California Educators on the Schooling Experiences of Central American Unaccompanied Minors

Introduction by: Helen Stec, New York University and Sophia Rodriguez, New York University

Guest Blogger: Martha C. Franco, PhD, Assistant Professor, California State University, Long Beach

In this blog, Dr. Martha C. Franco from California State University, Long Beach draws from a qualitative study to examine how educators in California public schools conceptualize and respond to the needs of Central American unaccompanied minors. Using a sociohistorical trauma-reducing framework, Dr. Franco highlights structural barriers to resources and identification, academic and linguistic challenges shaped by interrupted schooling, unmet mental health and socioemotional needs, and the burden educators assume as advocates within trauma-producing systems. This blog demonstrates how supporting unaccompanied minors' ability to thrive in schools cannot rest solely on educators; rather, it is a collective effort that requires intentional multilevel changes at the district, school, and educator levels.

We welcome additional comments and reflections. Please email us at: sophia.rodriguez@nyu.edu or through the Immigrant Ed Next website.

By: Martha C. Franco

“They’ve never been to school, so they get here, and then they get placed into a grade according to their age. So, for example, I have a 16-year-old that came from the rural part of Guatemala, hardly ever went to school, and he's placed in 9th grade or in 10th grade. and I'm like, “Oh, my gosh! He's expected to know how to read and write. He doesn’t even know how to read and write in his own native language.”

-Lilian, clinical social worker in Alameda County

Since 2014, over 460,000 unaccompanied minors have been released to sponsors across the United States. These are children and youth who have traveled from countries like Guatemala, Haiti, Colombia and others to the US-Mexico border, been apprehended, placed in Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters and then released to an adult sponsor. These sponsors can be parents, other relatives, foster parents, or a group home. As these children and youth adjust to a new home, many enroll in local public schools. California is one of the top three states with the largest numbers of unaccompanied minors released to sponsors in the United States. As such, it is a state that is critically important to elucidate how districts, schools, and educators address the needs of this newcomer student population. 

As Lilian, a social worker in a school in Alameda county illustrates in her answer to the challenges unaccompanied minors faced in her school, unaccompanied youth arrive at public schools with varying experiences of schooling in their countries of origin. Often these experiences fall under the labels of “Students with Interrupted Formal Education” (SIFE) or “Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education” (SLIFE), newcomers, English Language Learners (ELLs), and others. While these labels can provide a lens to understand part of the educational experiences of these students, as Lilian shows, they often fall short in providing sufficient support and resources to this student population. Instead, educators, like Lilian, are left trying to piece together various resources to address both the educational needs of unaccompanied minors and other needs like housing and mental health. Considering how California educators respond to the needs of their unaccompanied minors students while keeping in mind the limitations of their roles, their schools, and districts is critical to examining how our education systems become spaces of inequality and belonging for students like Central American unaccompanied minors.

Study Context

Research and policy on newcomer students as a whole is scant and research on the schooling experiences of unaccompanied minors is thin. To fill this gap in the research about unaccompanied minors and their schooling, my colleague, Dr. Stephany Cuevas, and I sought to study how educators across California public schools understand the role of education in the lives of Central American unaccompanied minors. Through the support of the Spencer Foundation, we designed a study that examines how educators in three California counties (Alameda, Los Angeles, and Orange) understand and address the needs of Central American unaccompanied minors. We use the term educators to encompass the various roles of adults working with this student population, including teachers, counselors, social workers, family and community liaisons, after school workers, and others. During my time doing similar research on the East Coast, I noticed that often the adults unaccompanied minors trusted and felt the closest with were not their teachers but instead family and community liaisons and their counselors. With this insight in mind as we designed our study, we wanted to ensure that we captured the experiences of the adults who worked with this population in multiple school settings. 

Our most recent publication offers insights from the first twenty-nine interviews we conducted in the last two years as part of our study. We employ a sociohistorical trauma-reducing framework to examine how California educators conceptualize and understand the challenges and needs of unaccompanied minors in their schools. During our interviews, educators were asked to share about their work with unaccompanied minors, to describe what they perceived to be the challenges these students faced, and to detail the types of obstacles, challenges, or opportunities their schools provided. Additionally, we asked questions about how educators responded to the institutions and perceived structural limitations to meet the needs of unaccompanied minors. 

Study Findings

The findings of our study illustrate the multiple ways in which educators identify and respond to the needs of their students. Four key findings emerged: (1) structural and institutional barriers that limit access to resources and recognition; (2) academic and linguistic challenges rooted in interrupted schooling and language diversity; (3) mental health and socioemotional needs stemming from trauma and migration; and (4) educator burden and advocacy, highlighting the emotional labor and moral complexity of supporting this vulnerable population. 

Lilian’s quote at the beginning of this blog post illustrates the nuance of the academic and linguistic challenges that emerge from a school’s inability to meet the realities of a student’s language diversity once they are in the classroom. Moreover, the experiences of the educators in our study highlight how schools and districts in a state like California, which is often perceived as welcoming and inclusive of immigrant students and families, can still fall short in addressing the needs of students like unaccompanied minors. Despite their best efforts, many educators in our study spoke to the seemingly innumerable tasks of simultaneously meeting the ongoing needs of their unaccompanied minor students and staying within the limits of their school and districts’ policies or resources. These systemic limitations did not just make their jobs harder but also further exposed their students to more precarity. 

Conclusion

Allowing immigrant students, including unaccompanied minors, to thrive in our schools is a collective effort that requires intentional multilevel changes at the district, school, and educator levels. Schools should not rely on the goodwill and caring of one or two educators in a building and instead focus on locating gaps in their resources, services, and training. Sometimes these gaps can be met through stronger family, community, and school partnerships. Educators underscored how services offered through immigrants’ rights organizations, housing agencies, and food pantries were essential to helping unaccompanied minors in their schools. These examples might offer windows of possibility for others trying to serve not just unaccompanied minors but all immigrant students better. 

Author Bio

Martha C. Franco, PhD., is Assistant Professor in the Sociology department at California State University, Long Beach. Broadly, her research examines how newly arrived youth immigrants make sense of various institutions like education, family, and the law in their lives. Currently, her research focuses on how Central American unaccompanied youth experience education, labor, and the immigration system while they adapt to living in the United States. She holds a PhD from Harvard University, a master’s in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an A.B. in History and Ethnic Studies from Brown University.