Mirroring Students' and Teachers' Classroom Experiences to Address the Challenges of Transnationalism in Mexican Schools

• In Event: The Students We Share and the Teachers We Need Between the US and Mexico

Abstract

The challenges of integrating students with US experiences into Mexican schools have been fairly well-documented over the last 15 years. Some scholars refer to these students as “invisible” because their US-based knowledge, experiences, and identities often go un-acknowledged (e.g., Zúñiga & Hamann, 2009). Yet teachers can also become invisible when administrators prioritize students’ or other voices and implement new strategies without consulting them as central actors in classrooms (Sanchez García & Hamann, 2016). In this paper, we examine the perspectives of students and teachers who “mirror” the challenges of transnationalism in Mexican schools. Igoa (1995) recognized the need for immigrant children to find a “reflection” of themselves in other people, such as their classmates and/or teachers, with the hope that the child has a form of acquaintance with the new environment. Mirroring the experiences of transnational students and their teachers in Mexico provides a lens to examine the worlds where students and teachers are constantly interacting. We conclude by making recommendations oriented towards teacher preparation in migrant contexts in Mexico.

Teachers are one of the first links for migrant students to their new community context. Seeing students and teachers as protagonists in teaching and learning processes is necessary to meet the different challenges of transnational education—and the opportunities that students’ transnationalism bring into classrooms. In this paper, we analyze transcripts of semi-structured interviews with transnational students and their Mexican teachers. We examine the lives of 10 boys and girls who arrived in Morelos (just south of Mexico City) between 2010 and 2012--children between 8 and 13 years old with previous school experiences in the US. In particular, we analyze the challenges and understandings that teachers have when transnational students arrive into their classrooms, as well as their pedagogical responses.

We organize our findings into three themes: I) transnationalism, II) educational transitions, and III) future aspirations in one or both countries. We find that transnational students turn obstacles and challenges into opportunities that allow them to move back and forth between the two countries, using their understandings of both systems and their social networks (Román-González, Carrillo Cantú, & Hernández-León, 2016). Teachers need support to appreciate these students’ experiences, to know how they can encourage a sense of community, love, friendship, and companionship in classrooms. By juxtaposing the views of Mexican teachers and transnational students, we found that schools can do more to provide needed resources and supports. Namely,
1) professional development should be designed to help teachers and administrators learn about the educational and migratory trajectories of transnational students to improve welcome protocols to the school and their classrooms;
2) Instructional guides are needed to integrate the cultural knowledge and practices of migrant families into the classroom; and
3) Teachers need many more curricular resources that incorporate the curricular knowledge and linguistic and cultural practices of transnational students.

Related policies and actions in Mexico are needed to implement these recommendations. For example, school-based programs to teach Spanish as a second language are needed in Mexico, as well as closer parent-teacher collaborations to incorporate family practices in the classroom and vice versa.

Authors

• Betsabé Román González, University of California - San Diego

• Juan Sanchez Garcia, Normal School, Miguel F. Martinez