Exploring Black immigrant students' educational experiences in k-12 schools

Abstract

Chapter 3. Complicating k-12 social support: gatekeepers and shepherds: This chapter will focus on the people Black immigrant children interact with inside and outside of schools. It explores the how, to what extent, and in what ways teachers’ and administrators’ perceptions, peer groups and peer relations, and family and community engagement shape the educational experience of Black immigrant children and adolescents. Black immigrant youth face racial and ethnic discrimination and stereotypes from teachers and peers, which in turn negatively impacts their academic progress, educational trajectory, and social adjustment within school. This chapter uses nationally representative quantitative and locally collected qualitative data in order to illuminate the adaptive and maladaptive strategies Black immigrant youth use in order to navigate and balance culturally different and often socially complicated school, peer, and family relationships in order to succeed in U.S. schools. Chapter 4. Complicating how students navigate the k-12 system: This chapter discusses the link that racialized classroom experiences, academic tracking (ELL/EL, Honors/AP/IB), and school climate (racism, racial composition) have on Black immigrant youths’ educational experiences. The purpose of this chapter is to raise awareness of how systemic racism, xenophobia, anti-Blackness, and sexism not only shape Black immigrant children and adolescents’ K-12 schooling experiences but also sort and stratify who within the Black population has access to the upper echelons of the U.S. educational system. Therefore, this chapter will once again use both qualitative and quantitative data to critique Black American and Black immigrant racial tensions as well as the destructive nature of Black immigrant youth as the new “model minority” stereotype.