CPL Facilitator Sunisa Nuonsy, who is a PhD candidate in Urban Ed and a big advocate for immigrants in schools, opened this virtual CPL meetup with an entry ticket, and Leaders went around and shared their responses to this prompt: “Where are you from? What is one unique element from your culture or upbringing that brings a source of pride of who you are becoming? I.E. Where you are from could be your country, borough, city you currently reside in or have lived in that speaks to who you are as a person, etc.”
After everyone had an opportunity to share, Nuonsy shared her own story as a refugee from Laos. She introduced the CUNY Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY-IIE) Condensed Principles, showing them on screen, and Leaders commented on what they noticed, often drawing from their own experiences as immigrants or as descendants of immigrants, responding to and reflecting on the principles.
Nuonsy shared some of her teaching experiences as a high school teacher working with immigrant students, and how she valued their knowledge(s) and helped them to feel heard, seen, and a sense of belonging in her classroom. She also shared some of the CUNY-IIE leadership team’s plans to support our immigrant students as well as the faculty who teach them.
She showed us a video from the Supporting Immigrants in Schools series and asked the Leaders to think through three questions: “How does the school support immigrant students? What stood out to you? What was surprising or confusing? What would you like to know more about?” Notably, she asked one of the leaders to read the questions aloud before watching the video, and paused a couple of times while showing the video to give the Leaders time to reflect on what they’ve watched. These are some great strategies to transform a passive activity like watching a video into an active, engaging activity. We entered breakout rooms to discuss the questions in smaller groups.
In my group, we shared several reactions and reflections. You’re not able to ask a student directly their immigrant status. One strategy the teachers use is to share their own experiences as immigrants, rather than ask students direct questions that would be invasive. Supporting students to apply for college is crucial because the college application process is hard to navigate and can feel scary. Students may not be interested in applying for college because they fear deportation.
In our big share-out afterwards, groups shared several reflections. Some never received this kind of support that was shown in the video (e.g., resources for parents, kindness and understanding, having information and a dream team in the school system, help navigating financial aid). If you don’t have the information you need (and the requirements are always changing), you might assume you can’t go to college. In the video, they spoke to the experience of the social experience of being an immigrant, which isn’t often talked about. The support in the school went beyond school hours and spaces: people attended other meetings with the students, carrying forward the support into other spaces. As a small school and tight-knit community, they needed help from community-based organizations for more support to make the impossible possible. One thing that was confusing for the viewers was related to FAFSA that Nuonsy was able to answer: you used to fill in “000” numbers on a physical application and a school counselor would take care of it; now, you can do everything online and click to say that you don’t have a social security number. The info can get miscommunicated and rules are constantly changing, so it’s great to get support from teachers and counselors who are in the know.
Nuonsy continued by sharing three sides to a supportive ecosystem: the guidance counselor who can sit with students to fill out applications together; an immigrant liaison who keeps the community connected to resources and information; and educators who support the students. There are more videos on elementary schools, refugees in schools and more modules to educate yourself further on the issues, activities you could try to create a more supportive environment for immigrant students. The activities walk you through how to do this work where you are in the school system. There are also resources for trauma-informed teaching. We also looked at the website for Undocumented and Immigrant Student Programs, which includes links to local campus Immigrant Success Liaisons.
CUNY-IIE also has a really cool FAQ that’s organized based on who and where you are in your journey to answer relevant questions. Nuonsy made this an interactive activity by providing us a scenario: if we want to help someone in a specific situation, how could you use the FAQ to find answers and help them? There are multiple places to start in the FAQ, and Leaders shared different strategies and starting points as well as where they found answers.
We closed the meet-up with a group discussion of things that surprised us, what we learned. The Leaders will be writing new blog posts soon, including take-aways from this session and sharing their process of writing poetry for the upcoming poetry slam.
