“Building as We Go”: Educators’ Constraints to Supporting Central American Unaccompanied Youth in California Schools

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 5:10 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Cultivating Hope: Facilitating Resilience and Healing Among Youth (Table 5)

Abstract

This study seeks to understand and support the academic and socioemotional needs of Central American unaccompanied minors. Using a sociohistorical trauma-reducing framework (Petrone & Stanton, 2021), it explores how educators (e.g., teachers, school counselors, social workers) in California public schools work with this student population. Through in-depth interviews, educators identified different constraints they faced in their work with this student population, including difficulty identifying and tracking students, schools being ill-equipped to support students, and colleagues with limited understanding of the unique circumstances of this student population. These findings suggest that schools are complicit in not addressing the different traumas unaccompanied minors experience or are even perpetuating them, demonstrating the structural limitations of schools to reduce to fully support these students.

Authors

• Mackenzie Rodriguez, Chapman University

• Braulio Campos Gil, Chapman University

• Stephany Cuevas, Chapman University

• Martha C. Franco, California State University - Long Beach