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Bilingual Research Journal The Journal of the National Association for Bilingual Education

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More than an English language learner: testimonios of immigrant high school students

Estrella Olivares-Orellana

To cite this article: Estrella Olivares-Orellana (2020) More than an English language learner: testimonios of immigrant high school students, Bilingual Research Journal, 43:1, 71-91, DOI: 10.1080/15235882.2019.1711463

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2019.1711463

Published online: 14 Jan 2020.

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More than an English language learner: testimonios of immigrant high school students Estrella Olivares-Orellana

Columbia University

ABSTRACT This article examines immigrant students’ stories through the documentation of their testimonios. Given the high number of immigrant students in public schools, it is imperative for teachers and teacher educators to have an idea of their perspectives, experiences, and identities. In educational settings, testimo- nios have the ability to unsettle power dynamics and position students as knowers. This exploration answers questions Lin Goodwin posed seventeen years ago and felt the need to engage again in 2017. Some of those questions are “What, if anything, is different in terms of who is in the classroom now? Are teachers any more prepared to work with immigrant children? Immigration and immigrants are indelibly woven into the fabric of American history, so any discussion about the education of immigrant children is embedded in an ongoing socio-historical conversation. This article explores the stories of a small group of immigrant students attending high schools in Long Island, a New York suburb that receives large numbers of Central American immigrant youth. Adequately understanding and attending to the unique realities of students with diverse backgrounds is a significant duty, yet a necessary one in order to serve students properly.

Introduction

Essential to the effectiveness of education and the establishment of positive schooling practices for both students and teachers is an understanding of who today’s students are and what experiences they bring into our classrooms. With that in mind and considering the growing numbers of newcomer students and unaccompanied minors arriving as adolescents (Sugarman, 2015), this article explores the testimonios of a small group of immigrant high school youth. Testimonios are personal stories usually told by a person from a marginalized group in society to someone who can write them down and disseminate them (Prieto & Villenas, 2012). The purpose of this exploration is to call attention to the identities and understandings of some of the students in our classrooms today and to help educators better comprehend immigrant students’ experiences. In 2002, Lin Goodwin, wrote an article that examined teacher preparation in light of changing demographics as a result of increased immigration. Goodwin (2002) highlighted key issues to be considered when preparing teachers to work effectively with immigrant children. At the time, Census data indicated that America was becoming more and more diverse, which she stipulated would have a dramatic effect on schools (Goodwin, 2002). This effect, she stated, was juxtaposed against decreasing diversity on the teaching force. Teachers of color constituted 10% of the teaching force (Cochran-Smith, 2000). Additionally, Goodwin’s article reported that many teachers joining the profession demonstrated

CONTACT Estrella Olivares-Orellana [email protected] Bilingual/Bicultural Education Program, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027 Dr. Estrella Olivares-Orellana is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University with extensive experience as a bilingual science educator. Her interests are in the areas of bilingual/bicultural education, science education in bilingual settings, classroom practices for the success of multilingual learners, and the academic experiences of immigrant youth. © 2020 the National Association for Bilingual Education

BILINGUAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 2020, VOL. 43, NO. 1, 71–91 https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2019.1711463

parochial attitudes and articulated a preference for teaching children like themselves in environ- ments they felt familiar with. Furthermore, Goodwin found that while there was growing literature and research on preparing teachers for diverse settings, (such as multicultural teacher education, the development of culturally relevant teachers, educating teachers to work with English language learners, urban education, etc.), there were no such efforts for preparing teachers to work with immigrant children (2002). The focus, if any, was on teaching strategies for English language learners. However, the article stressed the many reasons why understanding the specific needs of immigrant children goes beyond English language support and the fallacy of lumping immigrant children with English language learners for education purposes, given that many in the latter group are actually native-born U.S. citizens. Furthermore, Goodwin stated that

most of the literature that focuses on teacher preparation for the success and achievement of children of color fails to explicitly frame immigrant children as a group that exhibits particular issues and needs. As a consequence, immigrant children are rendered invisible when they are subsumed under these broad and inclusive labels (p. 161).

Goodwin further elaborates stating that immigrants and their offspring bring exceptional experiences to schools whose close analysis and understandingmust become part of the teacher education curriculum and discourse if teachers are to be effectively prepared to teach students who are immigrants.

Fifteen years later, in 2017, Lin Goodwin revisits her 2002 article by asking who is in the classroom now and reexamining teacher preparation in light of continued demographic changes as a result of increased immigration. Goodwin’s rationale for engaging in the same examination more than a decade and a half later is that she finds herself asking similar questions to the ones that prompted her 2002 article and not having clear answers:

What, if anything, is different in terms of who is in the classroom now? Are teachers any more prepared to work with immigrant children? Have the issues facing immigrant children and their families changed? How is the world different and what does that difference mean for education? In what ways have educators been full participants in that conversation? Have we done the right thing? (p. 434)

Goodwin (2017) attempts to address teacher preparation for newcomers entering U.S. classrooms today. She discusses 2012 U.S. Census data which indicates that while most immigrants continue to gravitate to four states, California, Texas, New York, and New Jersey, a total of 14 states show immigrant population percentages that are higher than the national average, with immigrants accounting for almost a third of the overall population growth in the suburbs from 2000 to 2009. These numbers suggest that “many more communities are experiencing demographics shifts for which they are not prepared and integrating newcomers of whom they have little knowledge or understanding” (p. 435).

In this new article, Goodwin addresses what has and has not changed about who is in the classroom now.Among the factors that have changed is the increasing number of immigrant childrenwhose status is uncertain, including the large numbers of unaccompaniedminors entering the country. According to the American Immigration Council (2015b), from October 2013 to September 2014, over 67,000 unaccom- panied minors from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico were detained entering the south- west U.S. border. This implies that school districts in various parts of the country “are facing large numbers of students who are entitled to schooling and who will require academic supports and curriculum responsive to their experiences and needs” (Goodwin, 2017, p. 436).

Furthermore, Goodwin (2017) reminds us that considering the turbulent political climate, this invisibility of immigrants in schools should be even more troubling to those in the field of education. She closes by proposing for teacher preparation curriculum to explicitly and deliberately address immigrant children, their families/communities, and their schooling and for teacher educators and teacher candidates to learn to look for the invisible, to notice who or what is missing, to develop a critical consciousness through reflection and action, what Paulo Freire (1968) refers to as conscientização. Finally, Goodwin suggests that “teachers – new or in preparation – become advocates for immigrant children who are instantly racialized and minoritized when they enter the United States, and its systems of institutionalized oppression and marginalization” (p. 445).

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Other scholars who research the education of children for whom English is not a first language have too, revisited previous work in an effort to stress the ways in which our education system, specifically teachers of immigrants, could be doing better by our multilingual learners. Fillmore and Snow (2018) revisited their 2000 “What Teachers Need to Know about Language” contribu- tion emphasizing the importance of teachers as significant agents of socialization who must foster students’ developing academic identities. Additionally, they expand on their previous writing (2000) which explained that many of the challenges we face in education stem from the fact that teachers have not always known how to confront the differences and diverse outlooks, languages, cultural beliefs and behaviors they encounter in their classrooms. As they did in 2000, they end with calling for effective teacher training with approaches that deepen pre-teachers’ knowledge about students and learning.

Recent events occurring at the U.S. border, where allegedly large numbers of immigrants seeking refuge are being held captive in unacceptable living conditions for long periods of time and children are being separated from their families (Khullar & Chokshi, 2019), coupled with the knowledge that immigrant children have just as much right to a free public education as U.S. citizen children (Plyler v. Doe, 1982), we have a duty to do better and prepare teachers with the right tools to serve all students well. This article accepts Goodwin’s (2017) invitation to explicitly and deliberately address immigrant children, their families/communities, and their schooling and to look for the invisible. It renders students’ perspectives to help us challenge the impact of our assumptions. Teachers and teacher educators must be aware of the stories, experi- ences, and identities of many of the students in American classrooms today. Adequately under- standing and attending to the unique experiences of students with diverse backgrounds is a significant undertaking, yet a necessary one in order to improve the conditions under which our children are educated and prevent the early exit of so many immigrant high school students. There are many factors contributing to the reasons why high school students leave schools before attaining graduation requirements that are beyond educators’ control; however, teacher education programs must make an effort to prepare teachers so that the factors educators can control, such as understanding students, providing realistic pathways for academic success, and creating an envir- onment in which they feel welcomed and cared for, are present and cultivated.

Methodologically, testimonios give voice to the silenced, represent the other, reclaim authority to narrate, and disentangle questions concerning legitimate truth (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, & Flores Carmona, 2012). With this article, I don’t intend to give students a voice, for they have one, rather I want to create opportunities to learn from their perspectives and make these accessible and audible to a wider audience. The testimonios offered here were documented as part of a larger investigation that sought to explore newcomer students’ perspectives on their school program placement and academic identity formation as a result. That investigation examined the testimonios of students from two public high schools located in Long Island, New York. The two schools attended by the participants of that investigation serve populations of similar socioeconomic status, as indicated by public school records, one from each of the eastern suburban counties: Nassau County and Suffolk County. According to the Office of the New York State Comptroller (2016), from 2010 to 2015, a net of 5.3 million people migrated to the United States from other countries and Puerto Rico. About 631,000 of those immigrants, settled in New York. Most of the net international migration to New York was to the State’s metropolitan areas, with almost 75 percent, or 452,000 occurring in New York City. During those years, the majority of immigrants who settled outside of New York City did so in these two Long Island Counties.

Many studies about urban youth have confirmed the importance of including the voices and perspectives of young people in research about them rather than relying on observations made by outsiders (Lukes, 2015). With that in mind, and in light of our immigration drifts to Long Island, this article offers immigrant students’ perspectives in an effort to better prepare many teachers for understanding some of the students in their classrooms.

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Challenging dominant notions of legitimate knowledge

The analysis of the testimonios presented here is framed with a Chicana/Latina feminist epistemology, which focuses on the ways Chicanas/Latinas teach, learn, live and balance systems of oppressions (Delgado Bernal, 2001). It challenges dominant conceptions and productions of theory, knowledge and pedagogy (Saavedra, 2011). In presenting students’ testimonios, I propose we accept their experiences as legitimate knowledge. The unsuitable education of many minorities, marginalized, and immigrant students is the result of an education system that fails to recognize and embrace students’ experiences and ways of understanding the world and their ideas of teaching and learning (Delgado Bernal, Elenes, Godinez, & Villenas, 2006; Saavedra, 2011). Students whose testimonios are presented in this article are immigrant students who bring varied educational experiences. Many of them have been classified as academically deficient students as a result of being compared to a standard proposed by an education system to which they have not belonged. In New York State, new arrival students are assessed by school officials following an ELL Screening, Identification, Placement, Review, and Exit Criteria chart that evaluates English language proficiency to label them as ELL or not ELL, and academic experience to determine the student’s literacy and math level (NYSED, 2015). Only knowledge of mathematics and English language proficiency is evaluated and considered. As Ford and Grantham (2003) articulate, this type of deficit perspective weakens expectations for students and hinders educators’ capacities to identify the various forms in which giftedness may appear. Furthermore, teachers who are unable to draw from the social and political knowledge newcomer students bring into the classroom may be losing valuable learning opportunities (Fránquiz & Salinas, 2011). In essence, this article calls for a shift from deficit to resource perspectives in the education of immigrant students. Resource-oriented perspectives have the ability to challenge deficit understandings of immigrant students and offer more fruitful and promising possibilities for the education of these newcomer students (Kibler, Bunch, & Endris, 2011). In framing the exploration of their testimonioswithin a Chicana/Latina epistemological framework, I intend tomake immigrant students part of the conversation so that the knowledge stemming from their testimoniosmay be utilized when designing pedagogical practices to serve them. In presenting students’ testimonios, I seek to shift power dynamics and make students the knowledge providers that inform educators about their experiences. With this article, I challenge the invisibility and irrelevancy of many immigrant students in American schools today.

In a state of double transition

Immigrant students who have experienced deeply wounding immigration experiences often draw strength from their border crossing experiences to deal with the challenges of acculturating to their new space. As Anzaldúa (1987) explains, “borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them” (p. 25). Thinking in terms of borders allows us to analytically examine how immigrant students make sense of their place in American schools and consider the beliefs at play when only the voices of those in power prevail in education.

The process of migration can be disruptive to the families of those involved. Families may migrate in a “stepwise” fashion, with one or two members at a time (Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2008). One parent may migrate first, leaving their child or children in the care of the other parent, or both parents may migrate together first, leaving children with friends or relatives until they are ready to send for them. According to Suárez-Orozco et al. (2008), such migration separations “result in two sets of disruptions in emotional attachments for the children- first from the parent, and then from the caregiver to whom the child has become attached during their parent- child separation” (p. 57). These emotional disruptions may impact students’ relationship to new educational spaces as well as new educators. While these youth used to miss their parents when their parents had left them to look for a better future in the United States, they now miss the caregivers they have left behind to reunite with their parents. Immigrant youth are constantly missing someone, somewhere (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008).

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It can be said that newcomer immigrant youth are suffering a double transition. One transition is that of any adolescent: the transitional stage of emotional, mental, and physical human development that takes place at that age. The second transition is that of moving and finding a place in a new country. They are in every sense of the word, in the midst of transformation. They live in what Gloria Anzaldúa calls nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning “in-between space.” Anzaldúa implemented this term to represent points of potential transformation. In her Interviews/Entrevistas, she explains that the nepantla paradigm theorizes unexplored dimensions of the experiences of those living in between overlapping and layered spaces of different cultures as well as social and geographic locations and realities.Nepantla, as Prieto and Villenas (2012) explain, is a space of in-betweenness, transformation, frustration, discomfort, and spontaneous ways of adjusting and learning. It is a place where transformation can take place because it has magic and a potential for magic. As a consequence of this potential for magic, nepantla has agency, therefore anything can happen (Cortez, 2001). For newcomer immigrant youth in U.S. schools, nepantla signifies the navigation between different worlds, the discovery of place and identity, and the agency that flourishes through that discovery.

Unfortunately, Suárez-Orozco et al.’s (2008) study, which focused exclusively on the experiences of recently arrived foreign-born youth, revealed thatmost newcomer immigrant students attended less than optimal schools. In fact, most of the children in their five-year longitudinal study “attended schools that not only obstructed learning and engagement but also were, in many ways, toxic to healthy learning and development. Rather than providing fields of opportunity, all too many were fields of endangerment” (p. 89). A recent qualitative study that examined teacher assignment and access of immigrant youth to academic content courses in California, explains that the nature of contact between teachers and immigrant students is framed and limited by language classifications thereby reducing their educational opportunities (Dabach, 2015). This study also found that educators with less teaching experience and less proven positive outcomes are more likely assigned to content courses where English language learners are placed unless a more senior teacher requested the assignment. Therefore, the conditions under which many newcomer immigrant youths are schooled in the United States exacerbate their state of transition and transformation. Newcomer immigrant youth often suffer “triple segregation”, which is by color, socio-economic status, and linguistic ability. As Suárez-Orozco et al. (2008) elaborate, these types of segregation have proven to be unavoidably linked to negative educational consequences, such as low and academic performance, reduced school resources, lower achievement, greater school violence, and higher dropout rates.

Research by González, Plata, García, Torres, and Urrieta (2003) demonstrates that the intricacy of an immigrant identity as a child, especially that of an undocumented child is often overlooked. However, the experiences of immigrant students can significantly impact their relation to school once in the United States. Immigrant students entering U.S. schools in their adolescent years have often made the journey from their countries alone and have recently joined parents who left them as young children, or other relatives with whom a close bond has yet to be established. Immigrant youth undergo “profound shifts in their sense of self and often struggle to negotiate changing circumstances in their relationships with parents and peers” (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008, p. 44). Moreover, for those students of undocumented status, the experience of crossing the border can be emotionally and physically upsetting, yet students are forced to leave those sentiments aside in order to deal with the more pressing issue of adjusting to a new schooling environment while also settling in with a new family, sometimes composed of estranged relatives. In presenting the testimonios of immigrant students, many of whom may be undocumented, this article seeks to bring attention to their experiences in order to inform our practice and provide more welcoming environments.

Testimonios as pedagogy

The use of student testimonios can prove to be a valuable tool for educators. González et al. (2003) urge that “testimonios be used as pedagogy, especially to educate future teachers and to raise the consciousness of people who do not have sympathy for immigrants, especially immigrant children,

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as they encounter an unfriendly and often hostile educational system” (p. 233). DeNicolo, González, Morales, and Romaní (2015) utilized testimonios to examine the ways in which students’ cultural and linguistic knowledge becomes visible when they reflect on their lives, in and outside of school, through personal narratives in the classroom. They found that testimonios can be a successful pedagogical tool to help students recognize their individual and collective community cultural wealth and use it in the elementary classroom. Taking inspiration from Paulo Freire’s (1968) concept of conscientização, “the deepening of the attitude of awareness” (p. 109), the testimonios presented here can prove to be useful to educators interested in better understanding students with diverse back- grounds and educational experiences. While these testimonios may be accounts made by a few participants, they may represent the voices of many whose lives have been affected by a particular social event (Blackmer Reyes & Curry Rodríguez, 2012).

Incipient from Latin America, testimonios consist of life stories usually told by a person from a marginalized group in society to someone who can write them down and disseminate them (Prieto & Villenas, 2012).Testimonios call for change, which in turn, calls for action. It is what Jara andVidal (1986) have called a “narración de urgencia” (urgent narratives) because in order to provide effective and equitable educational programs, educators must value the importance of understanding the experiences and knowledges students bring to schools. Testimonio is a form of expression born out of intense repression or struggle, where the testimoniante tells a lived story to someone who then transcribes, edits, translates, and publishes the text in an effort to recover subjugated knowledges to theorize oppres- sion, resistance, and subjectivity (Latina Feminist Group, 2001) and take this knowledge to a larger audience bringing awareness to conditions faced by oppressed peoples (Saavedra, 2011).

Positionality

Before researcher, teacher and teacher educator, I am an immigrant. I arrived to the U.S. at the age of 18, undocumented, and with knowledge of a handful of words in English. Navigating an unknown education systemwith an unknown language is not a foreign concept tome. It is an ever-present part ofmy identity. It is probably the principle reason behind my interest in the experiences of immigrant youth, and my desire to explore the ways in which immigrant youth are schooled and positioned in the United States. I cannot underestimate the impact of that reality on the explorations I undertake inmy research. Of equal significance, is the fact that, while I happen to share that background with the participants, the similarities end there. Being an immigrant does not make anyone an authority or a knower of all immigrants’ stories. Stories are unique and belong to their storyteller. As the researcher, my role in this study was to document and explore the testimonios of this particular group of immigrant students. Throughout the duration of this study, I remained particularly cautious and attentive to continue to seek out my subjectivities. In the words of Peshkin (1988), “[b]y monitoring myself, I can create an illuminating, empowering personal statement that attunes me to where self and subject are intertwined” (p. 20). Furthermore, I remained aware of my role as “advocate and partner” (Fontana & Frey, 2005) in addition to that of sole researcher, thereby focusing on those facets of the data that allowed me to better comprehend students’ message.

This is where the cultural intuition aspect of Chicana/Latina feminist epistemology played an important role. It was imperative that I acknowledged the power of my presence in the research process. While conducting this research, I was attentive to the intersections between my experiences, my pedagogy, and my academic life. As Saavedra (2011) urges us, we must acknowledge our own positionality, “excavate our privilege, our marginalization, our language and cultural borderlands, and how we can connect with our students in authentic ways” (p. 265).

One of the communal goals of testimonio is to name oppression and to arrest its actions of marginalization. Thus, testimonio is not to be kept secret but requires active participatory readers or listeners who act on behalf of the speaker in an effort to arrive at justice and redemption (Blackmer Reyes & Curry Rodríguez, 2012). However, some may argue that testimonio, is a socially constructed representation, without a universal standard of truth (Kohl & Farthing, 2013). It can be said that

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testimonio is an interpretation created by the researcher, and as such, it may lack some validity. I recognize my positionality and remain cognizant of the fact that the interlocutor’s interaction with the storyteller has an impact on the way the story is told (Sommer, 1995). These testimonios were co- constructed, and I cannot deny that my presence as a teacher, a teacher educator, and the researcher documenting these stories certainly impacted their direction. As explained by Hinterberger (2005), feminist researchers and theorists are concerned with both speaking for and representing others, therefore, the production of knowledge and power are directly connected to ethical and political issues of representation. Consequently, “transforming power relations and improving the material conditions of people’s lives is complicated by the contradictory and difficult problems of represent- ing the subjectivities and identities of ‘others’” (p. 74). In order to attend to critiques of appropria- tion, interpretation of voice, and misrepresentation, I invited students to collaborate in the process of analyzing their own testimonios to remain as true to their stories and perspectives as possible, never forgetting the power of my presence as someone from the outside seeking a story.

It was vital that I, as the researcher, reflected on the purpose and use of this research as it was taking place. It was equally important to pay close attention to how the participants’ stories were approached and interpreted (Delgado Bernal, 1998). When researchers write about the experiences of a group to which they do not belong, they must reflect on the ethics of their actions, and consider whether or not their work will be used to perpetuate domination (hooks, 1989). Consequently, I remained cognizant of my intentions to shift these students’ position away from that of subjects of research and toward the position of knowledge producers.

Testimoniantes

In this article, I present the testimonios of four newcomer high school students. Asmentioned previously, these testimonios were documented as part of a larger investigation that examined the perspectives of students in relation to their school placement. The participants of that larger study had been classified as students with interrupted formal education (SIFE) by two public high schools (referred to as sites A and B here) serving similar populations located in Long Island, New York. The New York State Education Department (NYSED) defines SIFE as students who come from a home in which a language other than English is spoken and: (1) enter a U.S. school after the second grade; (2) have had a two year educational gap; (3) function two years below grade level in reading andmath; and (4) may be preliterate in their first language (Advocates for Children of New York, 2010). Table 1 specifies participants’ ages and school attended. All the testimoniantes are originally from El Salvador; however, this was not intentional. Salvadoran students make up a large percentage of immigrant youth attending schools in Long Island. While students from other countries were invited to participate in the larger study for which these testimonioswere documented, those who ultimately agreed to take part in the investigation happen to be exclusively from El Salvador. Pseudonyms were used to protect their identity.

While no single country of origin dominates among immigrants to Long Island, El Salvador makes up the largest share (Kallick, 2010). In the 1980s, El Salvador suffered a bitter and violent civil war, sparked by gross inequality between a small wealthy elite, which dominated the government and the economy, and the majority of the population, which lived in poverty. In 1992, with the help of the United Nations’ ONUSAL (United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador), and after pro- longed negotiations, the opposing sides signed a peace agreement, which put an end to the civil war

Table 1. Testimoniantes.

Participant Age School Attended

Karla 15 Site A Henry 18 Site A Raul 16 Site B María 17 Site B

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and allowed the former guerrillas to form a political party and participate in elections (US Department of State, 2010). As the country began to recover, it was hit by a devastating hurricane in 1998, a large-scale earthquake in 2001, and two concurrent natural disasters in 2005, the severe flooding and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Stan and the eruption of the Santa Ana volcano, which affected approximately half of the country, displacing more than 26,000 people (USAID, 2009). Additionally, a wave of violence under the hand of street gangs, known as “maras”, has plagued El Salvador in recent decades. This represents an added challenge for this small and highly populated country. Maras operate in the major cities and also in some rural communities (Alas, 2000). One of the most notorious gangs in the world is Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, which is said to have originated just decades ago among the Salvadorian immigrant community of Los Angeles, and later exported to El Salvador when U.S. authorities began deporting gang members. The exportation of L.A. gang culture to a country rife with weapons from civil war sparked a boom in vicious gang- related crime (Fabricius, 2010).

These challenges, in addition to the expected possibility of employment, have made international migration a very worthwhile alternative. International migration has modified the national economy of El Salvador, as well as the lifestyles of rural households (Kandel, 2002). According to Kandel, as it is with the students participating in this study and some of their parents, young and mid-age adults make up the majority of the migrants. Although family members left behind, including many children left under the care of relatives, are “considered to be better off as a result of remittances allowing them to improve access to social services including health and education” (D’Emilio et al., 2007, p. V), there is a high price being paid by family structures. According to Canetti et al. (2000), separation from parents can be more damaging to the mental health of children than the death of a parent. While the original decision driving the migration is a search for a better life, the prolonged separation of children from their parents, due to strict immigration laws, has serious impacts on the lives and childhoods of the children left behind (Horton, 2008). As expressed by the testimonios shared here, the disintegration of the family structure is considered a major consequence of this migration wave.

Data collection and methods

During the larger investigation, for which these testimonios were documented, I started the con- versations using a tentative list of questions that stemmed from the research questions framing that research. We discussed the inclusion of artifacts such as drawings, pictures, journals, audio- recordings, videos, etc. to facilitate their story-telling process. I gave students a notebook and suggested they continue telling me stories in writing, once the interview ended. Three of the participants wrote in these notebooks. Based on the conversations that took place during the first interview, we met one more time individually. Students who had chosen to write on their notebooks, shared them at this second meeting. From the information shared at this subsequent meeting, a focus group was created to share common threads.

Testimonios are important multifaceted approaches to educational research (Blackmer Reyes & Curry Rodríguez, 2012). I collected these students’ testimonios in different ways. I recorded inter- views or conversations twice individually and once collectively with the participants. The questions framing the individual interviews were aimed at eliciting testimonios that would help answer the research questions the larger study sought to answer. We discussed topics such as their academic experiences prior to arriving to the U.S.; their experiences upon arriving and being placed in the SIFE program; the meaning of their classification to them; their relationships with other students; the impact of this classification and placement in a particular SIFE program on their academic trajectory; and their future academic goals. Urgent narratives emerged from the students’ testimonios that did not answer research questions. These stories were treated with equal or higher significance as the narratives that addressed research questions. Since I framed this research with a Chicana/Latina feminist epistemology, I was guided by my cultural intuition, without losing site of the fact that I was a mere interlocutor through which the narrators were bringing their situations to the attention of

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academic audiences (Cervantes-Soon, 2012). When recording, transcribing, and translating students’ testimonios, I retained the students’ voice as much as possible; therefore, some transcriptions were left in Spanish in order to preserve their true meaning.

Testimonios

Narratives that relate to these four testimoniantes’ migration and school placement in the United States were documented as testimonios told in the first person by the students taking part in this study. These testimonios are presented here as what Jara and Vidal (1986) call “narraciones de urgencia”, narratives that must be told in order to illuminate the experiences of some of the immigrant youth in many Long Island High Schools. Essential to their validity is the acknowl- edgment that these testimonios have been pieced together from answers to interviews designed to elicit information about schooling experiences and supplemented with narratives written on journals by the testimoniantes. Participants were given complete freedom in terms of the direction and/or topic of their journal writing. The appendix shows an excerpt of original journal writing sample.

Also important is the fact that the testimonios that follow are presented in English although participants spoke and wrote in Spanish. I have translated their words with the exception of terms that have no direct translation, which are explained as they come up. The sections that follow present testimonios arranged by participant. I present the testimonios of four participants of the larger study, two from each site.

Karla: “My 12-year-old aunt raised me”

Karla, a 15-year-old student from site A, discusses being the child of very young parents and having been passed around from relative to relative from a young age until her aunt of only twelve years of age took responsibility for raising her. Ultimately, Karla’s paternal grandmother sent for both of them to move to the United States with her. They were brought by Coyotes (term used by Spanish speaking immigrants to describe undocumented immigrants’ smugglers).

Sadly, I did not grow up with my parents. They were about 14 years old when I was born. I was told my dad left my mom to seek a better future in the United States and be able to help with the cost of raising me. Since my mom was young and alone, she did not know what to do with me so she gave me away to family. They say I spent two years from one relative of my mom’s to another with no one wanting to keep me. My paternal grandmother, who lived in the United States, found out and asked her 12-year-old daughter, Karina, who lived in El Salvador with her father, to take me in until she could send for us. There was too much gang violence in El Salvador for us to stay there safely. So my 12-year-old aunt raised me in since I was about three years old in San Julian Cacaluta, El Salvador. They say I used to call her mom but she was just a girl and told me repeatedly that she was not my mom. I can say I had a happy childhood. My grandmother used to send money so I could attend school. I had what I needed and I was content. One early morning, when I was in 9th grade, I was woken up very early by my aunt. She told me to get up and get dressed; I was very confused. She rushed me to get some clothes because I was leaving with her and her daughter to a city located about three hours called San Miguel. Supposedly, we were going to visit family that had just arrived from the United States. Sometime during that road trip, I found out we were actually going to meet coyotes who would take us to the United States. I started crying inconsolably and thinking Oh my God, I don’t want to leave, I’m going to leave my entire other family, my classmates, my school, everything of my country. I was crying a lot. Well, that was the day my life changed. On one hand, it was fine for me to leave because I would study more and better and I would have a new future, to reach my dream, I was going to the land of opportunities. Well, thank God everything turned out well on the way and we were able to cross and arrived to the United States.

Karla’s journal writing was very detailed and supplemented the interviews with additional informa- tion about her journey. In analyzing journal entries and transcribing interviews with the participants, I noticed how unique each story seemed but also how urgent their situations were. Some of the participants gave only enough information to answer interview questions but others were eager to discuss their journeys in detail. After explaining the reasons for leaving their country, descriptive stories of their voyage followed and the term hieleras was a common denominator. Hieleras is the

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Spanish word for cooler. According to the American Immigration Council (2015a), hielera is “the term commonly used to describe border patrol’s holding cells because of the bone-chilling tempera- tures at which the cells are maintained” and while these cells are designed for short term detention lasting no longer than a few hours, border crossers tell stories of being held in hieleras for days and sometimes weeks. Karla was one of the students who shared her encounter with las hieleras.

Unfortunately, after several sleepless nights missing my family, we were detained by immigration and they asked for our information and everything, then they put us in a car and took us to las hieleras. I remember it was a sunny day. There were lots of people there and they asked us to make a line to take off our bracelets, all of our accessories, even our belts and hairbands and everything; I only kept a sweater I had, which was small and didn’t fit. Then we were told to sit on the floor … We sat there for five hours until they began calling people and taking them somewhere else. They called my aunt and her daughter and my aunt immediately questioned why they had not called me, they told her because I was not her real daughter. I felt horrible. They put them on a bus and took them to another hielera and left me there. I started crying and crying nonstop because I wanted to be with my aunt, and then they took me into these rooms that had more people with small infants, children, young people and elderly people and everything. That place, Oh my God, I regret having gone there. It was so cold that you could not stand it … We were all sleeping on the floors, it was the worst. I had to spend three days there. We were fed bad food … for the three days I was there I did not eat … After three days, they called my name. I thought I would be taken to my grandmother but nothing. They took me to another hielera, where I would spend four more days. I was extremely cold and hungry. On the last day I was there, they called me and told me to give them my grandmother’s number to let her know where I was.

For Karla, as well as for some other participants, these terrible ordeals in las hieleras, were followed by positive experiences that seemed to have caused tremendous happiness, hope, and relief. These happy moments took place when they were moved by immigration officers from las hieleras to shelters for unaccompanied minors. These shelters are referred to as El Hogar.

When I arrived at El Hogar, they gave me a room, food, clothing, shoes, and everything you would have in a normal house. I was finally able to shower and after getting some vaccines I met the other girls and received a welcoming party called La Bienvenida. I felt very happy there. They had a school right there at El Hogar. I was given a placement test and placed in level 3, which was their highest school level. Every day, we were woken up very early to eat and go to school for the whole day. I spent a month there. It was lonely at times. I wanted to be with my family. The day finally came and I was told it was time for me to go live with my grandmother. I was so happy and nervous because I would finally meet her.

As our conversations unfolded, it became evident that for Karla and the other participants, the reunification process was a key event in their migration to the United States.

They told me I would leave at 4:30 in the morning. I was taken to the airport and boarded an airplane, and then another airplane. I was very anxious and just wanted to get there. When I finally got there I saw my aunt Karina, the one who had left El Salvador with me, and then I saw my grandmother for the first time and felt “Oh! My God”, a divine happiness inside of me. I also met my aunt Barbara. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I thank God for making it and for allowing me to meet my new family. My first day with them was beautiful. My aunt Barbara showed me around the house and then showed me our room. She told me we would share the bedroom and walk to school together and do many things together. She said we would do everything together and that’s how it was for the first two months until things started to change. We started fighting all the time. We still fight but I still love her. In the end, even though I have had some good and bad experiences, and I know that not all children get to have their parents, and although it feels horrible not to have them, there is nothing I can do about it, I thank God for giving me a beautiful grandmother who loves me and gives me everything I need since I was a small child. I am very grateful to her for everything she has done, for bringing me here, for making me a good child and for helping me go to school and prepare for the future. I ask God to take care of my parents, even though I barely know them and I will keep luchando (fighting) for a better future with the help of my grandmother.

When it came to discussing schooling experiences, Karla’s placement stood out as very interesting. Karla had been classified as a SIFE student by her school. Research suggests that many immigrant teens have experienced interrupted schooling because of poverty, migration journey, or violence in their country of origin (García & Kleifgen, 2010). Karla; however, seemed not to have had any significant schooling interruption other than the time it took her to travel from El Salvador to the US

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I was always in school in El Salvador. I was completing the eighth grade before leaving. School here is very different. At first, I didn’t understand English so I didn’t know what anybody was saying. When I started school here all my classes were called SIFE. I don’t know what that means but I know it’s different. We are separated from the other Spanish speaking students. Some classes feel too easy, like science, but others feel hard like math. I like it here but I would like to be with the other bilingual students. We weren’t really explained why we have these separate classes but my Spanish teacher explained a little. I have friends in the program but most of my friends are in other classes. Sometimes I feel envious of them. They seem so happy. I want to be in regular classes for bilingual students, not separated. I don’t think I will be in this program next year. My goals have not changed. I always wanted to be a flight attendant and that’s what I still want.

For Karla, life has changed significantly. While she spoke about the violence at the hands of maras “nos vinimos nosotros porque vivíamos asustados porque había muchas Maras” (we came because we lived in fear because there were too many gangs) and lack of safety prevailing in El Salvador, contrastingly, she also spoke about feeling more freedom to go outside in her country.

I used to play more. I spent most of my time playing outside with my cousins. Even though we had problems and violence because of las maras, I felt freer. I used to be able to go outside to play whenever I wanted to. It’s different here. I cannot go anywhere. I can’t go out at night.

Henry: “I cried because I didn’t know my stepmom and needed my mom”

Henry is 18 years old. He’s a student at site A. Henry’s father, like Karla’s, also lived in the United States while Henry was growing up in El Salvador. Henry explains that he struggled with the decision of leaving his mother, relatives, and friends behind. He ultimately decided to leave because he envisioned being able to provide for his mother from the United States.

I remember the day everything changed. I was eating pupusas (traditional Salvadoran dish) when I got a phone call from my dad to give me the news that I had to travel. I was happy but also sad because I would leave my mom, my family, my friends, and my way of life. I started thinking about it, should I leave or not? My family members were telling me not to leave them. I thought about it and decided I would leave so I could help my mom. When I told them, it was like a bomb went off. Everyone started crying. I even cried. I promised them I would come back healthy and well. The day I left was a sunny day. My family members were very sad. Even I was sad because I didn’t want to leave my friends, the countryside, my school, my animals and all the agriculture there, my beloved siblings, my neighborhood, my aunts and uncles, my futbol team…Mymom handed me off to a man and started crying. It was very hard for me. As we left, I watched the scenery. I didn’t know where we were going. We passed through places I had never seen before. The next day, we got to the Guatemalan border. We had to cross a river there. I remember the man told me he was leaving me there with some other men. He said they would take me to a house to sleep and then we would continue the journey the day after.

Similar to Karla, Henry also spoke in detail about the contrast of the horrible time his spent detained by la migra (slang term used by Spanish speaking immigrants to refer to US immigration officers) and placed the in las hieleras, followed by the happiness he felt when he was finally moved to El Hogar.

The day I was detained was a very disastrous day. As soon as I crossed the river, there was la migra. They grabbed me and sat me on the floor. They asked us about our origin and family. There was a lady traveling with me. They put us in a van and took us to las hieleras. Las hieleras are a horrible place. I was scared because I could hear children crying and screaming. It was very cold and we had to sleep on the floor without blankets. I was cold and frustrated. We had to use aluminum foil to cover ourselves. We all shared it. There was an open toilet and everyone could see what you were doing. We had to drink water that came from a dark stream and the food was often rotten. I was interrogated. They called my father to let him know they had me and then I was moved to another hielera for a few hours and then to a third one. The third hielera was the last one. I was very happy when they finally moved me to a bus. When I got to El Hogar, I thought it was another hielera because it looked the same, but the bus driver told me that I was in Texas, and at El Hogar, they were going to give me food, clothes, a bathroom, and that they would be nice to me. I was so anxious I couldn’t wait. I went inside and started looking around. I felt as if I had landed on the moon. There were toys and pictures everywhere. I couldn’t believe I was getting food. I called my parents and told them not to worry because I was fine. My mom told me she missed me too much and I felt like going back but then I remembered how hard she worked making pupusas to sell and that gave me the strength I needed to keep going so I could help her. The next day,

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I was vaccinated and started school. I was able to go outside and play futbol with the other children. We had a routine. On my fifteenth day there, I was told I would be reunited with my family.

As Suárez-Orozco et al. (2008) explain, the dynamics of the migration process impose significant stress on families as a consequence of the long separations that are often endured. As they further elaborate, migration separations can result in two sets of disruptions in emotional attachments for the children “first from the parent, and then from the caregiver to whom the child has become attached during the parent-child separation” (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008, p. 58). When children are left behind, they feel abandoned and respond with despair and detachment. As they are reunified, children begin missing those who took care of them in their parents’ absence and some have reported feeling like strangers with their parents (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008). Henry shared the bitter sweetness of reuniting with his father but immediately longing for his mother.

When I was reunited with my dad, I was emotional. I cried because I was happy to see him but saddened to have left my mom. I felt blessed to be with family and I am grateful to both my parents for supporting me. My first day was overwhelming. My dad had to go to work right away and left me with my brother and stepmom. I cried because I didn’t know my stepmom and needed my mom. I miss her so much, she is a very special person, someone who gave me a good life. She knows I love her very much and I miss her. I also know she loves me and misses me. She tells me so when we talk on the phone. She cries and tells me she wants to see me and she needs me. I miss her caring nature and her meals, her pupusas. I also miss my friends and my futbol team. I miss playing with them and going to other cantones to play against other teams.

Like Karla, Henry had also been classified as a SIFE student although he seemed not have had any significant schooling gap other than not attending school during his border-crossing journey, which lasted less than two months. Henry also attended site A and when discussing his academic experiences since being placed in school in the US, he expressed discontent.

I only stopped going to school when I left. My experience at school here has been a disaster. There are people who view us as if we are garbage because we are outsiders and can’t speak English. Some teachers think that because I am an immigrant, I’m less worthy than others. Sometimes teachers make me feel like I should give up. I don’t like my SIFE classes.

Raul: “[My grandmother] is like my mom. She’s the one I love the most”

Raul is a 16-year-old student from site B. Like Karla, Raul did not remember his parents very well before coming to the United States. They left him as a baby with his grandparents in El Salvador while they looked for better opportunities in the United States. He was happy about leaving his country for a better future but sad about leaving his grandparents.

I always lived with my grandparents, almost since I was born. I did not know my parents. They have been here in the United States the whole time. I only knew them from pictures but we talked on the phone frequently. They had told me they were going to send for me once and it didn’t happen that time. But then later on, suddenly, they called me and I was about to ask them for a gift because I had made it to the next grade in school, I was going to ask for a computer and they told me they were sending for me. I was happy but also sad because now my grandmother would be by herself, since my older sister had already left. She’s like my mom. She’s the one I love the most. When I got here I was very emotional. The reunion with my parents was marvelous. It was grandiose. I had only seen them in pictures. I also had never seen such tall buildings. Life here is fine. I get along fine with my dad; he’s like a brother to me. But I miss my grandmother too much.

Raul did not discuss his immigration journey in detail, except for saying it took him only 25 days to get here and that he had to run from la migra a few times. When discussing his academic experiences, Raul shared that he spent about a year out of school waiting for his parent to send for him.

When I lived in El Salvador, I left school for a while because I thought my parents were going to send for me and then it didn’t happen. I was in 5th grade. They told me to stop going to school but then it turned out that they couldn’t send for me. I spent a year without going to school. I worked in the meantime. I had two jobs, one fixing cars and another one making bread. The money I made was to help my grandmother. She’s my mom to me. She raised my sister and I. We call her mom. I miss her too much. I call her about three times a week. She’s

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not doing well. We want to send for her but she doesn’t want to fly. She’s afraid. I work to send money to my grandmother, since she had a foot problem.

When this study was conducted, Raul had exited the SIFE program at his school and had been placed in mainstream and bilingual Regents level courses. Raul attended site B and spoke positively of his schooling experiences. He stressed the importance of learning English.

My first day of school here was complicated. I got lost. My sister’s friend helped me because my sister came here before me. I was first placed in the SIFE program. I had different teachers for different subjects. Most of my classes were in Spanish except for English class. I liked the classes and I liked my friends. I think they prepared me well for the regular classes. Most of my SIFE classes were in Spanish. I then asked for some classes in English, like science. I failed the science regents but at least I tried. English is the most important thing because if you speak two languages you are better. For me, the most important thing is English. I took math in a bilingual class and passed that regents. I took social studies and science in English and failed those regents but I tried. I will keep trying. In my English class, I always participate, even if I make mistakes, it’s ok. I can learn form my mistakes. I like learning English.

María: “I couldn’t even call them mom and dad because I had never done it”

María is a 17-year-old student from site B. María left El Salvador with her younger brother without notifying their parents who lived in the United States. She feared he would become involved withmara. Close to one hundred thousand unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, sought asylum in the United States between October 2013 and July 2015 (Renwick, 2016). These three Central American countries consistently rank among the most violent countries in the world, with gang- related violence making in El Salvador the world’s most violent country not at war (Renwick, 2016).

My brother and I decided to just leave our country and come meet our parents here without them knowing. We arranged things with el coyote on our own by asking people in our neighborhood and planned on calling our parents midway. My parents were here in the United States for about fourteen years. We lived with our grandmother and when she died, our mom arranged for us to go live with an aunt and uncle. I was about eleven. After about two years, they decided they didn’t want to have us anymore; they didn’t want to take care of us, so we left to go live with our paternal grandparents. It was very hard to have to move because we were not wanted. We got along well with our paternal grandparents. We were there until the day we left. They found out we were leaving the same day we left. They were very surprised and very sad. They told us not to do it but we already had our agreement made with los coyotes. My brother was fifteen and I was afraid he would become involved with las maras; many kids were involved. I was seventeen and four months pregnant. I also wanted to give my child a better life. So I told my baby’s father I wanted to leave and he left with my brother and I. Also a few cousins came with us. We didn’t have the money to pay los coyotes but we thought our parents would be able to pay, since they lived here. They paid. My baby was born here. We called our parents from Mexico and they arranged everything for us.

For María, as was the case for Raul, her mom had always been her grandmother. Similar to the other participants, María explained how much her life has changed since moving to the United States and also how much they miss those who took care of them in their countries. As Suárez-Orozco et al. (2008) explain, “immigrant youth are perpetually missing someone somewhere- making the immi- grant journey almost always bittersweet” (p. 70).

Life here is different. I used to spend time with my grandparents just talking. Here, we don’t spend time with our parents. They are always working and I am always working to help support my baby. We don’t see each other. I have a babysitter for my son. In the beginning, it was hard to reconnect. The love was not there, not because we didn’t want to, I just didn’t feel it. I was not used to living with my parents. I couldn’t even call them mom and dad because I had never done it before. I had to get used to it. We are doing better but it’s not easy. We have to get used to their love I guess. It feels different. My mom had always been my grandmother until she died.

Maria, like Raul, spoke positively of her schooling experiences in the United States. They both attended site B. When describing her classes, particularly referring to her relationship with her teachers, she used the term confianza, which, McLaughlin and Bryan (2003) describe as social trust based on a confidence in the other person to have one’s best interest in mind. Vasquez Heilig (2011)

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states that immigrant families place confianza in schools because they believe that the best interest of their children will be served. This term also came up several times during the pilot study that led to the larger study for which these testimonios were documented.

When I entered school here, they told me since I was an immigrant that had stopped going to school in my country and was coming with little knowledge, they told me they were going to enroll me in SIFE. They explained they couldn’t place me according to grade level because there were too many things I didn’t know and had to learn. I thought it was ok. I feel good in the SIFE program. I feel like I have many things to learn still. I like the SIFE program. Teachers are very nice. I trust them. There is a confianza y cariño between us. My aspirations were to come and go to school so that I can give my son a better future. Those are still my aspirations. I want to be a doctor and be able to give my son a good life and good future. I am saving money to be able to pay for school. Everyone in my family is surprised because even though I have a baby, I am able to save money. I don’t even buy clothes for myself, only for my baby.

In the testimonios just presented, participants discuss the various reasons for leaving their home country, including wanting to provide for their family, reuniting with their parents, or escaping gang violence. They also offer detailed descriptions of their journeys, including their torturous stay in what is now known to Latin American immigrants as las hieleras, and their feelings of hope and happiness when they were welcomed with big arms by shelters called El Hogar.

While educational experiences, both here and in their home countries, and future goals vary, all conversations brought up issues of separation, abandonment, and reunification. All participants have undergone a double separation; first from their parents, and later from their caretakers in order to reunite with their parents. These factors have made their, already difficult, journey an emotionally traumatic experience to have to live through at such a young age.

Examination of testimonios

As mentioned previously, this exploration was framed with a Latina feminist lens, which uses the ways Latinas teach, learn, live, and understand systems of oppression (Delgado Bernal, 2001). As such, it sought to confront dominant constructions of knowledge. When it comes to analyzing the testimonios documented, it is imperative to remain mindful of their living narrative status and of the notion of testimonios belonging to the narrator not to the interviewer (Urrieta, Kolano, & Jo, 2015). Additionally, “with testimonios, the researcher is displaced by the narrator; who uses the interviewer to get his/her message across to a wider, traditionally external and un(der)aware audience” (Urrieta et al., 2015, p. 51). To that end, the researcher is displaced by the testimonios documented, and becomes a recorder and reporter. Because testimonios are what Jara and Vidal (1986) call “narra- ciones de urgencia”, it is essential to discuss the themes that emerged as urgent from the testimonios documented. These categories surfaced as needing to be told:

(1) Family Disintegration as a Result of Migration (2) Detained While Crossing the Border (3) Reunification

Family disintegration as a result of migration

When asked about life back in their countries, although not asked specifically, students started by sharing stories about their family structures and relationships with their parents. Karla did not know her parents. She explained that her parents were too young when they had her. She had been told at a young age that her father had migrated to the United States and her mother abandoned her. She was ultimately taken in by aunt, who at the time was only 12 years of age, a child herself. Karla’s grandmother supported them financially from the United Sates by sending remittances. Raul and Maria, along with their siblings, were left as babies under the care of their grandparents, while their parents attempted to settle in the United States until they were able to send for them. They both

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mentioned not to really remember ever living with their parents or what they looked like, since they were so young when they had left. However, the relationship was kept alive via phone calls, letters, and gifts. It is common for migrants who have children to leave them behind due to the dangers implicated with traveling undocumented by land and for aspects that individuals cannot control, such as strict immigration laws abroad, to prolong the reunification of the family for many years (D’Emilio et al., 2007). Family dynamics maintained across international borders for long periods of time, are referred to by many scholars as transnationalism (Murphy & Mahalingam, 2004).

Henry grew up with his mother, while his father lived and worked in the United States. Henry’s father maintained a good relationship with him. He called him often and helped him financially. This house- hold dynamic is not unusual for transnational families. Suárez-Orozco, Todorova, and Louie (2001) maintain that immigrant children are most likely to have been separated from their fathers. In a study conducted in 2006, in a small city of La Union, El Salvador, called Piedras Blancas, a fourth grade teacher, reported that 17 of his 21 students had at least one parent abroad (Aizenman, 2006). Henry talked about how difficult it had been to leave his mother behind but felt he could help her financially if hemigrated to the US, as his father had done. The family structures of the testimoniantes have been deeply impacted by international migration, which, as discussed earlier, has a long history in the small country of El Salvador.

Detained while crossing the border

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) (2014), children who are unac- companied or separated from their families are especially at risk in places of immigration detention and are often dispossessed of their basic human rights. This may have been why some participants in this study were compelled to give testimonios about their experiences while detained at the border and also why some participants did not feel comfortable discussing their journey crossing the border. As detailed in their testimonios, two of the participants described at length, the upsetting experience of being detained in hieleras for long periods of time.

The United Nations Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has decided that, as a general rule, unaccompanied migrant children should not be detained, since alternatives to detention exist. They state that

given the detrimental effects that detention and family separation have been shown to have on children, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has called on States parties to the Convention to expeditiously and completely cease the detention of children on the basis of their immigration status. (IOM, 2014).

However, from the stories shared by both Karla and Henry, it is clear that unaccompanied minors, at the time of their journey, were still detained for long periods of time in these coolers termed by immigrants as hieleras. These experiences certainly left an impression on them. Karla spent a total of seven days in two different hieleras and Henry spent a length of time he could not recall in three different hieleras.

Numerous experts have indicated that these detention centers can have long-term mental and physical health consequences for children, even when used only for very short periods of time (IOM, 2014). A chief operating officer for Save the Children, who visited a detention center in McAllen, Texas, describes witnessing rooms with concrete walls and floors packed with exhausted, lonely, dehydrated, and dazed children being held like criminals with toilets with little or no privacy, absence of showers and beds, and an “overpowering smell of sweat and urine” forcing guards to wear masks (Carranza, 2014). These occurrences clearly impact the already trying experience of children leaving family members, and what they had always known as home behind, and entering a new territory with long lost or new family members.

Reunification

As argued previously, when families migrate, they do it in steps. Traditionally, the pattern used to be that the father would migrate first to establish himself in another country. He would send remittances home

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to the mother and children left behind, until it was financially possible to send for them. This is no longer the norm. According to Suárez-Orozco, Todorova, and Louie (2002), today’s demand for service workers attracts mothers from many developing countries, in which cases they leave their children in the care of extended family members, usually grandparents or aunts. In other cases, both mother and father migrate leaving the children in the care of others while they work and send remittances from abroad. Some of these scenarios are represented by the testimoniantes in this study. Transnational families often expect that the separation time will not be long and that migrants will be able to establish themselves in the host country and send for those left behind soon after departure (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2001). However, reunification with family member separated by international migration can be prolonged and happen many years after the migrants’ departure took place. In some instances, this separation is significant; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila (1997) maintain that 10 years may elapse before parents are reunited with their children.

Henry grew up with his mother. As it is the case for many children of migration, the departure was a time ofmixed feelings, there is an excitement about the prospect of reuniting with loved ones and a new life, but migrating entails leaving behind loved ones (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2002). Henry spoke about how emotional he was when he was reunited with his father. He described crying because he was happy to finally see his father but sad to have left hismom behind. Suárez-Orozco et al. (2002) report that when the family has evolved to include new parental figures and siblings during the separation period, the reunification is further complicated. This was the case for Henry, he described his first day as over- whelming and stated “my dad had to go to work right away and left me with my brother and stepmom. I cried because I didn’t know my stepmom and needed my mom”. Understandably, adaptation to new family dynamics is an added stressor to the reunification process.

Raul and Maria were left by both parents in the care of their grandparents. They could not remember exactly how many years they were separated because they were toddlers when their parents left. In both cases, the parents stayed in contact with them via phone calls, gifts, and remittances. At the time of the reunification, Raul was 14 and Maria was 16 years old. Raul described the moment of reunification with his parents as marvelous, but he misses his grandmother, whom he calls mamá, terribly. He calls her about three times a week and works to send her money regularly. WhenMaria was reunited, she felt like she did not know her parents. She couldn’t even bring herself to call her mothermamá. She simply had never done it before. According to Suárez-Orozco et al. (2002), family separations due to international migration greatly impact children emotionally, as they initially feel abandoned and miss their parent or parents, and once reunified, they begin missing whoever took care of them in their parents’ absence. Furthermore, when the separation period is significantly long, children and parents report feeling like strangers upon reunification.

Extended periods of separation time between loved ones can cause profound family transformations. In an interdisciplinary study involving 385 adolescents affected by migration from a variety of regions, Suárez-Orozco et al. (2002) found that children who were separated from their parents were more likely to report depressive symptoms than children who had not been separated. A study, conducted to compare children’s development and family functionality between children left in the care of others as a consequence of their parents’ migration and children living with their parents in Ecuador, found that while the process of migration benefits families financially, it has unfavorable consequences for children of migrants due to the loss of family structure (Panzeri Piras, 2004). Children separated from their parents for long periods of time have shown attachment difficulties and withdrawal upon reunification (Wilkes, 1992).

Implications and conclusion

While the testimonios presented in this article were part of a larger investigation into students’ perspectives of their school placement and academic identity, they tell stories of resistance and survival that go beyond school labels and academic trajectories. As explained earlier, students’ narraciones de urgencia came to the surface not only to inform pedagogical practices concerning

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labeling, placing, and educating students but also to complete our insufficient knowledge of their experiences and lived realities. Stories of family disintegration, border crossing hardships, and family reunification surfaced as needing to be told.

Some time after these testimonios were documented, I learned that Henry had dropped out of school. I asked him why, and he stated he was not making any academic progress and was reaching 20 years of age. His words during our conversations and his journal writing quickly resurfaced in my mind, how he felt like giving up and thought people viewed him like garbage. Because Henry was indeed under-credited and would most likely age out of the school system before meeting graduation requirements, I saw him as being pushed out by our traditional education system. Education researchers refer to students in Henry’s situation as pushouts. Pallas (1987) explain that increasing federal and state accountability standards present an unrealistic challenge for students such as English language learners, teen parents, and student workers. Henry mentioned he was considering the possibility of enrolling in his school’s Night School or a General Equivalency Diploma (GED) program but his school did not offer such programs for students who lacked English proficiency. The implications of this exploration for education and policy felt urgent after that conversation.

The exploration of these testimonios contributes knowledge that can be used to design effective programs for students that may have not been well-served by our current system. A significant finding was the unawareness of some of the testimoniantes of their classification and placement. In 2014, the New York State Education Department’s (NYSED) Board of Regents approved amend- ments to part 154 of the Commissioner’s Regulations (CR) Part 154 establishing legal requirements for the education of English Language Learners/Multilingual Learners (ELLs/MLLs) in New York State and calling for schools and districts to utilize a variety of methods for SIFE identification and placement. Additionally, the NYSED established a SIFE workgroup composed of teachers of ELLs, administrators, researchers, and other stakeholders to design supplemental identification, placement and instructional services for SIFE students, stressing the importance of serving them appropriately,

[a]s one of the most vulnerable at-risk subgroups of ELLs, this population requires a commitment from all stakeholders to develop innovative approaches in order to appropriately serve them. Meeting the needs of SIFE is a considerable challenge, but it is one that must be met in order to provide real opportunities to the students. Briefly, the descriptions of the components of the aforementioned NYSED SIFE Resources are: The SIFE Oral Interview Questionnaire and Guidance Document; The Multilingual Literacy SIFE Screener (MLS); The Writing Screener; and The SIFE English as a New Language (ENL) and Foundational Low Literacy Curriculum (NYSED, 2016).

Furthermore, one of the changes implemented states that if the student is identified as an ELL, and the Home Language Questionnaire (HLQ) indicates that the student has attended school in the United States (the 50 States and the District of Columbia) for less than twelve months and is two or more years below grade level in literacy in their home language and/or math due to inconsistent or interrupted schooling prior to arrival in the United States, the student shall also be identified as a Student with Inconsistent/Interrupted Formal Education (CR Section 154–2.2). This change broadens the range of students eligible for SIFE services.

These amendments, provided by the NYSED, highlight how important it is that school districts identify, place, and provide a specialized curriculum to assist SIFE students with their academic success. However, two of the testimonios explored here revealed no such guidelines were followed. Both testimoniantes attended site A. According to their testimonios, they were just provided with the schedules they should follow but no explanationwas offered, nor participation expected from students or parents in the decision making process. This is significant because one of those students dropped out of school shortly after these testimonioswere documented. A connection became very clear between how these two students were viewed and treated by site A’s procedure and programming and how they felt in relation to their schooling experiences and even future goals. Would they have spoken differently about their academic experiences had they been explained their classification and placement? Would Henry have dropped out had he been offered a clearer path toward academic success? Consequently, one of the implications emerging from this exploration is the recommendation that education professionals adhere

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to state guidelines, which are founded upon the latest research findings and advocate for equal educa- tional opportunities and the integration of all students into the school community and larger society. It is crucial that schools serving large population of immigrant youth take some time to understand students’ experiences and consider the impact of their decisions. Those two testimonios cry out for the necessity to form partnerships with parents and students in the decisions that will affect not only the students’ academic success but also their positioning in schools. Students from site A shared feeling different, separated (Karla), and like giving up (Henry). Had they been included in the decisions that affected their academic trajectories or explained their placement, classification, educational plan, and its implications, perhaps their feelings would have been different.

In addition to implications for education, this exploration has research implications for the use of testimonios with immigrant youth. Testimonios are not just data. They are authentic stories that belong to people who open up to someone and trust this researcher or recorder to use this information in a way that would help others, and possibly even help them. Research with testimonios brings up the notion of integrity, legitimacy, and doing words justice. Therefore, one of the implications for research, stemming out of this study, is to honor participants’ narraciones de urgencia with the same significance that we give to the data surrounding research questions and theoretical frameworks. Testimonios as a methodology of qualitative research is intended to “articu- late an urgent voicing of something to which one bears witness” (Blackmer Reyes & Curry Rodríguez, 2012). It is also situated as liberationist pedagogy using writing as a means of liberation. Further, as explained by Blackmer Reyes and Curry Rodriguez, like Freire’s (1968) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, testimonio empowers the speaker or narrator to transform their stories as an acknowl- edgment of the revolutionary aspect of literacy with the goal of naming oppression and arresting its action. To that end, testimonios by nature are personal, sensitive, and render the testimoniante vulnerable. In giving their testimonio, they have opened a window exposing intimate lived realities, a window which now the researcher, in documenting these testimonios, will open even further to invite others to bear witness to these realities. González et al. (2003) urge that testimonios be used as pedagogy to educate future teachers and to raise the consciousness of those who may be unfamiliar with the experiences of immigrant students. Opening spaces for students such as Karla, Henry, Maria, and Raul to tell their stories can be a valuable tool for moving toward the better under- standing of the experiences of newcomer immigrant youth and allow pre- and in- service teachers and teacher educators to create spaces and pedagogical methods that provide equitable educational opportunities. It is imperative that educators placed in front of immigrant youth understand that the students in their classrooms are more than just English language learners.

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Appendix

Sample Original Journal Writing- Karla

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