School Social Work in the Trump Era

This has been a difficult week for those of us who care deeply about social justice.  Before Trump became president elect, he had already caused so much damage, with incidents of hate and bullying taking place at school all over the country.  This type of hate is nothing new for communities of color, except that now making blatant racist, xenophobic, sexists, homophobic, etc. comments have been normalized and we have effectively entered an era where "creating unity" is code for "keep silent."  As school social workers, we have a responsibility to act in support of the children and families that are hurting, scared, anxious, and have been rejected by their own country (yes, U.S citizen children of Latino or Muslim background are also the targets of hate).  I will continue to develop this post further, but I wanted to immediately have a place to post resources and links for addressing these issues in the schools and supporting our families and children.  Keep posted as I add resources here.

Immigrant's Rights Under a Trump Presidency created by MALDEF

How to effectively use interpreters

Illinois Refugee Mental Health Taskforce

Combating anti-muslim biasGlobal Battleground or School Playground: The bullying of America's Muslim children

 Resource Guide for Supporting Undocumented Children

10 Steps to Equity in Education 

 

Hispanic Serving Institutions and the Accompaniment Process

As the demographics change and we welcome a growing Latin@ population at Dominican University, there are implications for us in terms of reconsidering or re-thinking things that we formally took for granted. We have to consider things like:

• How is the cultural, historical, and social context of Latin@ students reflected in our curriculum and campus? 
• How does the fact that we are a Catholic institution shape how we approach our work with Latino students? 
• What does it mean to mentor students? What should mentoring look like for first generation Latino students?
• What are the assumptions and underlying values that drive the way we do things and how do we need to change those assumptions in order to serve the needs of Latin@ students?

We need to ask ourselves questions about whether or not we are building on the strengths and the navigational capital that Latin@ students bring to the campus. Are we going to approach our growing Latin@ student body in a way that allows us to adopt lessons of mestizaje, border blending, and border crossing; or are we wringing our hands with worry about how we will be perceived as an HSI with too many brown students on campus?

As a first generation college student myself, I had no idea what to expect in college and had to be a nepantlera in terms of negotiating boundaries and borders – psychological, cultural, and academic. I was lucky in that I was able to navigate this process successfully and found strength and support in my Latina sisters on campus. A transformational and validating moment for me, which I described in my dissertation, was a day that I heard Gloria Anzaldúa speak on campus.  She directly spoke to the "triple duty" that Chicanas/os have to do on campus: our regular course work, our own research to find out about ourselves (because we don't get that in the classroom), and the work to create our own space and identity.  She gave me the vocabulary to understand and articulate my own experience. Many students have yet a fourth or fifth duty: working numerous hours to help pay for college, which has become increasingly unaffordable; and our continued duty to our familias.

Regarding the identity work, there continues to be pressure from the dominant culture to create limited categories and checklists of who we are and how we are named.  As a young Chicana, I did not feel as though I fit into any of these predetermined categories, but I still felt pressured to choose one identity. I was already living a mestiza identity, but just didn't know how to talk about it.  In Gloria's talk, back at U of I in 1991, she said that we needed to take control of our identities and name ourselves.  I am always a bit surprised and at the same time, not surprised, that Latin@ students today reflect the same struggles in their narratives. 

The tools that I received from Gloria that day is an example of the kind of work we need to do with our Latin@ students. We need to understand their history, and their current social political context, and what they bring with them to the institution. Students do not come to our campus as individuals, they come already as members of a particular racial or ethnic community and that identity becomes particularly salient in an academic context. By having this conocimiento or consciousness, we assist students in their journey to being Nepantleras. For me, this Nepantlera way of being allowed me to move between cultures, borders, and ideas - and understand how and when I needed to be a bridge - and when I didn't need to take on that responsibility.  Gloria Anzaldúa describes Nepantleras like this:

The supreme border crossers [who] act as intermediaries between cultures and their various versions of reality and like the ancient chamanas, move between the worlds. They serve as agents of awakening, inspire and challenge others to deeper awareness, greater conocimiento, serve as reminders of each other’s search for wholeness of being. (“Speaking Across the Divide” 7)

What is particularly important in the way Anzaldúa describes a Nepantlera is that it is also someone with an extensive level of agency.   Nepantleras take action from within the complexity of our varied positions and multiple contexts. So as teachers, mentors to students, we can pay particular attention to our own process as Nepantleras so that we are aware of our own social locations and positions and how we need to act in order to create environments that feel like home to our students.  

What does this mean about how Dominican University can move forward to help students?  I want to start with something Timothy Matovina described: the importance of moving beyond hospitality to homecoming (Lecture, Dominican University, 3/2/15). How we can provide a home for our students – one that really provides that psychological "home space" where students can feel safe from the daily microaggressions and where they can do the identity work required as they navigate various contexts?

An existence as a Nepantlera can mean an identity that can appear or feel fragmented.  However, with the concociemeto or awareness of the beauty of this identity, and the navigational capital that comes with this identity, it can be strengthened by acknowledging its multiplicity and its incompleteness; understanding that identity is a process and contextual, and that we are constantly crossing borders in our interactions with others.  As we do this, we challenge practices that we need to change in order to bring about institutional transformation.

In considering best practices for HSI's, one particular strategy caught my attention: the suggestion was that we “walk each student into college.” When this literature talks about “walking with students” they talk about educational pathways, helping students through the financial aid processes, time management, and other college-going skills. But here is one area where Dominican University, being a school with a Catholic tradition and identity can take this idea of “walking with students” and add another important element that is also key to students’ success; and that is the importance of relationship.

When I think of walking with students, I think of the process of accompaniment. There is a growing body of theological literature that describes accompaniment as a form of pastoral care grounded in Latino and liberation theology (Nanko-Fernández, 2010).  Based on my work conceptualizing accompaniment within the social service context, I define accompaniment in this way: a relationship grounded in values of dignity, unity, mutuality, love, and respect that uses interdisciplinary knowledge to navigate mainstream institutions, build capacity, and create more accessible and responsive systems.  As Nanko-Fernández (2010) describes, accompaniment is “necessarily contextual, as it entails attending to particular individuals and communities, in particular times and circumstances, with particular needs, gifts, challenges, and limitations” (p. 81).

If we adopt this model of walking with students, we can address most if not all of the best practices recommended for HSI’s: 1. Calling out and ending deficit views of students (in accompaniment we would view students as gifts), 2) blurring or ending hierarchies (in accompaniment, the relationship is one of equals and one of mutuality); 3) expecting everyone to take responsibility for the learning (in accompaniment we would as faculty, staff, and administration, accompany each other in serving our students); 4) empower students to customize their own educational pathways (in accompaniment it’s not about doing for, but doing with and building capacity for others to advocate for themselves and their communities and challenge structures and institutions that are oppressive).

This is one way that we can move forward to make Dominican a home for our students.


Paz y Solidaridad!