if there is that—it could be their background in education. It could be that they didn't have the most—the best education, early education. It could be the communities that they come from here in Boston. But it just seems like they are sometimes the kids who have it the hardest. . . . But I think there is a big Dominican population in Boston, too. So, maybe that's kind of why. It feels like it's harder for them, that they're involved in more of the outside, negative things outside of here.
Ms. Thompson’s description of Dominican students sheds light on a deficit perspective that Latin@ students may have to navigate.
While there was ample evidence in the interview data that the teaching staff recognized diversity among Latin@s at Hilltop, our analysis revealed that asking or talking about Latin@
language learners or recent immigrants. Hilltop is a school with a large Latin@ ELL population. But the ELL population is representative of more than just Latin@s, which the teachers seemed to recognize. However, teaching staff rhetorically confounded “Latin@” students with “ESL” or “immigrant.” Mr. Bryant conflates Hispanic and ELL teachers:
And just to say something very quickly about the Hispanics, the ESL teachers, these ESL teachers at this school do something that I've never seen before. The school year is out. It was over. They're in the summer. They literally will go to [Dominican Republic], spend the summer there. They'll go to Spain. They literally immerse themselves into the culture, so that when they come back here, if a kid is doing something, they say, okay, I
understand that. . . . So, you have teachers here who go really above and beyond to educate the student at all levels. But I think that most of the teachers here are really dedicated to educating all students, particularly those of minority, the Haitians and the Dominicans or the Cape Verdeans.
In this example, we can see the way Mr. Bryant ends his answer, recognizing the racial and ethnic diversity of the ELL population in the school. However, his answer starts off by referencing “Hispanic kids” and the over-the-summer work that “the ESL teachers” do to meet their students’ learning needs. Mr. Bryant refers to Spanish-speaking countries as places that the teachers traveled to. We saw this rhetorical “Latin@,” “ESL,” “immigrant” relationship in most of the teaching staff interviews. While the way that teachers discuss Latin@ students is
problematic, the ways that the teaching staff also talked about the multiple forms of diversity within the Latin@ community at Hilltop indicates that the teaching staff had a nuanced view of the diversity of their Latin@ students’ experiences.
ESL/immigration status
Marcos, an older Honduran ninth grader who recently immigrated to the United States, described how he ended up at Hilltop:
Well, since I had the problem with immigration, they took me and they told me that I had to study. My father made himself responsible that I came over; they told him that I needed to study. They gave us the papers where we could go. We went, they told us where we could go, the schools that spoke Spanish, because initially, well I don’t know much [English] now, but I know a little bit, but when I came I didn’t know anything. I needed a school where they spoke Spanish, and where I went to leave the papers [at registration], they told me about [school name], that it was near us and they spoke Spanish.
From our interviews with students and teachers, as well as our observation data, it was clear that Hilltop serves a substantial population of students for whom English is not their first language. Hilltop has developed the reputation of being a school that is welcoming to Spanish- speaking, if not other, recent immigrants to Boston.
In the previous section we showed the ways that the label “ESL” was often, sometimes inappropriately, connected to the experiences of Latin@ students. We asked both students and teachers about the ways in which students of different racial or ethnic backgrounds might be interacting socially, academically, or otherwise. While our questions tended to focus on race and ethnicity, the students and teachers at Hilltop were more likely to respond in terms of English language proficiency as the characteristic most likely to cause segregation among students. Mr. Bryant has a perception that students who are recent immigrants tend to be more motivated
academically driven than their peers. Like Mr. Bryant, Ms. Davis expressed a sense that the ESL students had an exceptional drive to succeed academically:
I'm trying to think back to the eight years I taught ninth grade, because I feel like so many of my ESL students really feel and have that desire to learn. They can see how relevant it is for them. When I was teaching ninth grade, I had a lot more of a challenge to help the students to see the relevance of their education, how it could be important in their lives. And that's why every day it's like, how can we get students to see how education can help them?
In other words, Ms. Davis and other teachers seemed to indicate in words and in actions a commitment to meeting ESL students where they are academically and moving them forward to meet higher standards. A field note excerpt from an observation of an ESL class at Hilltop also demonstrates a teacher working to meet the needs of her students:
Class is now engaged in a read-aloud. “Do you know what ‘go mad’ means? It means to go crazy,” Ms. Brown says in response to female student (brown skinned) who is reading a passage aloud. As female student reads aloud, other students in the class read along with “The Boy with Striped Pajamas.” Now another female student reads aloud while other students read/listen along. Ms. Brown stops the reading after 2 minutes and asks clarifying questions. “Have you ever had a time when your parents told you not to laugh at someone if you don't know their story?” Ms. Brown asks. “Yes, I used to laugh at old people,” male student says. . . . “I want to see you working with someone and talking in English,” Ms. Brown says to the class as they work on worksheet she has just handed out. The ESL teacher engages her students in authentic literacy activities to build English proficiency and comprehension, pacing the activity and pausing to gauge her students’
comprehension, and accessing students’ prior knowledge to build understanding of the text. In other words, we saw parallels between the aspects of the ESL classes that students indicated they appreciated/helped their learning and the practices we observed in ESL classrooms.
In summary, while students and teachers were likely to describe ways that ESL students were socially and academically isolated from their peers with greater language proficiency, teachers regarded ESL students as highly motivated to succeed academically relative to their U.S.-born counterparts. This high regard for the motivation of Hilltop’s ESL students seemed consistent with the teaching practices we observed for ESL students and the ways the ESL students themselves characterized their satisfaction with the ESL classes.
Academic Supports and Interventions
The second prominent theme demonstrated the ways in which teachers supported the positive development and academic achievement of Black and Latino males. In addition to critical race theory, we utilized an inductive lens to allow unanticipated themes to arise from a rigorous and close reading of the participants’ interview data. What emerged from this level of analysis was a set of practices that were identified and corroborated across and between student interviews, teacher interviews, and classroom observations. In addition to strong teaching practices, the strategies most frequently mentioned were the school’s case management system and an array of afterschool programs. For example, Alex, an 11th-grade Haitian student, shared his opinion of good teaching: