Issue

As the daughter of recent immigrants in a non-English speaking household, immigrant education and the education of English as a second language are both crucial to me, and impact the lives of my family and peers.  Growing up in a primarily immigrant area, it was not uncommon to hear notes of Spanish and Vietnamese intermixed in the halls of my high school.  Schools should be places that nurture as inspire, as “immigrant students’ school-going aspirations are strongly related to their academic achievement, affirming the imagery of their inordinate drive (Valenzuela, 1999, pp. 11).”  With heightened proportions of students having moved recently to the United States or growing up in non-native English-speaking households, it is vital that their unique experiences are incorporated into the education they are receiving, and that they can access, understand, and empathize with lessons they are continually learning about.  For “language minority youth, the majority of whom are children of immigrants, [students] participate in higher education at a lower rate than native English speakers (Callahan & Humphries, 2016, 264),” pointing at discrepancies in our current education system that leave immigrant and non-native English speaking youth at risk.