Reconceptualizing Education for Newcomer Students

Countless reforms and interventions have sought to improve academic outcomes for immigrant-origin students, with labels like “at-risk” rushing forth to solve the “dropout crisis.” And yet, even in culturally and linguistically affirmative environments, youth still fall to the margins. Using research from a newcomer school located in New York City, the author explores the everyday lives of nine immigrant students outside of school, showing that youth are not simply waiting for school reforms. Their educational lives are not bound to institutional spaces or the logics of schooling. Instead, youth routinely take up educational practices that are intellectually rigorous, joyous, resilient, and fulfilling. These practices reveal educations that are not held to a single place or purpose. Instead, they are present in schools, on subways, at museums, in neighborhoods, across many other places, and always on the move. Using a historical and ethnographic lens, this book challenges researchers and educators to consider how education might be reconceptualized to better respond to marginalization and exclusion and, in the process, provoke new understandings of education itself.

Book Features:

• Listens to the stories, histories, and philosophies of immigrant youth as they explore the realities and possibilities of education.
• Examines undocumented educations--practices that fall outside of schools or appear only in marginalized, liminal ways.
• Explores education in everyday life, moving outward from the classroom, to hallways, beyond the school doors, and finally beyond the very logics of schooling.
• Includes vignettes of student participants, interviews with teachers and administrators, and analysis of school policies and curricular documents.
• Sparks different ways for researchers, educators, and activists to think and study with recently immigrated youth.

Jordan Corson is an assistant professor of education at Stockton University, Galloway, NJ.

“In this timely book, Corson argues that immigrant youth enact meaningful educational practices in informal, unstructured places over transitory space and time. This learning is both pragmatic and liberatory, allowing immigrant youth to learn and apply new skills while imagining future possibilities.”

—Anthropology and Education Quarterly

“Jordan Corson expertly weaves together history, philosophy, and research to examine the education of immigrant-origin youth. His stance is one of unraveling, de-bordering, and reconceptualizing. He does not come with answers, but rather questions and dreams of what can be when we let go of what is.”
—Tatyana Kleyn, professor, The City College of New York and CUNY—Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY-IIE)

“Corson’s ethnographic inquiry pushes the boundaries of educational research by inviting both the ethnographic ‘subjects’ as well as the reader into a space of radical (re)imagination of immigration, education, and schooling.”
—Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales, associate professor, University of San Francisco

“Jordan Corson’s new book is an educator’s dream. Through humanizing portraits of newcomer students in the United States, he shows evidence of possibilities for schools. This book is inspiring, powerful, and hopeful, and it honors immigrant students’ stories while proposing a reframing of what schools could be. Teachers, students, parents, and anyone in the field of immigrant education will benefit from this book.”
—Gabrielle Oliveira, Jorge Paulo Lemann Associate Professor of Education and of Brazil Studies, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Contents

Acknowledgments  ix

Prologue: Scenes of Education  xi

Introduction  1
This Book’s Questions, Themes, and Terms  2
Guiding Theories: Unconditional, Uncategorizable, and Imaginative Educations  10
Participants in This Book  12
Notes on Entangled Methodologies and Positionality  15
Organization of the Book  18
Conclusion  20

1.  Questioning Marginalization and Schooling  21
A Very Brief Overview of Margins and Schooling Immigrant-Origin Youth  23
Marginalization and an Ethnographic Present  25
Conclusion  28

2.  A History of Immigrant-Origin Students in the U.S. Education System  31
Early History of “Americanization” for Immigrant Youth  34
Systems in the Gap  37
The Rise of Bilingual Education and the History of Newcomer Schools  39
Looking Toward Other Educational Worlds  48
Conclusion: Challenging the One Best System  50

3.  The Birth of the Newcomer as an Educable Subject  53
Schools Reckon With and Respond to “New” Immigration  56
Discourses of Newcomer Educability  59
Educating Desirable Newcomers  60
Conclusion  67

4.  Surviving, Succeeding, and Making Do at WISH Academy for Newcomer Youth  71
Tracing the History of WISH in New York City’s 21st-Century Neoliberal Context  72
Making WISH  74
WISH’s Curriculum  75
Survive and Advance: The Evolutions of WISH  76
WISH vs. Everybody  84
The Cost of Public School  87
Conclusion  90

5.  Educations in Place and on the Move  93
Newcomer Youth Participants  96
Education and Space/Place  101
Entangled and Moving Educational Practices  115
Borderless Constellations of Learning  122
Conclusion  126

6.  Undocumented Educations  129
A Reflection on Authoring and Documenting  131
Legitimate Education Is Something to Access  132
The Supplement of Out-of-School Time  135
Education, Equality, and Opportunity  137
Subjugated vs. Undocumented Education  142
Culturally Relevant Teaching to Demands of Schooling  143
Conclusion  144

7.  New Possibilities and Conceptions of Education  147
Wildness and Education  149
Potential of Everyday Educational Practices  152
Daydreams of Newcomer Students  158
Daydreams as Educational Acts for Newcomer Youth  160
Daydreaming Impractical Educations  162
Conclusion  164

Epilogue  167
Introducing a School of Otherwise  168
The School of Otherwise: A School Made for Being and Thinking Otherwise  168
Conclusion  172

Endnotes  175

References  177

Index  193

About the Author  199