Reflections From a DACAmented Teacher: Navigating the Implications of Status Within Multiple, Shifting Contexts

• In Event: 81.027 - Participating in Action: Shifting Social Contexts and the Lives of Immigrant-Origin Students

Abstract

On June 15, 2012, President Obama issued an executive order known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) which granted eligible undocumented youth with renewable work authorizations and temporary deportation relief. Prior to this, undocumented individuals could not obtain lawful employment (Abrego, 2006). Now for the first time, undocumented young people were not only able to obtain a driver’s license and open a bank account, but they were also able to legally pursue careers including becoming educators (Wong, 2016).

Due to the relatively recent enactment of DACA and the new presence of undocumented educators in the classroom, very little attention has been paid to DACAmented educators and the ways in which their legal status impacts their teaching (Treviño et al., 2017). Although a growing body of literature has explored the ways in which intersecting identities impact educators’ emotions and teaching practices (Chubbuck & Zembylas, 2008; Rivera Maulucci, 2013), there is still a need to highlight how undocumented educators navigate the implications of their legal status within school structures and in the context of shifting policies, particularly as the sociopolitical landscape has rapidly changed with the rise of Donald Trump and his anti-immigrant rhetoric (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2006).

As an undocumented/DACAmented educator, I engage in an autoethnographic study to critically reflect on the ways in which my status impacts my emotions and teaching practices in the context of the current sociopolitical climate. Autoethnographies as counterstories by educators with marginalized identities provide critical insight about the ways in which such educators navigate their multiple identities within the classroom and how their lived experiences inform their teaching practices and philosophies (Ladson-Billings, 1998; Roth, 2005). During the past two years, I was an educator at two predominantly Latinx neighborhood high schools in a large, Midwestern metropolitan area. The primary research question guiding this study is as follows: How does my undocumented status and positionality impact my instructional or pedagogical choices, actions, student and/or teacher interactions, and teaching philosophy?

Drawing upon journal entries, teaching notes, and recollections, I outline vignettes that highlight the contradictions and dilemmas I faced as I navigated my status while teaching in a context in which students raised questions and voiced fears about the pervasive anti-immigrant discourse. Although I didn’t share my status with my students, I was explicit about my stance on issues related to immigration as I tried to alleviate their concerns. Yet, while I was teaching, I was also confronted with the reality that DACA could be (and temporarily was) rescinded, and I would lose my short-lived opportunity as an educator. The vignettes illustrate how I navigated personal, school, state, and national level contexts which impacted my emotional well-being and teaching practices (see figure 1). Ultimately, this autoethnographic analysis provides critical insight on how the multiple shifting contexts that I navigated can also have profound implications on undocumented educators across the country who are now a part of our classrooms. Examining this is particularly crucial in the current context in which the future of DACA remains uncertain.

Author

• Syeda Samana Raza, University of Illinois at Chicago