Transforming Schools: Centering HMong Agents, Belonging, and Inclusivity

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium examines how HMong people forge spaces of belonging in schools that historically casted them as outsiders. Although schools boast about their inclusive educational policies and initiatives, HMong people must continually negotiate through a system that marginalizes and invisibilizes their existence. Each paper interrogates how HMong people experience and respond to such institutional forces of control and/or privileges in education domestically (i.e., United States) and/or globally (i.e., Thailand). This panel addresses critical questions about envisioning inclusive and transformative education for marginalized students. By centering how HMong people redefine concepts of belonging, the papers in this session encourage academic institutions to critically reflect on and amplify HMong people’s contribution to educational diversity and inclusive learning environments.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific Americans

Chair

• Stacey J. Lee, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Papers

• "Ib txwm nyob tej teb tej chaws no": Resistance and Belonging Through Storywork - Choua P. Xiong, University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh

• "My Family Away From Home": Transformative Resistance of HMong Students and Student Organizations - Kaozong Nancy Mouavangsou, University of California - Merced

• Redefining Diversity, Inclusion, and Resistance: HMong Students' Lived Experiences in the Neoliberal University - May Kao Xiong, University of California - Merced

• Untwining Threads: Centering Hmong Parents' Experiences of Supporting Their Adolescent Children's Education - Mao S Lee, University of Minnesota