EDUC 327 Professor Fruja Week 4: The Challenges of Legal Status & Week 5 Youth in School April Ma 02/22/2012

The framework of implications of unauthorized status clearly illustrate the current situation of immigrant children in terms of their documentation statuses, ecological systems they are living in, and overall negative developmental outcomes on health, cognitive, education, social-emotional, engagement and labor market access. In this article, authors make broad elaboration on each of it. Immigrant childrens documentation statuses have direct influences on their interactions with their immediate environment. For unauthorized children, their opportunities are largely restricted by the macrosystem through governmental policies, media representation, and etc compare to exosystem and microsystems. They are also facing the risk of being sent back to their home country. Cruz talks about the current insufficient resources and unfriendly policies for undocumented immigrant students and English Learners. She argues that more researches and opportunities should be applied for them. But from the perspective of government, especially among promoters for Hazleton law, regulations are needed for the sake of citizens. However, like Judge Munley stated, we cannot stripped immediately all their rights because of one single illegal act. For immigrant children with ambiguous documentation or with a temporary status, the exosystem of neighborhood and community resources and networks of information is crucial for obtaining citizenship rather than macrosystem. Abrego talks about Latino immigrant family from low socioeconomic status in Los Angeles and how their educational opportunities are restricted by the violence in the community. She also mentions that undocumented immigrant childrens interactions with microsystems (mesosystem) like their busy-working parents, and older cousins or siblings also affect their

academic achievement. The ambiguous documentation status makes them feel uncertain about their future and creates barriers to fulfilling their academic goals. For citizen children in mixed documentation family and citizen children of unauthorized parents, their academic opportunities and networks of information are supported by both macrosystem and exosystem. So their success is depending more on their family relationships and school resources. Overall, regardless immigrant childrens documentation status, Orozco and her colleagues found out that unauthorized status has uniformly negative effects on the development of immigrant children across the lifespan. I personally found microsystems of family and school involvement crucial for the development of immigrant children regardless their documentation status. It is true that their academic and career opportunities are restricted by their unauthorized status, but insufficient resources do not mean no resources. Gonzales gives us couple examples about how a trusting relationship with school and family lead them out of desperation and give them information about pursuing higher education. Parents can support them emotionally by explaining the situation and setting up goals for future; school can support them with information and resources like how to apply scholarship for higher education and how to work legally after graduation like Bucknell does. On the other hand, even though certain Latino immigrant children have official documentation in Abregos story, they still left behind because their parents have no time to take care of them and their neighborhood is surrounded by violence. I do believe that school and family can guide children to explore their potentials, so that they could make contribution to this country in the future.

Week 5 Youth in School From the reading for implications of legal status, I found out that the microsystems which are school and family environment affects immigrant children the most among all ecological systems in the framework. This weeks reading confirms this idea. School plays a crucial role in immigrant childrens transition, adaption, and assimilation to the new country both positively and negatively. It is true that certain challenges are commonly faced by all immigrant children at school, but some challenges vary from their immigrant or generational statuses, ethnic backgrounds, and gender. The most fundamental challenge is the language barrier. Low level English proficiency largely affects immigrant students apprehension, academic perf ormance, and social involvements. Instead of providing supports and directions, school becomes a main source of anxiety and insecurity. It takes time for immigrant children to overcome the language barrier. But for second or third immigrant generations who are born in this country, English is not a problem. The second challenge that is faced by the majority of immigrant children is discrimination, not just from white Americans, but also from other ethnic minorities. Orozco and Todorova depict the racial tension among different immigrant groups in all 4 schools. Oral and physical aggressions are part of their daily life on the school bus, lunch table, and even in class. In certain cases, such aggressions come from teachers. Roy and Roxas talk about the microgressions against Somali Bantu students from teachers because of their insufficient knowledge and misconception about Somali Bantu culture. The third challenge is the different expectations and social norms at American school from their schools in home countries. By the meantime of American teachers complimenting well behaving immigrant students, immigrant students view American teachers as cold and indifferent and are astonished by how their

American peers treat teachers. Such different cultural norms are also reflected on their relationships with peers in daily communications and group works. Despite those challenges, there are definitely optimistic sources at school for immigrant children. Bilingual program ranks the most important one. All improvers and high achievers from todays reading benefit from bilingual education more or less. It prepares immigrant students with appropriate language proficiency while not impeding other academic developments and the awareness of cultural differences to avoid potential conflicts with mainstream American students. And also immigrant students can build a strong emotional bond with teachers at bilingual program because of special trainings that bilingual teachers have about immigrant childrens culture and development like Ms. Cheng from Putnam Middle School. Every immigrant child is willing to come to her for advices about academic pressure, unfamiliar social norms, or unfair treatments. They support immigrant children emotionally when their parents could not. Other optimistic sources at school are resources and opportunities. Immigrant children who come from low socio-economic class may not be able to access to high technologies or extracurricular books at home or have limited information and net-working about college entrance. But school can make those available to them. Immigrant children can also explore their leading potentials and discover their non-academic talents through activities and organizations at school.