID 837251138.  PARTICIPACIÓN EN LA INVESTIGACIÓN ES VOLUNTARIA Usted no tiene que participar en este estudio si no quieres. Si usted es voluntario para participar en este estudio, puede retirarse en cualquier momento sin ningún tipo de consecuencias o pérdida de beneficios a los que tiene derecho. DOCUMENTACIÓN DE CONSENTIMIENTO He leído este formulario y decidido que voy a participar en el proyecto descrito anteriormente. Sus objetivos generales, los datos de participación y los posibles riesgos se han explicado satisfactoriamente. Entiendo que puedo retirar en cualquier momento. Nombre impreso del estudio para el participante Firma del participante Fecha 219 Firma de la persona que obtiene el consentimiento Fecha 220 APPENDIX B Informed Consent 221 INFORMED CONSENT Study Title: An inquiry into constructing narratives Principal Investigator: Dennis Michael Boyer Sponsor: Boise State Bilingual Education Department This consent form will give you the information you will need to understand why this research study is being done and why you are being invited to participate. It will also describe what you will need to do to participate as well as any known risks, inconveniences or discomforts that you may have while participating. We encourage you to ask questions at any time. If you decide to participate, you will be asked to sign this form and it will be a record of your agreement to participate. You will be given a copy of this form to keep.  PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND As an ESL instructor I have often wondered about the significance of writing narratives for students learning a new language. This study will involve stories previously told as well as new ones that will be recorded in interviews.  PROCEDURES I will ask you (the participant) to view previously written classroom books of student narratives and artwork. I will ask you to discuss the reasons for writing or drawing what you did. I will ask you to share how this made you feel and if you believe it to be an important way to learn a new language and culture.  RISKS/DISCOMFORTS There are minimal risks associate with this study. I will use previously written stories only with the blessing of the writer and I will use a pseudonym to protect your identity. If for any reason you do not want to continue as a participant in the study or wish to have your stories deleted from the record, I will respect your wishes.  EXTENT OF CONFIDENTIALITY Reasonable efforts will be made to keep the personal information in your research record private and confidential. Any identifiable information obtained in connection with this study will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your permission or as required by law. 222 Your name will not be used in any written reports or publications which result from this research. Data will be kept for three years (per federal regulations) after the study is complete and then destroyed.  BENEFITS There will be no direct benefit to you from participating in this study. However, the information gained from this research may help education professionals better understand what students learn through engaging in narrative writing projects alongside their teacher.  PAYMENT There will be no payment to you as a result of taking part in this study.  QUESTIONS If you have any questions or concerns about participation in this study, you should first talk with the principal investigator: Dennis Michael Boyer at (541) 270-5529 and/or Dr. Stan Steiner (208) 426-3962 If you have questions about your rights as a research participant, you may contact the Boise State University Institutional Review Board (IRB), which is concerned with the protection of volunteers in research projects. You may reach the board office between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday, by calling (208) 426-5401 or by writing: Institutional Review Board, Office of Research Compliance, Boise State University, 1910 University Dr., Boise, ID 83725-1138.  PARTICIPATION IN RESEARCH IS VOLUNTARY You do not have to be in this study if you do not want to. If you volunteer to be in this study, you may withdraw from it at any time without consequences of any kind or loss of benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. DOCUMENTATION OF CONSENT I have read this form and decided that I will participate in the project described above. Its general purposes, the particulars of involvement and possible risks have been explained to my satisfaction. I understand I can withdraw at any time. Printed Name of Study Participant Signature of Study Participant Date 223 Signature of Person Obtaining Consent Date 224 APPENDIX C Narrative: Jesus 225 Jesus I was in third grade when I came to the US; I think I was nine. I didn’t know English but I had a bilingual tutor that sat with me in class and helped me follow what was happening. It took me no longer than half a year and I already knew what everybody was saying. In elementary school I felt welcomed by the other kids and the teachers. My teachers cared about me. This changed once I got to middle school. Throughout my years in elementary and secondary, ESL class is the place I felt like I could go and where I didn’t have to be afraid. This was the only place where I could talk to somebody that I knew was going to understand me. If you were to talk to somebody American, they're not going to understand exactly what you are dealing with as if you were Hispanic. The American teachers would listen but you knew they were not really trying to help you. You know that these teachers are not living what you are living, they are not real. They don’t know anything about what’s going on with you. They just focus on what they are teaching, not what people understand. If somebody goes there and does fucking nothing, they could care less as long as they read the shit right, they think they are teaching but they are not. When I got to middle school, that’s when the bullying got really bad. I was afraid a lot of the time. There were kids that just wanted to punch me for wearing the wrong clothes. I was more focused on getting to the next class you know, or getting back from recess than on paying attention. It's not like I could tell a teacher, “Excuse me sir, can you help me out here cause somebody is bullying me.” What happens is that the kid is going to be suspended maybe for a day or two, then he's going to come right back to me and 226 beat my ass in the locker room. It's nonsense. It's scary you know, it's something you have to go through every day because you have to go to school. You know you have to, how do you tell your mom no, you just hope you don't get bullied- you hope that you don't see the other guy at lunch. You hope. And that is all like a big package- I could have fought 80 times. My focus at school was to steer clear of trouble, to not bring attention to my family, so I didn't bring attention to me. I tried to stay away from trouble at all times, but trouble seemed to find me. If I had a problem I could address the problem in the ESL classroom, people understood me. I felt like ESL class was a comfortable place to express my feelings, a safe place where I could actually learn. That changed when you left. I’m going to tell you about the ESL teacher and the principal we had after you left the high school. The ESL Teacher was always after me; he wouldn’t leave me alone. They were always investigating me. They were focused more on busting people than trying to teach people. This is how they acted towards Mexicans. Through the years, I was pulled from class, and a few fellow students, to have field tests done on us. In one year, I got maybe 5 to 6 field drug tests done to me. A field test is when they grab a pen and wave it in front of your eyes, or they close your eyes and make you hold your head towards the sky and make you count for thirty seconds to see if you delay or you're counting too fast to see if you are under the influence or not, like a roadside sobriety test. It would start by them stating that we have "information" (using hands to make quotes) from various people, including three to four students that would say that you might be under the influence or whatever. But obviously it was because teachers were 227 keeping an eye out. And then if they have lookouts, then it's lookouts. But then, five, five times of the six times that they conducted the field-tests on me, nothing happened. I WAS CLEAN! They held me there for an hour, or so. They actually, a few of those times came back to me, stating that I had used Vizine on my eyes, after they had already looked through my pockets, they were just making up stuff you know. Because they said "my eyes look white now, what's wrong with your eyes, did you put Vizine in them?" I said no, "you already searched me, you already did everything. You know I didn't. Can I go back to class now? Sometimes they would say yes after holding me there for an hour or so interrogating me, trying to get me to rat on other students like always. Trying to see who is... let’s just say they're out to get people. They would ask me about other students, to rat on other people, to tell on others. They would ask me if I I had any more information. They would search through my pockets, my backpack, through my locker. If you were hanging out with somebody before that period, they would also go through his stuff too. And it's "random"(making quotes signs with hands) But you can't tell me that's random. I hang out with a group of Mexicans. For example one time my buddy went to art class, and I went to ESL. They conducted one of these so called random drug searches when dogs come in and search the lockers. Well one day, I’m sitting in class and guess what, here comes the dog into my classroom and same thing with my other partner, and my other friends. But I didn't know yet, I only knew after everything had happened. I was not surprised, I was already expecting this because I know better, I already know. 228 They came in and made us go out, leaving our backpacks there so they can sniff it. Then I went out, I had an orange right, I was eating an orange and as I went out I dumped this orange peel in the garbage and I just went to stand over there with my whole class. After the cops were done searching the classroom, they didn't find anything. Then Mr. Lugosi, the principal came over and started whispering to the cop. He said, “Hey- he threw something in the garbage- go search it.” So here comes the dog, it searches on the garbage can, they empty the whole garbage can out- everything. They didn't find anything. He said, "You did something, you must have done something with it. You shouldn't be throwing stuff out when we are searching for stuff". They wanted me to believe that they just happened to see me throwing something. No, they were on my ass already; they wouldn't leave me alone. Then, since all that stuff had started happening they didn't want me to play soccer. I wouldn’t tell on other people so their harassment intensified. They just started pulling shit out of their ass. "You need to finish this ESL paper, you need to finish this English piece of paper, you need to finish this piece of paper to be able to play, you need to finish this and that." I would finish the work but then they always had another one and another one. You know me; I’ve always been motivated to stay in school because I live for playing soccer. My dream has been to play professional soccer. They said, "If you don't basically work with us, then you are not going to play". Like I said, 5 of 6 times they never caught me or determined me to be under the influence. One time they said, "you must have been smoking a day or two before, how about you just go home." They said, "you look like you are a little bit high or whatever, why don't you just go home." They didn't want to deal with it because they weren't sure. 229 They would say Officer White (the school resource officer) the one who usually does the field sobriety tests, can't come today. So who's doing it? Mr. Lugosi. He's a cop. He's a fucking cop! Who needs a fucking cop in the school when you got a principal like this? Sometimes the cop would conduct the sobriety test and sometimes the principal. And I just went home. But that's all their focus was, busting me. This was the only time my parents were ever notified that I was being pulled out of class and tested all the time. They were notified the one time when I was actually sent home- that's the only time. I didn’t ever tell my parents about them investigating me because it would just worry them. When they sent me back home that one time, they made me sign a piece of paper stating that I was not allowed to come back for so long, I was suspended for suspicion of marijuana. And I wasn't able to come back. I called for weeks but Mr. Lugosi wouldn't return my calls. So I just showed up to school and I told him, "You know I'm trying to come back to school" and he admitted that he couldn't bring me back to school because he needed to follow a paper, rules, a transcript, he needed to follow the rules he made up or whatever. He threw 80 darts and he hit one at the end. By this time you have to say, wow this guy is working for the cops. You know, you already dodged him 80 times; do you have to dodge him 90? That is no way to live. You don't do that. So yea, I never understood why they were doing this to me. After doing sobriety tests on me one time, two times, three times, four times, I was clean, I got sent back to class, no word to my mom, no word to my father. 230 Now when he was doing all this it also kept me off of soccer for about three weeks. After that I was done- not playing anymore. That's why I was trying to come back. I kept pressuring, pressuring him, coming back coming back, coming back. And by that time I was picking up packets every Monday to do at home and then bring it back, come every Monday, take them home, bring them back. And that's when I would say, "When can I come back? You know I'm trying to play soccer." And one time I caught him, I saw him coming into the office while I was returning a package. I said, "When can I come back?" That's when he sat me down and said, "I'm going by this script and I can't break it." Then all of a sudden he says, "Well if you think you're ready to come learn, I'll allow you to." But that didn't include playing soccer or any of that. But then he decided he wasn't going to follow the rules and he brought me back in. How do you have written rules, written laws, then all of a sudden I just come in and we have a verbal talk and now I'm back in school? He had all sorts of powers. One time I was in the locker room with one of my buddies, a white person- I know who it was- happened to walk by. I knew he went into the office and ratted on my buddies, and me for supposedly smoking pot in the locker room. Next period I get called out. He tests me, he does a sobriety test, nothing happens. He tells me that it's because somebody ratted on me. Somebody said I was stinking of, you know whatever. So he was listening to anybody and everybody. If you had something to say about me then he would listen. Then he would go after me. I never had a chance to confront people who were supposedly telling on me. I never felt like I had the power to, never. I was just there to study and they were there to do whatever they wanted to do to me. If they felt they needed to take me out of class to 231 do a sobriety test, and that's the law then that's basically what you're there for. I didn't feel like I could say, "No- or don't you think you need to stop because you already did this 4 or 5 times?" you know. (Participant is fighting back tears.) The second time I was pulled out of class and field-tested I told my parents. They said it was likely because I was hanging around the wrong group. All I was doing was sitting down to eat with Hispanic kids. It doesn't matter how they dress, I don't mind how they dress, but that's the kind of people they thought I was. So when my parents told me that it might be because of the people I was hanging out with, I felt put on the spot. I was just trying to get by. I wasn't trying to get picked on but look it happened. I wasn't trying to sit with Mexicans, but look this is what happens. When I would sit down to eat a bunch of my friends would sit with me. I know it might seem weird, it looks like, blacks there, Mexicans there, whites there, you know. It's just that way. It's not because we are trying to be like ganging up on somebody, it’s just that we feel like all we have is each other because nobody else will understand us. “Don’t Bring Attention to the Family.” My mom was more worried about me just finishing school, not caring about how I did it. She would say, “don't bring attention this way.” It's just something that Mexicans basically go by. You don't bring the wrong attention this way, and if you do, then you deserve what's coming. You know? Basically that's why I went out and starting doing my own thing like starting online classes for half of my junior year...and then all of my senior year. That's when I said, "OK if I'm going to be a fucking glow light walking through school, everybody is going to be staring at me, all the teachers and everybody, then I'm 232 done. So I just started studying by myself. My parents didn’t want me bringing any attention to their immigration status. So I just got the online classes through my probation officer. I guess I should explain how I ended up with a probation officer, a cop. See even all of that is connected, the cop has a brother, and the brother is the one who is in charge of the online school. So they left me with that, and I'm like what the hell? I ended up on probation and kicked out of school One of these times they had pulled me out of class, they said they had a investigation going and that's when I learned that the one doing the investigation was the school resource officer White. That day they told me he couldn’t come to test me because he was injured so they sent another officer. And they tried playing the old, "I used to smoke pot too, and blah blah blah, with my buddies with my surf board every now and then, we used to be your age too, we used to now and again smoke pot..." trying to have me feel familiar like to make me comfortable. I wouldn’t tell them anything. So one day I was coming to school and when I got off the bus there was Mr. Lugosi waiting for me. He took me into the office and he had me sit down for about thirty minutes without him coming in. By that time, I already knew what was going on, that he was trying to get me for some reason. He came in and then he started talking, saying, " I don't know if you've been hearing about it but some kids got caught with weed yesterday and they said it was you who gave it to them. I didn’t know what he was talking about I just didn't say anything. Then he said I was being investigated for it. I said, "investigated for what?" Then he left then came back and said, Officer White was doing the investigation but he's not here, so he's going to bring in somebody else. They brought in somebody else. They started saying that the girl who got busted got caught with thirty 233 dollars of stuff- thirty bucks worth of weed. They got caught with thirty dollars worth of weed, one or two days before. That is what they are using. Some fat fool ratted on her, she and this boy. Officer White and Mr. Lugosi stated that they had me on camera giving something wrapped in a napkin to the girl. And that happened to be the stuff they got caught with. And I said to myself, "No it's not me- I never gave anything to her". They said, "yea- we got you on recording. We are actually going to print the recording on a CD so you can see it." I told them, "I don't want to see it because I know I didn't do it, so I don't want to see it.” They said, " We have been talking to a few people and they all say you are the main guy to go to, you’re the main person that everybody is going to, you're a big player." I told them, “No I didn't make a sell. I have no clue what you are talking about, but whatever you are going to do, just do it. If you say you have footage, then just proceed." And the surfer cop who sometimes smoked with his buddies, he looked at me and he wasn't being nice anymore more, the cops weren't being nice no more. Now they're being serious, now they do not like me. I said, "No, I didn't do it." Then I got arrested; I got my hands put behind my back. The cops said we have evidence, "now we just need you to admit it." They want me to admit to doing it, to say how much it was because "the only person that would know how much it was would be the person selling it." That's what they said. But that's not true, if I got 20 and shared with my buddy, he would know how much I got. At the beginning there was no parents and they were trying to have me admit to it. All that stuff, admit to whatever. Now that I think about it, it was like all of a sudden my mom appeared. I believe my mom appeared and even an ESL teacher, another girl with 234 very yellow hair. She's not an ESL teacher but I think she knows some Spanish. She was translating for the cops when they were looking through my phone. They asked me for permission, they said, "if you don't give me consent of it, it is going to sit here until we have the right to- the OK to". I said, “OK.” Then they searched my laptop too. So I said, "Go ahead, go for it." He searched through the phone, he didn't find anything, he looked through my pictures, didn't find anything, he looked through the contacts, he didn't see anything familiar, or I would guess, he looked through the texts, he didn't see anything. Then he looked through my laptop, he didn't see anything. He said, "Obviously if you sold from here, you must have deleted it right?" And I just didn't say anything. You know he was just trying to make up his own story. He was just trying to have me obey by what he was saying, to just agree with what he was saying. Um, but I wasn't saying anything. “Like obviously I'm just giving you the computer and my phone so we can get this done and over with sir, because I know what I'm doing and I know you don't know shit OK.” So I just give it to him, they give it back and by that time my mom is right next to me. They are trying to let me know about my rights, whatever- if I don't want to talk, I don't have to talk. They've already asked me a few questions, at that point my parents were still not there. And obviously this is after a few times, they had already interrogated me five times before you know without my parents. If I wanted to rat on anybody I could of five times already, and I know if I would have done it, they would have treated me better. I wouldn’t rat on anybody so they made an example out of me. 235 * So by the time my mom's there I told them, " No I don't have a clue about it, I don't know anything you’re talking about." And the cops said, "Yea, we have you recorded. We're going to go get the disk, burn it, we're burning it right now, we're going to show it to you." I said, "No, I don't want to see it, it's not true, I don't want to see it” and I never saw the disk. But as I was being arrested, he searched my pockets, he said, “Alright you have the right to remain silent.” I was done you know. I was in the principal’s office handcuffed with my pockets turned out and my pants undone hanging down under my waste. All that was going through my mind was, “I'm going in, I'm done.” They made me take everything off, my shoes, coat, everything. They made me take it off. And they keep trying to still have me confess. I say, "No I'm done, I'm done, arrest me." My mom is crying. She is crying in the corner because they're just pressuring her you know, she is crying her eyes out telling me, “If you did wrong you need to admit to it, if you did wrong admit to it" Anyway, she's just going and going and going and going. I said, "no, I'm not, I didn't do it." And they arrested me. Then the officer was calling in to juvenile, or they were acting like they were calling in. They were on the phone calling in, the police with the principal. They were making room for me, supposedly. OK- ROOM- they were making room for me. So they call in, then the cop rolls out with the principal to discuss the situation in private. And then they come back and say, "OK- listen, listen, we don't have room right now. It's full. It's full, we don't have room right now, but here listen- I have another contract for you. How about this, if you admit to it, we'll let you go in the custody of your mom." 236 They played me to the end. I said, "Hey arrest me I'm done, that's it.” Once you are arrested, they need to go through, they need to proceed. I'm in handcuffs ready to go, right. Mom is crying right there. They go out, and then they're coming in here, here comes more officers. I'm ready right, and here comes the principal and officer and they said, " OK- here- we don't have room right now, it's full. But we have this, a contract. It's a contract that if you admit to what you just did, you're going to be allowed back to the school and you're going to be in custody of your mom." You can be with your mom for however long your suspended and until you get your community service done. (Or whatever they gave me, well they didn't give me the forty hours yet, but after when you know go to the court) But basically this paper allowed me to come back to school if I wanted to, a get out of jail free card, you know get out of juvenile free and be with mom And by that time my mom said, " Yea! Get it, sign for it" You know. My mom is the one that made the decision. . My last words were, "Take me." My mom, my mom wanted for me to be free you know and she was crying. She said, you know... basically, “Yea, we worked half way, we (with a sudden single clap of his hands) half and half, we met in the middle. But still that's not what I wanted. It was not what was supposed to happen. You know that's not it. Like they try to work with you, but that's not what you want. It's like you have no power. Even when you try to say no, it's a yes! You have to say yes. “And look this is how we are making you say yes.” You know, I said, “no, show me the video, show me the footage if you have any.” They didn’t have any, and they were going to take me out, I was arrested, and then they suddenly said, “there is no room, but we have this deal for you.” They were like, “If you sign this confession you 237 can go with your mom, we'll take these handcuffs off of you, you can go home, you can come back to school, go back to studying and have a normal life.” After I signed in Mr. Lugosi shook my hand. He just shook my hand because he felt accomplished, he felt like he succeeded in something. My mom is an immigrant to this country. She doesn't speak English and is not educated. She has no understanding of the whole American concept of "rights" at all, the whole thing. She is from rural Mexico. There are no rights in Mexico for poor people. We had nobody at all; my mom had no clue what was going on, she was just going along with what was happening. And the other lady that worked for the school was basically taking orders from the officers and that's it. The one with the yellow hair that spoke Spanish wasn't trying to help me or tell me, “Look you probably should wait and not sign this.” From that day I started to work on my online classes. I was trying to set it up, get everything prepared. I called daily but it took me maybe six months, even more before the principal would set up the classes for me. That’s how I ended up with a probation officer. And I had to go meet up with her at a certain date for my court with a parent. I had to sign another contract agreeing to take UAs- drug tests, basically they could call any time they wanted and have me pee. I had to call once a week to check in. I ended up with fifty hours of community service. My probation officer said, “That's what they are trying to do, they are trying to charge you with a felony.” She explained, “they are trying to charge you not only with delivery. You're the manufacturer, the main guy, you’re getting it, you’re a big player, and you’re the main person in the community. And that was it, all in order for me to be 238 charged with a misdemeanor. But this kept me from being able to apply for my papers under Obama’s temporary work visa (DACA). They were trying to have me turn over people, turn informant. They were trying to paint me like this and put me in the big house. They were trying to go further. And my probation officer said, “You're either lying to me or you’re telling the truth, if you’re lying you’re doing a very good job at hiding it.” She had guts, she looked straight into my eyes and she told me, “These people are after you. They think they have you good. ” The harassment at school went on for years but they never did find anything on me. I never finished online school or graduated; I am still one half of a credit short from receiving my high school diploma. Now I am working in landscaping, staining decks, all sorts of things, odd jobs. Making ends meet, mowing lawns. I don’t play soccer anymore. (Jesus 2014.) 239 APPENDIX D Narrative: Jael 240 Jael I just graduated from the University with a Bachelor's in Psychology and Linguistics. I came back home to help the family because I've ben away for a while. I'm working at the community rec. center as a recreational leader, looking for a job probably outside Waldorf County. I've been thinking about going to teach English abroad actually. Japan, Asia... yea, I definitely want to do that. But I'm not sure because I definitly want to stick with the family, so...I'm debating what is going to happen. The family has been good. We have a big family but most of them went/are in Mexico now. So it's just my mom's couple sisters here and my parents, my brothers. My little brother is almost 18. I keep saying he is fifteen...but he's not. He will graduate high school next year. They've been well, just working and stuff. I talk to family in Mexico, at least once a month. My parents definitely talk to my grandparents and uncles and aunts once a month probably even more. We go to Oaxaca to visit every two years, although I haven't been there for three now. I think I'm going to go this year because it's my grandparent's 50th anniversary and I think it's a big thing!I think they're going to have a party and everyone is going to come for a family reunion, so it should be fun. When We Met in ESL Class I think we met probably when I was in middle school, right. You were an ESL teacher and I had you for like fifth or sixth period when I was in sixth grade. I thought it was great to see someone who isn't Mexican understand and feel for the Mexican community and be like, “I want to do something about it, you know.” You were a very nice white guy...for sure. I remember you telling us you were Mexican on the inside and 241 we were like, “yea Mr. B!” We would go to your class. It's kind of blurry but I know that you taught us some in Spanish and we used to read in English as well. We read bilingual stories, a lot of that. It was a fun class. It was just learning from each other I think, and it wasn't structured like the other classes were, there was a little more freedom. As I look back now at the bilingual books we made in you’re class, I see my picture and I think, “Yes! I know her! I’ve gotten so old.” I now remember writing scary stories after reading Juan Savageau's Stories that Must Not Die! You told one too, but I can’t remember what it was called. Writing Stories in ESL Class I remember writing La Matlacihua because it is a well know story everywhere in Mexico. La Matlacihua and La Llorona are very old stories. I think Matlacihua is a Nahuatl word. We were supposed to write a scary story and it is one that is always fun to tell. I remember hearing about it when I was like seven or eight. I remember writing this one cause its from Oaxaca where I'm from. La Matlacihua, a lot of people still talk about it. I remember hearing about this one when I was little and then writing about it in your class because I was thinking about stories. It seems so long ago. As I revisit the books we made together many years ago, I recall another story I wrote too called The Curious Woman. Interestingly enough it involves the eye booger from a dog. It is a scary story from a town nearby where I used to live in Mexico. I feel like I still have this book somewhere, it is very cool. The memories these books bring back, writing these stories bring back a lot, it's intense! It is so crazy because it just makes me realize how much we have all grown. 242 When I think back to when we were in class together, we were so young. Back then I was not ready for what I know now. We were kids, sixth or seventh grade. It is fun to see these books again. And now we're adults, it's definitely difficult now that I've graduated from college to think I have to start acting a little different and what not, so...It is fun seeing this. It brings back memories of school when I didn't know English. I didn't get it. When I Came Here I came here the second time when I was elven in fifth grade and this writing we are discussing I did in sixth or seventh grade. When I first came here I went to Quinault Elementary and it was just my brother and I in a classroom with no other kids that spoke Spanish and there was no bilingual teacher. My uncle worked there, he always helped the younger ones, but he would come in some times to help us. I think we learned English pretty fast because we had to. The first time I came to the United States I was only one year old. We came illegally the first time with my parents and we stayed for five years. It was hard, my parents decided they couldn't work and take care of us at the same time so they took us back to Mexico. They left us there with our grandparents and our aunt. They came back here to work and send money back to the family in Oaxaca. By the time I was eleven my mother had become a resident of the US so she was eventually able to help us get residency but it took awhile with the lawyers and stuff. They established a home and job here and then came back for us. So I came back when I was eleven with papers, a resident of the United States with my brother and my dad. We came because our parents wanted us to be together. They wanted us to come here and 243 learn English to have the American dream. So my dad went and got us in the summer of my fifth grade and we moved here. We would go back and visit from time to time but that was pretty much it. I wasn’t happy about coming here because we were living a comfortable life with pretty good money in Mexico while my parents were working here. I didn't want to come to the US because after my parents came to the US we had a nice house, good money and went to a good school. We were considered, in a small town, rich. So we had a good life and I didn't see why I was supposed to go to the US. My parents were like, “Oh! It’s going to be fun, you get to go to school, and it’s going to be great.” I really wasn't that excited about it. Then when I came here it was difficult. I didn't understand anything. I didn't expect it to be so difficult. The most difficult things about coming here was not understanding the language and not understanding about racism. I think that was the most difficult thing because in Mexico, there might be racism between the native Americans, or the indigenous peoples of Mexico and the people mixed with Spanish but it's not like here, so in your face. When I came to the US and I saw this separation of color where people treated each other differently because of whatever color they were or because of the language they spoke, that was extremely difficult. I became aware of this probably when I was eleven or twelve when I had just arrived here. At stores they would talk to you differently and they would say mean things at school because I'm Mexican. The racism intensified in middle school. When I came in 5th grade it was still elementary school and there wasn't a lot of racial stuff when we were still kind of young. It was before the kids learned to be racist. It was definitely middle school where that started. In elementary they were super sweet and then in middle and high school when 244 puberty kicks in people start terrorizing each other about color, being popular, this and that. Even within the same ethnic group kids were bad to each other, so I can't blame it all on racism. And, at the beginning of high school I remember it being worse than at the end of high school. I think it was because when I came here there wasn't a lot of Mexican kids in school. And the Mexican kids that just came in, they didn't grow up with the Americans, so it was hard for them to be together. But, I know my little brother has grown up with a lot of Americans and with his generation they are like best friends in high school, they all hang out and they're fine. It wasn't like that when I was in high school or middle school because we were some of the first to ones to come into this community I guess in a way, it was rough for my brother and me... and a lot of the Mexican kids that went to school. Reflecting on it now brings a lot of memories of how hard it was. It was kind of painful. Sometimes you didn't know why it was happening, so the only way you could react to it was with hatefulness. I remember I kind of hated the white kids and people. I was like they are so mean, you know. I don't get it. And, then when you get older, its different- still difficult but its like, oh- I get it now. Things Are Changing for the Better Now I understand things differently now. I think a lot has been changing; a lot of people are being more understanding. Being Mexican is more acceptable in this community I think. I haven't heard any racial comments in a long time in this town or just in general where I've been. I think the last time was high school, since high school it's gotten better. 245 I think in school there was definitely a lot of racism to contend with. I know my parents, maybe at work or just random places experienced it too when I was in school. But I think there has been a change. I don't see my parents experiencing as much of that anymore. I haven't in awhile. It has gotten better every since Barak Obama became president. We are friendly people. My mom, any time anyone comes to my house, "Hey you wanna eat some food?" I’ll tell her, “Mom, she just ate food.” We like to eat food. It is also because sometimes we might not get treated right from other people so we might want to make people feel good, you know. Mexican American Identity Like many Mexicans, economic reasons brought my family here. We are from the state of Oaxaca, one of the poorest states in Mexico. My parents told me stories about trying to survive in Mexico; it was really bad. I was born in 1990, so during that time when they got married and had me and then my brother within the next year, they couldn't buy milk or diapers or any of that so during that time they decided to move over here. They said they wanted to come over here so they could send money back- at the beginning. Now, I have lived here at least half of my lifetime, but I still identify myself as Mexican, just like that. Obviously I identify as Hispanic if its on official papers or something like that, but if people ask me, I say I'm Mexican! Or, if someone asks me if I’m Latina, I say, “Well if you want to say that I guess I am also from the Latin I suppose.” I just became a US citizen last summer. I have dual citizenship. I am a citizen of the United States, so I'm an American I suppose, although it is difficult to say I'm an 246 American when I'm obviously Mexican. I guess I did it most because my parents wanted me to become a US citizen, they were like, you know the laws are changing, you should definitely think about it. And I think the US brings a lot of opportunities so why not, it's about time. The Importance of MEChA for Inspiration A big memory in high school was when I was president of the MEChA club; a lot of people really liked me for that. They kind of admired me, especially the young kids. They would come in and be like, “Oh Jael, you are a legend, you have been a MEChA president.” We would go to conferences and raise our own funds. We did a Dia de los Madres event. I remember the food was donated to us. All the community came and I was responsible for doing that. So that is a good thing and a lot of people remember me because of that in high school. In high school MEChA was definitely a big thing to me. MEChA is unity between the people, all kinds of people, their cultures, a commitment to doing service for the community. It was getting together with people and trying to do something positive. In high school I thought of it as a way to make sure the kids were studying, doing their homework. I always told them, if you want to go to the conference, you have to have good grades, and come to the meetings; it was a discipline sort of thing. It was definitely helpful for a lot of kids who stick to it. I saw a light bulb go on for some of the students. I tried to join MEChA at the university but it didn't work out. Another important memory from high school was the Cesar Chavez conference that we attended. What was really cool was later when I was in university I was a leader for that conference. It is awesome when you see how their faces light up and they are 247 like, “Oh we can go to school! You don't just have to quit.” That was fun. I saw it as a way that kids could realize, “hey- I can do higher education beyond high school, maybe I shouldn't drop out.” That's definitely how I thought about it. It helped me keep on track because people were looking up to me back then. It meant something real. It inspired me to stay on this path of education; I think that's why after graduation I felt like I had done all of these things so I couldn’t just quit now. I wanted to go to community college first and then to university. Community college was good, and cheap too; I don't know why more people don't do it. It was especially hard for me between high school and college because my parents didn't believe I was going to make it. I had to beg them a little bit to attend. A couple of months before I graduated people were like, are you going to go to college? I was like, “I don't think so.” Then Tami, who was this beautiful Native American school counselor, was like, “Jael- take your SAT's do this and that.” She was really pushing me. Speaking of Tami I just saw her in Wapiti on the 3rd of July. She was really happy to see me. She was who really pushed me. She said, “You have to do this!” Then I showed my parents how much university costs, $20,000 a year. They were like, “NOOO.” Then I was like, “But we can get a loan, maybe if I get scholarships.” Finally they gave in and said, “Well, try.” I got one scholarship and I had some money through financial aid but I didn't know how to use financial aid. I didn't know how to apply for it, or how much I would get, or how much I had to take out in loans. So, then my parents said no, nobody really believed in me. I decided I would just go to community college and so I did. Then after, I decided to go to 248 Western and they were like, “OK- I think you're serious now.” So they got a loan out for me and I went to Western. Psychology and Linguistics When I got to the university I wasn't sure what I wanted to study. I knew I liked talking to people, being with people, so my advisor said, "study psychology." And so I did. At the beginning I didn't really enjoy it much, but then when you get more in depth in classes, I started to enjoy it. The reasons I studied linguistics was because I always wanted to go teach English abroad. My advisor said make linguistics your minor and you will be able to get a TOEFL certificate that will allow you to teach abroad. I found linguistics to be very difficult because English is already my second language and I didn’t feel like I was strong in English at the beginning of college because I didn't know the rules of English. I still want to teach English abroad. I was involved with the international club after high school. Like I said before, I tried to join MEChA at the university, which is a really good MEChA, but there was some drama that happened at an out of state conference so I decided I didn't want to be part of this MEChA. That’s when I joined the international club and I was the national representative and secretary of the club. I MCed at the 24th annual event, it was really fun. I started to become interested in Asian cultures. Really a lot of it happened when I was in middle school, when I made friends with Yao who was from China. I definitely felt an affinity with Asian cultures. I want to work with international students as well when I come back, if I do go teach English abroad. I want to work as an advisor for international students. I also want to get my Master's for sure, I don't want to pay for it though. I am happy working with kids right 249 now. They are so brutally honest, they will say stuff like, " Jael, you know today you are not at your best." I'm like, “Oh really?” And some days they're like, "you are awesome". On Being Bilingual After going to school I realized that learning both of your languages at the same time is better for a child. And, it works on their confidence too to know that others are interested in my language and I can use my language to learn something new. I was talking recently with some kids from the neighboring community and they said they have classes in both Spanish and in English, a dual immersion program. I thought that was awesome because I hear they cut our bilingual program here in our community and replaced it with a tired old English only model. You know they blame it on budget cuts. But hat can't be all that it is. Now more than ever I want to apply what I’ve learned and be a good influence on people in this community, especially my little cousins. They are going to school now. Before talking with them I had no idea that this English Only thing is happening now. After leaving for college, I guess I'm not current on what they are doing or learning in school. It makes me upset now that they don't learn Spanish anymore, or at least have a couple hours to read in their primary language; it is sad. What is even worse is that parents, many who are undocumented, feel like they can't do anything about it. Regardless, parents should have a voice in the decision. I know from first-hand experience when you don't know the language and all of these regressive changes are happening, you don't know what to do about it. That is what happened with my parents too. Although we were “legal” we still were ignorant to how the school system functions. They were like, “I don't know what this is” and I didn’t either. 250 Advice for Migrant Students and Their Teachers I would like to tell new migrant students to not be afraid. Things are probably going to be very different from what they're used to back home, but they should try not to stress out about it. If they're younger they won't as much but if they were older- I would stress the importance of working to learn English without forgetting their Spanish. It happened to me when I started taking Spanish classes at the university and I was like, “whoa... where does this accent go?” Losing language is so bad. And to teachers: Be understanding. The most important thing you should know is that just because a student doesn't speak English it does not mean that they are not smart- ok. They may be smarter than anybody else but they can't tell you. And, don't dumb them down like “oh, Johnny you can't do it” They can do it; you just have to give them a chance. They are as smart as anyone else. I remember going to school in Mexico and I didn’t feel smart at all. They had the honor roll with three kids' pictures up there, every month they would change their pictures, I never got up there! I wasn't all that smart. But, when I came to the US I was pretty smart- all of a sudden. Not to put the United States system of schooling down or anything, but it's not that great right, just saying. So all of a sudden after I learned English, I think sixth grade, I started to get recognition from my classes that I was doing really well. I said I know I was not smart in Mexico, so what is happening here? I think it was that I didn't know the language and teachers were trying to give me the benefit of the doubt that I might know what is happening. Because she doesn't understand doesn't mean that she doesn't know. 251 APPENDIX E Narrative: Chato 252 Chato When I Came to the US My father came to the US when I was eleven. Then when I was eighteen there was a chance for me to come here. My father went back that year because his dad died and he wanted to at least say goodbye. I think that's the reason why he came back home the last time. Coming here was like an action movie, running around, it was scary, the whole experience. It took us two weeks of walking. Nogales, from Nogales to... I don't really remember the name of the town. That time we were not able to make it here. So that was one of the first times, one of the hardest times of all my experiences. We were turned back the first time when we came here. As we prepared for our trip, there was this guy from another town whose family was talking to us. "OK just please take care of him", I don't remember who he was, but he fainted while we were walking. There was a storm...and we were just walking and walking without even seeing a thing. Then we hear this "boom!" it was one of the guys that couldn't continue walking any more. Actually that day we went through like two weeks straight where we were walking and we were resting for an hour or two hours at a time. So for two weeks straight we walked, the heat was incredible. When we started we were like “OK- we can do this.” But the people who were supposedly in the town to pick us up, didn't show up. By then we didn't have any food, we didn't have any water, everyone was desperate. We waited and the people still didn't come. And that was the whole thing, we were trying to look for some water, there was no water. Luckily for us, that night it rained. That night it also snowed. So it went from intense heat to the point of 253 snowing, I was like whoa! You're not supposed to let people notice you down there but we had to make a campfire because we couldn't stand the whole situation like that, it was pretty severe. Still the people, they didn't come. And once they did come, they only had space for, like thirty people. My Dad went ahead, but we stayed back with the others. The migra didn't show up at that time, and it was strange because after that we were looking for a migra. After the situation with this fainting person, we were like- “OK we can't just leave this person to die. We gotta do something about it.” After the guy started passing out we started trying to find a highway so people would be able to notice us. We had to walk for at least three hours for border patrol to stop and pick us up. We got on the highway and started walking towards the direction. We knew where the border patrol had to go, they travel back and forth back and forth. So that was the only option for us to have some help for that person. Once they stopped, they put us in the pen. They fingerprinted us and processed us. They kept us in a cage in the desert, the size of, like ten or twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide. You have 100 people there. I don't know if you have seen chickens that are in cages, like that there. We were kept like that for a couple of days. Then we were cuffed and shackled while being transported by bus. Every time immigration arrests you they do that, hands and feet. Once I was taken across the border my thinking immediately returned to coming here, it is always focused on coming here. I had to come back...I forgot to tell you... The van that came to pick us up came. But I came with two relatives, and me and my dad; we were four of us plus the other person. We were not related to this other guy but we were sort of like responsible for him 254 in a way. So my dad was the only one who made it and came the first time. I knew he was here or on his way here to the Pacific Northwest already. So I couldn’t just go back; I'm already here, I have to move forward. My other two relatives they were like, thinking about it and decided, “no I don't like this we should just go.” So we decided to go back and rest because after like two weeks, our feet were bleeding from walking, walking, and walking. We made a new plan, “OK, we'll try for the next one.” The coyote said,” you guys need to rest otherwise you guys are not going to make it if you are going to go again for two weeks without food. We were in pretty rough shape, the last four days we couldn't find any food. We had to go close to a ranch where there was this puddle that was muddy, dirty, probably. It had cow poop in there. But we had to drink water from it. Back in those days the security on the border was increasing. It was 2005, there was a big increase around those years. I didn't know the extent of it until recently, I've been reading about it. But I remember we had to go and walk longer distances to avoid getting close to security. On my next attempt trying to cross I made it. This was the wild one, that's when it seemed like a movie because we were chased by a helicopter. We were running in a little, mini truck with thirty people on it being chased by a helicopter. We were just trying to escape and at some point we had to drop the pick up truck and everyone started spreading around, that was the plan, to never get in to a group or a bunch of people, everyone had to go on their own. That was the scary part because if you get lost, you are on your own and there is like nothing there. 255 So, that happened too the last time after we were picked up we were chased by the helicopter. And I don't know how we got out of there; I don't remember that part. But we made it. It was scary. There we were, this very large family, on this bumpy road in the desert, being chased by a helicopter. A month later I started at the high school where we met in the ESL class. Being Deported I had been living here in Washington County for three years before I got deported. I’ve been deported twice. The first time I was put in jail because I got in a fight. This is the part that I went through that made me change my ways. There is a reason why migrant people get in trouble so easily because, for one, our way of seeing police is so different, completely different from how people see police here. They are going to help you if there is a situation. You could get help from the police. But, back in Mexico that's not the case. Our experience, my personal experience is that you are always going to get into trouble eventually if you have an encounter with the police. We stay away from them. You just don't feel like you can rely on police at all. Anyway it was 2006 I think. I got in a fistfight; it was outside of school. Someone reported it. There was somebody bothering me. It was all because of a girl. We got into a fight three times and most of the times I defended myself, and it was fine. Two times, I defended myself and he got hurt. The third time, it was not a fight but we got into a confrontation, pushing. He ran straight to the police and reported that. From there I got arrested- “assault 4.” Back in those days there was a thing called Secure Communities that was starting to be implemented, but at that time there was still no active connection between local police and immigration. So, I was arrested, had to pay bail and went 256 through all the process you go through when you get into the system with whatever charge. I had to take anger management class and I though that was the end of it. I did all that I could to avoid getting in trouble again. I paid all my fines; I did all that I had to do and wanted to move on. I got in trouble again for a DUI and it is a funny one too. So I got arrested twice in one year. On my birthday I was literally covered in alcohol. I was down at the bar. My friends were like, “oh it's your birthday!” This is the way you celebrate birthdays with us, they cover you in alcohol; I was covered in drinks. Earlier that day I had decided I didn't want to drink I just wanted to go out with my friends to have dinner. They were like “hey do you want to drink?” I told them no because I was going to go camping later with this family that kind of adopted me when I got here. So I had plans to go camping with them, they were waiting for me. We went to the bar and were celebrating and I probably had a couple of drinks but more importantly, my friends covered me in alcohol. That's the reason they got kicked out because that is not allowed in the bar. They got kicked out of the bar; they couldn’t come back- they were banned for the night from the bar. I was concerned for my friends, they came to celebrate with me and they got kicked out of the bar. Yet, I had planned this whole trip, I had my backpack and all my gear in my car. The car was parked inside the parking lot of the bar so I couldn't leave it there because we were going to be away for a few days. So this is what I did, I called a cab, we were done with the bar and I was going to be on my way to the place where we were going camping. I called a cab. But first, the cab that picked me up from the bar, took me to see my friends that got kicked out of the bar. I went to check on them, and they were fine. Then I came back to my car to grab my backpack. I decided to 257 just pull my car out from the parking lot, just outside on the street. As soon as I did that, I pulled up, parked my car, turned it off. I don't know if someone called the police on me or what. But here came a policeman just walking. My car was already parked. The lights were off but I was still in the car. I got pulled out of the car, asked for identification, all that stuff as I smelled like alcohol- terrible. I got tested for sobriety. I'm so nervous at that time I'm shaking. From playing soccer the day before, I had twisted my ankle. I was shaking I don't know why, so I didn't pass the test, they took me to jail. "I'm just going to book you in for five minutes" and that's all they did. They took me in, and in five minutes I would have bailed out. But, since I had a previous deportation and they already had all my information, they didn't need anything else to hold me. Once they have that, it is automatic that you are going to stay there. They said if someone picks you up in five minutes you can go. Five minutes later they're like, “I'm sorry you can't.” I was in the county jail for a few days. I was flagged for being deported before, so that’s what they do, just hold me there automatically. So from there, I get deported again. By then, my girlfriend was pregnant that is why I had to come back. That's the reason I came back the last time. We were talking and that's when I found out she was pregnant. That was what made me come back. And, another thing, I knew since I had all that stuff I had to come back at some point again. When you get deported you get all of these charges, that's one of the reasons why you have to come back right away. It's because once you get those charges and get deported, there is no one to respond to those charges, then you get in even more trouble because you didn't show up for a hearing, you didn't show up for all 258 that stuff and all that accumulates and builds up to a point where you have arrest warrants because you didn't show up to court and all these things, and it keeps going. I knew I was going to come back because of my girlfriend being pregnant, so I would have to be on top of that or otherwise I would be in a big trouble just here locally and I would be like deported again because of those reasons. So I hired a lawyer to represent me because I wasn't going to be able to show for the first hearing. Because once you don't show up for the first one, you get a warrant. Then for whatever reason if the police officer ever stops you for anything, once you have a warrant, you get arrested and deported again. At least that was the case back in those days. I've been reading that for minor traffic offenses you can get deported, but it's supposedly not suppose to be like that. My lawyer said, since you have all of this record, it's better to leave it alone and stay away from the whole judicial system. Because once I tried to fight some of the charges, they would notice that I have deportations and all, so I would lose either way. It's better that I leave it at that, that's what my lawyer said. “Leave it at that, try to pay all the fines and stuff.” And that's what I did and I’ve tried to stay away from it. I’ve always known that I had to do everything I could to be as clean as possible, because once you are in the system, you are in the system. I have a family now, two daughters, 4 and 3 years old. It's stressful when I start thinking about the possible futures, if I have to face...legally speaking. Right now I'm in the process of buying a house, not directly but through my girlfriend. But I will be the one who is paying for the house, yet legally I cannot buy a house because of my immigration status. It's pretty stressful because if it was me I would be able to do it, but 259 because it will be in her name, and she has a lower income, she does have good credit, I can't build credit, I guess. All that stuff is pretty stressful, all the legalities like not having a driver's license...everything related to paperwork. At this point, unless the laws change, I can't get any change in my status at all. For many years, that has been the most stressful thing in my life. In the case, for any reason, I happen to just get stopped by officers and I get arrested, everything goes...all my life, not just my life, but all my family's life is like BAM! My work is here; my children depend on me here. 260 APPENDIX F IRB Approval 261 Date: June 03, 2014 To: Dennis Boyer From: Subject: cc: Stan Steiner Social & Behavioral Insitutional Review Board (SB‐IRB) c/o Office of Research Compliance (ORC) SB‐IRB Notification of Approval ‐ Original ‐ 107‐SB14‐086 Writing the World: Narrative Writing as Culturally Responsive Pedagogy The Boise State University IRB has approved your protocol submission. Your protocol is in compliance with this institution’s Federal Wide Assurance (#0000097) and the DHHS Regulations for the Protection of Human Subjects (45 CFR 46). Protocol Number: 107‐SB14‐086 Expires: 6/2/2015 Received: Approved: 5/28/2014 6/3/2014 Review: Expedited Category: 6, 7 Your approved protocol is effective until 6/2/2015. To remain open, your protocol must be renewed on an annual basis and cannot be renewed beyond 6/2/2017. For the activities to continue beyond 6/2/2017, a new protocol application must be submitted. ORC will notify you of the protocol's upcoming expiration roughly 30 days prior to 6/2/2015. You, as the PI, have the primary responsibility to ensure any forms are submitted in a timely manner for the approved activities to continue. If the protocol is not renewed before 6/2/2015, the protocol will be closed. If you wish to continue the activities after the protocol is closed, you must submit a new protocol application for SB‐IRB review and approval. You must notify the SB‐IRB of any additions or changes to your approved protocol using a Modification Form. The SB‐IRB must review and approve the modifications before they can begin. When your activities are complete or discontinued, please submit a Final Report. An executive summary or other documents with the results of the research may be included. All forms are available on the ORC website at http://goo.gl/D2FYTV Please direct any questions or concerns to ORC at 426‐5401 or humansubjects@boisestate.edu. Thank you and good luck with your research. Dr. Mary Pritchard Chair Boise State University Social & Behavioral Insitutional Review Board