This article explores the fundamental role of teachers' lives as they work to create and maintain a small dual-language school. The Appleton Bilingual School (ABS) is chartered by the Appleton Area School District in northeast Wisconsin. ABS was established with the support of city and school district officials and has maintained that support…

This article presents how over two summers the authors worked with students from Syria, Pakistan, Tanzania, Mexico, Honduras, China, and Vietnam to create their own chalkboard project. They wrote "I am" poems and "I remember" memories. They engaged in the arts, creating their personal comic book heroes and leaving inspired…

This research studies a justice-based program that was originally developed from an initiation by a community agency seeking a collaboration with a postsecondary program. For this article, service-learning is defined as an experience in which students are provided an opportunity to participate in an organized activity in the community that serves…

There has been a tremendous increase in the debate regarding who should be allowed to move to the United States, for how long, where persons may come from, and if they should become rightful citizens. This article focuses on a study that was conducted at a university in the western U.S. The purpose was to investigate current counselor education…

As the population of English language learners (ELLs) in schools increases, school leaders seek to build more culturally and linguistically sustaining school communities. Often, the first step in these efforts is to intentionally invite ELLs and their families to school-based events with the hope of involving parents in their children's formal…

Changing demographics in the United States have for many years pointed toward a developing minority-majority within the U.S. population. Projections from the U.S. Census (2015, 2016) signal that the aggregation of all minority groups will form a majority (i.e., a minority-majority) of the overall population by 2044. Despite making these many…

In this article, two co-authors share their immigrant stories of persecution and flight to the U.S. Txerthoj Vang is a refugee from Laos who supported the U.S. as part of the Hmong secret army during the Vietnam era. Mayra Pasayes is an immigrant from El Salvador who fled that country's civil war during the 1980s. Though they each faced a high…

Historically, American public schools played an important role in assimilating immigrants with different cultures into the mainstream. This process is currently occurring in other parts of the world that are undergoing demographic changes due to immigration. Some of these countries have turned to multicultural education as a tool to respond to…

Schooling in the U.S. is ideological by design (Althusser, 1971; Apple, 1990; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008). It can justify and further the inequitable, hierarchical, and stratified economic, social, and cultural attitudes of a society (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985; Ayers, 2004; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Eubanks, Parish, & Smith, 1997).…

The phenomenon of migration as it is known today must be understood in the larger context of the globalized economy and the "race to the bottom" that characterizes the multinational corporate relationship with the global South. A deeper understanding of the ways in which migration today is rooted in the machinations of the globalized…

Little empirical research has examined the cause of language shift or the factors related to the heritage language (HL) development of language minority groups. This study investigates the factors that facilitate or inhibit the HL development of second-generation Korean Americans, with a focus on adolescent HL learners, who go through phases in…

In 2005, a group of concerned parents who had arrived in the United States as refugees from war-torn Somalia received approval from their local school district to establish the Iftin Charter School (ICS). The K-8 school continues to engender hope and intellectual strength in its students and parents. ICS finds itself uniquely equipped to meet the…

America's history books abound with stories of immigrants who contributed to the development of this country. In terms of social studies curriculum, all states require schools to teach about immigration. However, the question is how to teach this topic in a manner that will give students--elementary through high school--a better understanding of…

California's Proposition 227, or the Unz Initiative, had as its main focus the requirement that English learners be taught only in English, based on the belief that these children could learn English in one year. This led to the dismantling of many bilingual programs in K-12 schools across California. A team of faculty from California State…

Schools across the United States serve children from families that have crossed the U.S. border without documents. Some of these children have crossed the border themselves. For teachers and other educators, the Supreme Court decision of "Plyler v. Doe" (1982) has set the precedent that all children in the United States are entitled to a…