This Isn’t Our School: Using Placemaking Literacies to Explore Children’s Experiences After School Closure

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Policies, Mattering and Praxis: Research in the Social Context of Education within Schools

Abstract

Working alongside children during the closure of their neighborhood elementary school, this postcritical ethnography utilizes placemaking literacy invitations to explore real-time experiences and impacts of a school closure policy. In this paper focused on the fall semester after the closure, findings include: a) Children notice different racial dynamics at their new school and discuss it explicitly with each other as they seek to make sense of this new place and their sense of belonging.; b) Children’s sense of belonging at their new school is complicated by mourning the loss of their old school. This study shows the affectively intense experiences of children experiencing forced displacement and the impacts of closing a longstanding neighborhood school.

Author

• Kristin Valle Geren, University of South Florida