Momentum They Already Carry: Ancestral Momentum, Arrested Momentum, and Institutional Conditions in Urban Schools

• In Event: Enhancing Educational Outcomes for Multilingual and Immigrant Students

Abstract

This paper introduces Ancestral Momentum and Arrested Momentum as a leadership framework for understanding how urban secondary schools serving undocumented, recent-arrival, and first-generation students either activate or suppress inherited cultural, cognitive, linguistic, and motivational resources. Drawing from deculturalization, curriculum violence, culturally organized learning, and motivational theory, the paper argues that schools must redesign curriculum, relationships, and institutional routines to transform student identity from marginal background into academic rigor, belonging, and engagement.

Author

• Alejandro Macias, University of Southern California