Dreaming Otherwise: Creative Policy Negotiation and Creating Communities of Recognition for Multilingual Immigrant Youth

• In Event: Addressing and Dismantling Intersecting Inequities to Promote Educational Justice for Newcomer Youth

Abstract

Objectives
This paper highlights the work of school leaders whose are focused on creating communities of support and recognition for multilingual immigrant youth and considers how these leaders actively negotiate and resist policies that they feel are incoherent with the values of their school communities and the needs of the youth they serve. Public schools continue to be sites of political contestation, subject to the agendas of politicians and reformers who seek to enact specific nationalist or neoliberal visions for society. Much has been written related to the so-called “unintended consequences of policies” and how nationalist and high stakes policy regimes play out within the spaces of schools for youth of color and immigrant youth (Menken, 2006; Suarez, Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2015).

Methods & Data
This paper draws on case study research within Internationals Network for Public Schools high schools focused on the everyday interactions and practices within schools that were increasing opportunities for immigrant youth. It looks across multiple studies over time to trace how resistance to incoherent policy mandates and creative policy negotiation has been a core value within High schools in the International Network for Public Schools (Jaffe-Walter, 2008; Jaffe-Walter & Villavicencio, 2023).

Preliminary Findings
In the early days of the first school, International High School at LaGuardia Community College, which was established in 1985, school leaders brought educators together to collectively consider how the school might better serve the needs of its immigrant students. After a period of intensive observation and discussion, educators decided to change the structure of the school by establishing extended class periods for project-based work, heterogeneous student groupings, dedicated time in the school week for teacher collaboration, and a democratic governance structure. To implement these new structures that were not aligned with the logic of external policies around staffing, scheduling, and financing, school leaders engaged in extensive negotiations with the union, the Board of Education, and the state.
Later, leaders of the INPS network came together to resist high stakes testing mandates that were incoherent with the needs of their newly arrived multilingual students which lead to the development of an innovative system of portfolio assessments used by the schools which is now being piloted by New York State for use in other schools. More recently, an INPS school leader (and co-author on this paper) has been instrumental in working with her faculty to create an alternative teacher inquiry process that was more aligned with modes of teacher learning in her school and which fostered more responsive schools for her students.

Significance
Reflecting on different instances of creative policy negotiation within INPS schools, this paper considers the possibilities for leaders and educators in other schools serving multilingual immigrant youth. It explores questions such as: How have generations of leaders within the INPS network learned and passed down commitments to creative policy negotiation? What solidarities and relationships make this work possible and what factors limit it? To what extent should resistance to dehumanizing policies be a core competency of leaders serving minoritized communities?

Author

• Reva Jaffe-Walter, Montclair State University