Nearly half of all Americans, including many educators, are still working through their feelings about former President Donald Trump’s victory this week. This is particularly the case for those of us who work with immigrant students in our nation’s public schools.
Here are some suggestions for how teachers, schools, and their leaders can move some of those feelings to action:
Support Students
In theory, no one working in schools should challenge the idea of providing support to our students.
However, as the saying goes, “The devil is in the details.”
Research has documented the negative impact on mental health and academic achievement that occurs when students are concerned that a family member (or they themselves) might be in danger of being deported.
President-elect Trump has declared he will deport millions of people who might not have the necessary documents to remain in the United States legally and has threatened to revoke the legal status of other immigrants. Given his intentions, what are schools’ plans to provide the additional mental health and academic support so many of our students will need? In California alone, 1 million students are estimated to have at least one undocumented parent, while 4.4 million children are in that situation nationally. Many more have other family members in similar jeopardy. Are counselors being trained to provide care to young people facing these fears? Are schools working with local legal professionals to offer free legal advice to them/their families and (ideally) representation?
Trump and his supporters have other plans for these students, including challenges to laws that require public schools to provide free education to students, regardless of immigration status. If that happens, and undocumented children are either banned from public schools or required to pay tuition, can educators and school leaders ethically stand by in the face of these efforts to deny schooling to residents of their community? Are school staff members in discussions with public officials to clarify how the denial of schooling to some children makes the community worse for everyone—children are on the streets, unsupervised; they’re not gaining the skills that lead to employment to improve neighborhood economic stability, etc.?
There are now restrictions on the actions U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can take at schools. How will schools respond if those are loosened to allow ICE officers to seize parents or guardians dropping off or picking up their children? Or, even worse, if ICE officers demand to enter classrooms to seize students? Are school leaders providing training to classified staff and educators so they know what actions they can legally take in those situations? Are school administrators in conversation with local law enforcement and attorneys to develop a legally and morally responsible protocol for dealing with these situations?
In the face of this polarization around immigrants, how are school leaders planning to ensure this animosity does not spill over to their student bodies? For example, our school organizes an Empathy Project in which our immigrant students share essays and presentations about their personal stories to students in English-proficient classrooms, who then respond in a structured process. These kinds of group and individual conversations can result in new relationships and greater understanding of the reasons, risks, and struggles involved in why immigrants are starting a new life in the United States. This kind of activity may reduce the odds of student conflict and, instead, help build a greater sense of community.
The Trump campaign’s focus on the transgender community is not going to make it any easier for students who identify as transgender, nonbinary, or LGBTQ+, either. How are schools going to respond if those students are bullied or, even better, be proactive before the bullying starts? Will training be provided to teachers on how to support transgender students in such areas as the use of language and curriculum that is inclusive of all students?
Support Teachers
Teachers are going to have their hands full with the actual extra work involved in supporting students and the emotional toll it will take on us.
What can schools remove from teachers’ plates immediately? What can they do to make our jobs a little bit easier? An ongoing Ed Week series in my Ed Week blog offers some suggestions, including respecting and retaining prep time, reducing the number of meetings, and minimizing classroom interruptions.
Support Communities
Historically, schools have been “mediating institutions” in and for their communities. These institutions “mediate” between individuals with little power and government or other larger entities such as large corporations. Schools and other organizations can perform this function by bringing these individuals together to organize for their needs and beliefs. Edmund Burke called these groups “little platoons”; Alexis de Tocqueville described them as “associations”; and Richard John Neuhaus coined the term “mediating structures.”
Any time is a good time for educators and school leaders to reflect on how they feel about this role, but this election makes it particularly timely for schools to thoughtfully consider how they can serve as mediating institutions and ask themselves questions like:
* Given the research that schools, within their campuses, can only directly impact 30 percent or so of the factors affecting student achievement, should they consider what they can learn from actions schools have taken historically to influence outside factors? Examples include the Freedom Schools of the civil rights movement and the equity efforts of today’s community schools movement. There are also many examples of schools working with their neighborhoods to improve traffic safety, oppose pollution-spewing industries, or implement policies by school boards to refuse cooperation with ICE. The community/school partnerships developed in the Alliance Schools model led by the Industrial Areas Foundation in Texas are another example of this kind of “mediating institution” work. (I worked as an organizer for the IAF for many years prior to becoming a teacher.)
* If one of the responsibilities of schools is to prepare students to be active participants in a democracy, what should that look like today? Is it a matter of just teaching concepts like the separation of powers and the number of congresspeople in the House of Representatives, or should it be to develop “active citizens” who grapple with the problems facing their community and engage with others to solve them?
It appears that we may be in a period of monumental change. During this time, will schools choose to be bystanders or will they decide to be “upstanders”?
