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Long Trip 2018 Photo 3
No full texthttps://educate.bankstreet.edu/longtrip-2018-images/1002/thumbnail.jp
Micheline Thomas, Interviewed by Brett Dion
No full textPast Bank Street Archivist Brett Dion interviews Micheline Thomas, who joined the Bank Street library staff in 1985. Topics include changes in Bank Street throughout her time working at the library, and reflections on how the school impacted her.https://educate.bankstreet.edu/oralhistories/1003/thumbnail.jp
Long Trip 2018 Photo 2
No full texthttps://educate.bankstreet.edu/longtrip-2018-images/1001/thumbnail.jp
Over the Hills and Far Away: Inviting and Holding Traumatic Stories in School
Get PDFThousands of young immigrant children enter school each year, bringing their immigration stories with them. They enrich the communities that receive them, bringing hope and new perspectives, new languages, and experiences of other worlds to share with peers. Sometimes their stories include experiences of loss and trauma in their lives prior to entering school. Studies estimate that more than 51% of immigrant families have experienced at least one traumatic event or loss, and at least 15% of immigrant parents and children present with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Aragona, Pucci, Mazzetti, Maisano, & Geraci, 2013). These traumatic histories can include difficult events and/or losses that occurred in children’s countries of origin, during immigration journeys, or as part of the acculturation process, when poverty and regressive immigration policies often exacerbate existing vulnerabilities (Aragona, et al., 2013). Refugee children and families have an even higher incidence of traumatic history, with PTSD rates up to 75% (Rousseau, Measham, & Nadeau, 2013). Societal obstacles such as social and emotional isolation have been a common experience for immigrant families, who may have limited social networks, which increases their risk for depression and poor adjustment.
Young children who come to school with traumatic immigration histories may experience barriers to learning that may not be readily visible to their teachers. Children may be preoccupied, experience fight-or-flight reactivity to social challenges, or be hyperalert to the externals of the environment, causing them to be distracted from the school’s academic readiness agenda (Holmes, Levy, Smith, Pinne, & Neese, 2015). In addition, difficult behavior resulting from trauma triggers may distract teachers from the underlying issues that fuel some children’s outbursts and disruptions. Frequently, teachers and other school support staff react in frustration to children’s difficult-to-manage behavior and then seek to remove the children from the classroom and/or school settings. Those children then find themselves further isolated and stressed.
This paper features an innovative school-based approach employed by the Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice (ERP) at Bank Street with groups of young children who have a traumatic history. In the cases documented here, the children had traumatic immigration stories and had experienced trauma and loss as a part of their immigration history. The purpose of the ERP approach is to have foundations of child development as well as an understanding and appreciation of how children’s life experiences inform classroom interactions. ERP tries to uncover the root of children’s behavior and its connection to traumatic histories so that underlying issues of trauma can be addressed instead of ignored or dismissed
Building Bridges, Not Walls, Between Latinx Immigrant Parents and Schools
Get PDFAs a teacher educator and former bilingual teacher, I have encountered many teachers who have negative misconceptions about immigrant parents. These misconceptions prevent teachers from forming reciprocal and meaningful relationships with parents and even with children (Colegrove, forthcoming). Negative misconceptions impact teachers’ abilities to be equitable as well as their willingness to offer high-quality learning experiences to children (Adair, 2015; Crosnoe, 2006) or to include parents in meaningful, educational decision-making (Doucet, 2011, 2008).
This essay addresses some of these misconceptions as they were articulated during a large video-cued ethnographic study of Latinx immigrant parents of young children in Texas and California. As part of the larger Agency and Young Children study (Tobin, Arzubiaga, & Adair, 2013), Dr. Jennifer Keys Adair and I interviewed 116 Latinx immigrant parents. I focused specifically on 55 Latinx immigrant parents who were from México, Perú, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Chile. I conducted group or individual interviews with all the parents after they watched a twenty-minute film about a first-grade classroom comprised mainly of children of Latinx immigrants. Parents were asked to respond to the practices in the film. The majority of the parents wanted to talk about their frustration about not being taken seriously by schools and teachers.
The essays looks at the parents’ reactions to the film and their understanding of the negative misconceptions of themselves and other Latinx parents. It then offers some strategies for teachers to overcome these misconceptions and to work with Latinx parents to create reciprocal and meaningful relationships between them and schools
Conceptualizing the Problems and Possibilities of Interprofessional Collaboration in Schools
No full textRecent educational programs and initiatives hinge on effective collaboration between education professionals, such as school social workers, school psychologists, teachers, and principals. The authors seek to build on prior conceptual work to explore the range of collaborative practices school social workers engage in with other school professionals. Drawing on conceptual frameworks related to interprofessional and other collaborative work in schools, the authors examined how school social workers (N=39) report collaborating with other professionals based on a hypothetical case designed to elicit collaborative practices. To triangulate the findings, the authors also draw on responses by 14 teachers, five school psychologists, and four principals. The authors identified five modes of collaboration: initiator/coordinator, assessor, intervener, whistleblower, and collaborator. The article concludes with a discussion o the implications for theory and practice.https://educate.bankstreet.edu/faculty-staff/1033/thumbnail.jp
Fostering Democratic Patriotism through Critical Pedagogy
Get PDFWhen I was a high school US history teacher in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, I sometimes wondered about the relationship between patriotism and critique of one’s nation. Specifically, I questioned just how critical students could be without becoming disaffected toward the United States. I tried to be honest with my students about the nation’s mixed record of democracy—how the country was founded on ideals of equality and yet stole land from Native Americans, kidnapped millions of Africans as part of a massive system of chattel slavery, and denied the vote to women until 1920. But I wondered if these realities, paired with enduring inequalities, would make students want to dissociate themselves from this country and participation in political life.
I had one student who made me think that perhaps the inverse was true: that the more students understood American failures to promote equality, the more motivated they would be to engage in fighting for it. He was the son of Nigerian immigrants. In ninth grade, he threw ketchup packets at his global history teacher, skipped class, and was regularly suspended. But in 11th grade English class, he read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and became a different student, seemingly overnight. He adopted a serious demeanor, wore a tie to school each day, and became a leader in class discussions. In reading about the injustices that drove Malcolm X to lead a movement for Black civil rights, this student saw a reason not for despair but for pursuing education so that he too could contribute to that movement. From that moment on, I wondered whether it was in fact impossible for schools to develop the type of citizens needed to protect and improve our democracy unless students were taught to be critical of the nation’s flaws
Patriotism, Race, and the Militarization of Citizenship
Get PDFThe visual essay emerges from 2.5 years of ethnographic and arts-based research on the politics of race, citizenship, and military recruiting among Latinx youth in Texas. The essay juxtaposes two examples of how the military intersects with racialized constructions of a patriotic citizen: 1) the case of Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem at NFL football games, and 2) the role of military-run Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs in teaching citizenship. Through the two cases, the essay challenges readers—and educators—to attend to how patriotism is linked to both white supremacy and militarization within the United States
Loving America With Open Eyes: A Student-Driven Study of U.S. Rights in the Age of Trump
Get PDFIn the wake of Donald Trump’s election, the students of my 4th grade classroom in a public school in East Harlem had lots of questions about our country. Over and over they wondered: What is a right? How can we protect ourselves when we disagree with the government? This paper stories the year-long study of rights in the United States that grew out of these questions and the learning that came out of this curriculum, as well as works to define what patriotism means to me as an educator and a citizen
A New Approach to Mindfulness with Teachers
Get PDFThis thesis explores the topic of implementing mindfulness programs with teachers in school settings. It begins by exploring the history of how mindfulness has been implemented with students as well as with teachers, revealing the problematic nature of the “mindfulness fad” that has entered into public schools across the country in the past ten years. It also analyzes more recent programs that have begun implementing mindfulness in schools in more productive and responsible ways. The paper then gives a narrative account of a non-traditional mindfulness group that offers an alternative method for training teachers in mindfulness. The group facilitator conducted the group using a Motivational Interviewing (MI) framework as well as a therapeutic groups framework, and tracked participant growth by using the Trans Theoretic Model (TTM), colloquially known as the “stages of change.” At the conclusion of the group, the majority of group members made notable progress towards integrating mindfulness into the fabric of their lives, showing that the method used was efficacious