Graffiti Walls: Migrant Students and the Art of Communicative Languages

• In Event: Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: Migrant Education History, Culture, and Practice: Mobilizing Fields of Hope and Possibility

Abstract

In 2012-2013 close to 350,000 students, nationwide, were eligible for migrant education services. From pre-school (2 years) to Out-of-School Youth (22 years), migrant families rely on MEP services to overcome the challenges they face when moving through different schools across cities, districts or states. Aside from high mobility, migrant students go through a stage of anonymization in which the lack of sense of belonging can often compromise school performance, as well as disrupt the development of a healthy self-esteem. School districts, lead by draconian misconceptions, group them as English Language Learners or Immigrant students. Though these labels may apply to a large number of migrant students, the reality is: migrant students have specific needs that must be understood, identified, addressed and included in all the supplemental programs designed by educational agencies working with migrant populations.
To provide migrant students with the opportunity to explore their languages, cultures, identities, and communities, three teachers and a university professor developed an interdisciplinary curriculum, Graffiti Walls©, to de(fence) the voices of migrant students, whom are often silenced by schools. Using Habermas’ post-Marxist theory on communicative and strategic actions as their framework, students and teachers analyzed their identities, languages, cultures and communities through various artistic expressions – poetry, photography, drawing, painting, tagging, and graffiti.
In the past five years, over 1,500 migrant students in Imperial Valley, California, have had the opportunity through Graffiti Walls© to: a) write and draw bio-poems that describe their personas and to respond to the question, Who am I? b) create “Digital Cultural Collages,” portraying their communities; c) design “Cultural Tags” that depict in a single signature their cultural identity; and d) assemble these tags creating a Graffiti Wall. Inspired by the work of Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street), Tupac Shakur (The Rose that Grew on Concrete), Matt de la Peña (Mexican WhiteBoy), R. J. Palacio (Wonder), Vik Muniz (Wasteland) and Sebastião Salgado (The Salt of the Earth), among others, migrant students have been able to: experiment with different forms of expression, own their work, and perhaps most importantly, to empower themselves.
The outcomes of Graffiti Walls© suggest that when teachers create programs specifically with the needs of migrant students in mind, in where students can critically think, listen, read, write, draw, paint, and spray, education moves from a scripted sequence of strategic actions to the drive for communicative actions. Moreover, migrant students who participated in Graffiti Walls© equipped themselves with communicative tools to convey information in a mindful way; and are able to establish social relationships based on respect and appreciation, as well as become adept in expressing their own opinions, feelings, self-identity and communal belonging, and thus raising their emotional quotient and overall wellbeing.
The challenge is now for LEAs to find similar pathways that can facilitate the dialogue between teachers and migrant students. As Castells (2011) points out, communication enriches learning. Without communication, education becomes a strategic action that treats migrant students as if they were anonymous objects rather than as powerful human beings.

Author

• Fernando Rodriguez-Valls, California State University - Fullerton