Newcomers as Citizens: Learning From Missed Opportunities in the Sheltered EL Social Studies Classroom

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 3:35 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Civic Learning and Culturally Responsive Practices (Table 3)

Abstract

This paper explores how high school students who are newcomers to the United States construct citizen identities in a sheltered social studies class. Framed by Critical Race Theory and LatCrit and situated in a demographically changing midwestern U.S. community during a politically contentious election season, it highlights missed opportunities to connect the life and curriculum of the school to newcomer students’ lives in meaningful and justice-oriented ways. Attending to missed opportunities, what did not happen, sheds light into the spaces where inequity is born and offers insight into how we might approach remedy and repair for equitable citizenship with intentionality.

Author

• Tricia Gray, University of Nebraska - Lincoln