Publication Date: September 22, 2023
Pages: 224
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:
Jordan Corson is an assistant professor of education at Stockton University, Galloway, NJ.
“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
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