Habits and Attitudes of Successful International Students: Implications for Teachers and Teacher Educators

• In Event: Voices From the “New American Mainstream”: Lessons for the Teachers of Today’s Immigrant Youth

Abstract

This paper summarizes findings from a study about the habits and attitudes of recently immigrated international students attending high school in the U.S. The paper will synthesize selected findings from the forthcoming book Portraits of Promise: Voices of Successful Immigrant Students, to be published in 2012 by Harvard Education Press and will focus specifically on their implications for teachers and teacher education.

Told largely through the voices of students themselves, the Portraits of Promise project draws on interviews with adolescents who attend schools in New York City and California that serve large populations of adolescents that have recently immigrated to the United States. A primary question the project is intended to investigate is, “What assets do these young people possess that help them succeed with the various challenges of being newcomer students in an American high school?” Success in the study is defined broadly, beyond grades and test scores, and includes factors such as: coping with the challenges associated with the first few weeks in a new country; using both English and one’s language of origin to understand academic content; using peer relationships effectively to facilitate learning; establishing relationships with teachers that are helpful and supportive; managing negative peer pressure successfully.

Data sources for the study include focus group interviews with students who identify themselves as successful (approximately 12 students from each site); in-depth follow-up interviews with a subset of these students; review of participating students’ written work, grades, and attendance records; informal interviews with the students’ teachers; and classroom observations. For the proposed paper, I will synthesize a subset of findings from the overall study and present excerpts from student interviews to give voice to the issues raised in the synthesis.

Findings from the New York-based interviews, though preliminary at this point, suggest that the study will point to numerous implications for teachers and teacher education. Students in the New York focus groups consistently identified “hard work” and “learning English” as the most important factors in their success at school, although many added that being allowed to work with peers in same-language groups has also benefited them academically, particularly when they were new to the U.S. Participants cited multi-year teacher relationships as supportive and appreciated when teachers truly listened to them (instead of dismissing them because they were not native English-speakers).

Author

• Michael Sadowski, Bard College