“I am not Your English Teacher”: Leadership for Addressing Xenophobia and Racism in the Wake of Demographic Change

Abstract

This case asks educational leadership students to consider how immigrant students new to a quickly changing community may interpret subtle messaging of unbelonging and overt xenophobic hostility. Despite her best intentions, the principal in this case struggles to connect with the Latinx students and families who were recent arrivals to the community and school. The authors ask future school leaders to consider how to make a school environment more inclusive for immigrant students and other students who may be marginalized for their differences.

Introduction

Immigrants and their U.S.-born children make up more than a quarter of the U.S. population and immigrant-origin youth make up 26% of the children under age 18 in the United States. This is up from 13% in 1990 (Esterline & Batalova, 2022). The Pew Research Center projects that the immigrant-origin share of the population will rise to about 36% by 2065 (Lopez et al., 2015). The number of immigrant and refugee families settling in the United States has increased significantly in past decades, often in states that have not traditionally been destinations for immigrants. Some new immigrant destinations have seen increases of more than 300% in their immigrant populations (Capps & Soto, 2016). This case examines how leaders in one new Latinx immigrant destination district grapple with demographic change in an increasingly divided and adverse political environment.

School leaders are responsible for helping all students feel a sense of belonging in a school community, a directive that is complicated by differences in race, culture, and language (Khalifa, 2018). Feeling a sense of belonging can be understood as layers of interaction, experience, and environment from the micro to the macro level (Brezicha, 2018). Politics of intersectional identity impact each level of interaction. Because of this, we use two theoretical orientations to highlight key issues in this case narrative. First, we use nested context of reception to orient the school leader and school within a broader social context. Second, we examine how racialized identities and language difference impact the experiences of immigrant-origin youth and English learners (ELs) in U.S. schools using raciolinguistic perspectives.

Nested context of reception theory (NCOR) asserts that an individual’s ability to settle in a new society is based on multiple factors at every level of governance and interaction. It can be visualized as a set of concentric circles in which an individual’s environment and daily life are at the middle, encircled by community, public institutions, and governmental policy. NCOR provides a lens for understanding how interpersonal interactions, institutional culture, and national policy influence students’ experiences of belonging (Golash-Boza & Valdez, 2018; Hopkins et al., 2019). Belonging is a complex human experience and a key factor impacting immigrant youths’ well-being, identity development, and agency. Immigrant families are often subjected to a new and unfamiliar racial order in the United States resulting in feelings of exclusion and isolation (Ee & Gándara, 2020; Urzúa et al., 2016).

A raciolinguistic ideology theorizes the co-naturalization of language and race over time and provides a lens for understanding the racialized experiences of immigrant youth (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017). Immigrant youth often feel unwelcome in school communities when they are racialized because of their skin color, religion, linguistic diversity, and perceived misuse of standarlized American English (Abu El-Haj & Bonet, 2011; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rodriguez, 2020; Teranishi, 2002). Since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, most immigrants to the United States do not identify as white. In addition, having a documentation status different from a U.S. citizen, and living within an immigrant community can further distance non-white immigrants from the benefits and privileges of whiteness (Lee et al., 2017; Mwangi & English, 2017; Rodriguez, 2020). Immigrant-origin youth are often treated by schools as perpetual foreigners and have their multidimensional identities compressed into a single categorization of EL. In sum, NCOR with a raciolinguistic perspective helps students of school leadership focus in on the complexity of welcoming immigrant youth and providing them with equitable opportunities to learn in a racialized society.

This case draws on student narratives of their school environments and the actions of school leaders that signal to immigrant students about their place in the school and community. The case is written from the perspective of two focal characters: Ms. Ball, a high school principal, and Manolo, a high school student, but draws on data from two in-depth qualitative studies of immigrant-serving schools, one in a new immigrant destination and the other in a traditional immigrant enclave. Ms. Ball, a middle-class white woman, shares a gender identity and racioethnic background similar to 80% of educators in the United States (Ingersoll et al., 2021). In this narrative, Manolo is a recent immigrant to the United States and is considered Latinx in the U.S. racioethnic hierarchy. In the U.S. immigrant-origin youth make up 26% of all children below 18, and is also learning English like one million other high school students in the United States (Sugarman, 2021)

The case chronicles both the subtle and symbolic ways in which educators in the case school signaled to immigrant students that they were unwelcome and overt actions that made students feel targeted because of their skin color and/or the way they spoke English. All the experiences described in the case are based on actual events recalled in student interviews. Quotations in the case were taken directly from interview transcripts to honor the voices and speech patterns of student participants.

Setting: Lewis High School

Lewis High School (LHS) is the only high school in the small suburban community of Lewis in the Northeast United States. Like many suburban areas of the country, Lewis is changing rapidly and is considered a new immigrant destination because between 2000 and 2010, the number of immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America who moved to Lewis increased by 37%. The Lewis Area School District experienced an almost 900% increase in Latinx students. As with other new immigrant destinations, some community leaders reacted with uncertainty and fear toward their new immigrant constituents (Brezicha & Hopkins, 2016; Massey, 2008). Tensions escalated as white residents blamed immigrants for increasing crime and straining social services. The Mayor and City Council, in support of white residents, passed harsh anti-immigration ordinances that criminalized renting to and hiring undocumented immigrants. These new laws made Latinx residents feel unsafe. One community member argued that laws fueled suspicion of any person “who looked Hispanic” or had an “accent,” making many immigrants feel like they did not belong in the community.

The student population of LHS reflected the changes in the school community, both in the physical space and student enrollment. Located on a sprawling campus, LHS includes a large main building built in the 1920s, a smaller building that houses the ninth graders and vocational programs, and a large sports complex with a football field and track. In recent years, the district has added several temporary trailers reflecting the rapid growth of its student population. Housing almost 3,500 students, the school serves as a community hub, and its dynamic student body reflects the community’s changing demographics.

Indeed, more than two thirds of LHS students qualify for free or reduced lunch. The school employed approximately 200 teachers, 56% of whom were absent for 10 or more days, and only 8 counselors ¹ . Within LHS, Latinx students account for almost 51% of the student body. While accounting for half of the population, approximately 75% of Latinx students scored basic or below basic in math and science, and 60% of the students scored basic or below basic in English Language Arts. Latinx students represented 25% of students in Calculus, Chemistry, AP Math, and AP Science. Latinx students represented 37% of the students taking the SATs or ACTs (Office of Civil Rights, 2021). Although Latina/o students were underrepresented in advanced coursework, they represented almost 60% of the expulsions in 2017 and 40% and 45% of the out-of-school and in-school suspensions, respectively (Office of Civil Rights, 2021). The data show the lack of representation of Latinx students in many of the advanced placement and college preparatory courses, while also showing their overrepresentation within suspension categories, pointing to disproportionate disciplinary action taken toward Latinx students at LHS.

In 2017, almost 22% of LHS’s students were classified as EL, with 98% of these students classified as “Hispanic.” No EL students were enrolled in the gifted and talented program, and only 16 % of students in Advanced Placement courses were EL students (Office of Civil Rights, 2021). These statistics provide an overview of the linguistic/racialized context found in Lewis, pointing to the low number of EL students at LHS who were being prepared to enroll in colleges and universities.

Despite the rapid change in student demographics, the superintendent and school board of the Lewis School District remained silent on the issue. Any mentions of the demographic changes were often in vague and coded language, such as during one school board meeting when a school board member blamed the “families that have fifteen (15) kids from one house” for overcrowding. This off-handed comment reflected the negative stereotypes present in the community about racially marginalized immigrant families. The state’s Department of Education also remained largely silent on how to support immigrant students. Most of the information coming from the state focuses on guidance on how to meet the federal mandates and reporting guidelines (Brezicha, 2022). This has left LHS’s new principal, Ms. Ball, with very little guidance as she seeks to support the growing immigrant population.

Case Narrative

Ms. Ball has been the principal at LHS for 2 years. When she was hired, the superintendent told her that the district had become more “urban” since he had been a principal at the high school. Ms. Ball understood this coded language to reference the increasingly non-white population at the school. She believes she was hired because she had previously been a principal at a Title I school in an urban center where she was able to increase test scores over a short period of time. Soon into her tenure, she began picking up on the subtle and not-so-subtle xenophobic and racialized language used by many veteran white teachers, many of whom had grown up in Lewis and attended LHS themselves. In her first year as principal, Ms. Ball sought to better understand racial and ethnic tensions at the school. She met with teachers and counselors and hosted a series of listening events for parents and students. When she first put out the call for students and parents to participate in these meetings, almost all of the respondents were white and English-speaking. She quickly realized that to understand the lives of her Latinx families and students, she would have to be intentional in her efforts to get to know the families and students. She started inviting students to a pizza lunch in her office to begin to learn more about their experiences in the school. In one of these events, she began a conversation with a ninth grader named Manolo.

Manolo moved to Lewis after briefly living in New York City. Originally from Guatemala, Manolo speaks K’iche’ and Spanish. He came to the United States 3 years ago and is learning English. Transitioning to high school has been challenging because Manolo feels uncomfortable and lost at LHS. Manolo had been sent to Ms. Ball’s office once before when a School Resource Officer (SRO) accused him of being disrespectful. The SRO had stopped Manolo because he was wearing earbuds in school. Manolo pointed to another white kid wearing earbuds and asked why he was getting in trouble when the white kid was not. The SRO then sent him to the office for being disrespectful. Manolo’s tense relationship with the SROs started on the first day of school when he got in trouble when he did not take off his belt before going through the metal detectors. The SRO yelled “belt, belt, belt!” at him. Manolo did not understand what he was supposed to do. The SRO misinterpreted Manolo’s misunderstanding as a failure to comply and became hostile. Now, the Manolo feels singled out by the SRO. He attends the lunch to talk to Ms. Ball to discuss his concerns.

Over lunch, Ms. Ball asks Manolo about himself. Manolo tells Ms. Ball that he loves basketball and often plays pick-up games at a local community center. Ms. Ball asked if he considered playing on the school team. After thinking about it, Manolo tells her that students who look like him only play on the soccer team. He admits that he would want to join a sports team or after-school program but still feels too shy to attend the meetings. “I am still nervous doing it. I’m telling you, I’m a very shy person. I’m too nervous to do anything.” When she asked why, he said, “when you participate or something, you got to talk to others so it made me just kind of nervous. What if I don’t know nobody there? Who’s going to help me and talk to me?” Later, passing by the trophy case at the entrance to the school, Ms. Ball noticed how most of the students in pictures of sports teams and after-school clubs are white. When asked for data on the demographic breakdown of the students who participated in extracurricular activities, she was told that the school did not gather that information.

She then asks Manolo about his classes. Manolo hesitates before eventually telling her that he struggles with the language in some of the classes. Ms. Ball asks for an example. Again, Manolo hesitates as he admits he does not want to get anyone in trouble. Ms. Ball assures him that no one will get in trouble but that it helps her to understand his experience in the school. Manolo then tells her about his first-period Chemistry class where the teacher wrote a word problem on the smartboard for students to solve independently. When he raised his hand to ask the teacher about the word Fahrenheit, his teacher looked down at him and said, “Manolo, I am not your English teacher,” before moving on to the next student. Feeling frustrated, Manolo eventually just put his head down and decided not to finish the problem. Even when in classes filled with other students who are learning English, he doesn’t feel like the skills he learns there helps him in the classes where he is left to fend for himself. Even in his classes where most other students speak Spanish, his teachers are almost always white, monolingual English speakers. He only knows of two teachers in the school who speak Spanish, but he has never seen them. Although Ms. Ball is aware of how few teachers speak Spanish, she did not realize its impact on students.

Ms. Ball asks Manolo about his family. Manolo’s older sister, Yuritzi, is in the 11th grade and is also learning English. He often helps her with her homework because his English is the best in his family. He knows this is because he was only 11 years old when his family migrated to Lewis. His sister was 13 and learning English has been a much slower process for her.

When Ms. Ball asks what Yuritzi’s plans are after high school, Manolo shared that Yuritzi recently came home in tears because she met with her guidance counselor for the first time and learned that she had taken the wrong classes and would not graduate on time. She will have to take summer classes to make up for the missed credits. Yuritzi wonders why it has taken her counselor so long to realize these discrepancies on her transcript. When she asked about resources for college, the counselor gave her a pamphlet about the local community college but did not explain what it was. Yuritzi does not understand the difference between a community college, a college, and a university. As lunch wraps up, Ms. Ball decides to follow up with the guidance counselor and visit Manolo’s parents.

Ms. Ball sent a note home with Manolo in English asking his parents to come to the school. Although Manolo translated dutifully, his parents were still suspicious that he had caused some sort of trouble at school. After several excuses from Manolo about why his parents could not come to school, Ms. Ball decided to pay his family a house call. When she arrived, Manolo’s mom answered the door, but they were unable to communicate well because Ms. Ball only speaks English and Manolo’s mother only speaks Spanish.

Ms. Ball recognizes that there are many complicated and competing challenges she must address. Although she recognizes there is an urgent need to support students like Manolo, she knows making significant changes to the culture of the school will take time and buy-in from all school stakeholders. In the following weeks, Ms. Ball begins to strategically plan to address the urgent and long term needs of minoritized and marginalized students and families at the school. Where should she begin? The following teaching notes provide guidance for school leaders who may be facing similar challenges when addressing racism and xenophobia in immigrant serving schools going through demographic change.

Teaching Notes

School leaders play an important role in creating a welcoming school environment, particularly for immigrant-origin youth and newly arrived immigrant students (Crawford, 2017; Marshall & Khalifa, 2018; Scanlan & Lopez, 2014). This case presents vignettes illustrating how intrapersonal interactions impact students’ perceptions of belonging. We suggest two complementary frames that educational leadership students might use to analyze this case. NCOR helps educational leaders think beyond the school to better understand how policies and societal and political structures shape immigrants’ integration into a new society (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006; Stepick & Stepick, 2009). Raciolinguistic perspectives offers insights into why immigrant students in this case felt like their skin color and the way they spoke English marked them for surveillance and exclusion. Following teaching notes on the case analysis, we provide activities that help students imagine a school in which immigrant students feel included and welcome.

Nested Context of Reception

The emerging research on immigrants’ NCOR (Brezicha, 2022; Golash-Boza & Valdez, 2018; Hopkins et al., 2019; Park, 2020) builds on the context of reception (COR) construct, which considers how the sociopolitical environment influences how immigrants’ interact with a new society (Hopkins et al., 2019; Portes & Rumbaut, 2006; Stepick & Stepick, 2009). In this case, we see that both external social and political forces, as well as internal school practices, influence immigrant students’ school experiences (Park, 2020; Wilson et al., 2019).

As public political institutions, adults within the schools respond to the communities’ conceptualizations of who belongs within the community. These boundaries influence how school leaders and teachers understand and ultimately serve immigrant students (Brezicha, 2018, 2022; Brezicha & Hopkins, 2016). How the school situates itself within these multiple contexts also influences students’ feelings of belonging. Importantly we acknowledge educators’ abilities to create spaces of belonging for their immigrant students even amid xenophobic and racist contexts of reception. Thus, how individuals experience belonging depends on their interactions in a complex and fluid environment.

Given the hostile climate in LHS, it is not surprising that many immigrant-origin students did not participate in extracurriculars due to both structural and cultural barriers. Even when they did try to participate in extracurriculars, they did not always find the care and connection they sought. Thus, many students did not feel a sense of belonging to LHS. These student experiences echo an unfortunately common experience for immigrant students who often feel insignificant and invisible in schools. This social isolation and segregation can prevent students from thriving in schools (Cherng et al., 2014; Kroger, 2007).

Raciolinguistic Perspectives

The U.S. legacy of racism and xenophobia impacts one’s NCOR. Immigrants are subjected to “an ideological whitening or blackening that reflects dominate racial oppositions” (Ong et al., 1996, p. 737). Race and language are intertwined at interpersonal, institutional, and policy levels to position immigrant-origin youth as “racialized speaking subjects who are constructed as linguistically deviant even when engaging in linguistic practices positioned as normative or innovative when produced by privileged white subjects” (Rosa & Flores, 2017, p. 150). Flores and Rosa (2015) argue that immigrant-origin youth “inhabit a shared position as raciolinguistic Others vis-a-vis the white listening subject” (p. 151). The white listening subject is not to be understood as a “biographical individual but as an ideological position and mode of perception that shapes our racialized society” (Flores & Rosa, 2015, p. 151). In other words, it pertains to institutional actors, policies, and practices in schools and can include teachers, curriculum, and the classroom environment (posters, bulletin boards, texts).

Raciolinguistics is a helpful lens for analyzing this case when we see how Manolo is told “I am not your English teacher” when he asked a question about a particular word. We also see it in how the meetings held by the school and the principal’s interaction with Manolo’s parents privilege the speaking of English. Beyond these more obvious examples, raciolinguistic perspectives are helpful for asking critical questions about who is teaching the English language, why it is privileged over all other content and social-emotional learning, and what it would mean to value the speaking of other languages as much, if not more, than English. Further, how would the climate of a school evolve if the focus of teaching and learning with immigrant youth was not to see how closely they can “perform White middle-class norms but to explore, honor, extend, and problemaize their heritage and community practices” (Paris & Alim, 2014)? By paying attention to the white listening subject, rather than on the racialized speaking subject, school leaders can begin to shift the focus and goals of the educational climate to “dismantal the hierarchies that produce the white listening subject” (Flores & Rosa, 2015, p. 167).

Understanding the ways in which contexts of reception for immigrant youth are nested and racialized can help school leaders better understand the challenges of serving immigrant communities well. Importantly, educators and school leaders must also see the linguistic and cultural assets that immigrant families bring to a school (Cardoso & Thompson, 2010; Lowenhaupt & Hopkins, 2020; Orellana et al., 2003).

Classroom Activities

This case is a learning tool for school and district leaders who want to make their schools a more welcoming place for immigrants and other marginalized and minoritized students. The following discussion questions and fieldwork activities are best suited for graduate students who are already working in schools as teachers or school leaders. However, data from any local school could be used for in-class analysis.

Discussion Questions

1. What action steps should Ms. Ball have taken as a new principal at the school? In what ways could she have engaged teachers and families differently? How could she address racist or xenophobic remarks by teachers?

2. What schools put on their walls signals to students who the school belongs to and who is valued in the community. Think about the description of Lewis’s hallways and discuss what a school might put on its walls to signal the inclusion of marginalized and minoritized youth?

3. At Lewis, immigrant students reported being singled out because of their skin color and language differences by School Safety Officers and teachers. The disproportionality revealed in the disciplinary data supports the students’ reports. As a school leader, how would you respond to these concerns?

4. How might a school or district leader ensure that students feel represented at school? Consider how many Latinx-identifying teachers work in Lewis ISD, how many immigrant students participated in extracurricular activities, and how many Latinx students are tracked into honors classes and selected for Gifted and Talented programs. What overt actions could a school leader take to address these concerns?

5. Consider the Chemistry teacher who told a Lewis student that he “was not an English teacher.” What does this statement signal to students? Imagine a school in which all teachers felt it was their responsibility to teach literacy, or English, or even math. What would this look like at the classroom level, school level, or district level?

6. Much of what school leaders can do is at the district and school levels. But what could the school leaders, in this case, do to learn more about the lives and needs of their immigrant students?

Field Work for Teachers and Current School Leaders

• Walk around the hallways of your school (or university) and observe what is on the walls. Use an audio recorder to record descriptions of what you see. You may also take pictures if appropriate. What groups of students are celebrated in the hallways? Who is valued in this school community? How do you know? What groups of students are invisible in these spaces? You can also include classrooms in your observations.

• Creating a culture of belonging for marginalized students in a school environment is certainly not easy and involves considering outside factors as well as school climate, curriculum, and discipline. At Lewis, the culture of exclusion was reinforced when students were underrepresented in honors classrooms and after-school programs. Bring in data from your school. Are tracked classes (honor, AP, IB, Gifted and Talented) representative of the population of the school? What about special education? Are particular groups of students over-represented?

• School leaders often have to navigate external pressures from their communities and constituents including from both state and local politicians and policies. Conduct an audit of your community’s responses to the immigrant communities. How have the immigrants been received by residents and leaders such as the school board members, city and county officials? Consider the state political context, how have the Department of Education, State Superintendent, and others responded to the immigrant population in the state? No response is also an important thing to note.