Abstract:

This session focuses on new ways of schooling in which traditional power structures are questioned and school is a welcoming place for all students and their families, which in this case includes students who speak English as an additional language or are bilingual, working class, transgender, or gay or lesbian. The schools described are ones in which new ways of thinking have allowed for new educational structures (in this case dual immersion charter schools), policies (e.g. no discrimination or bullying, no external rewards given), and practices (e.g. numerous field excursions, college visits, deep and alternative types of parental engagement). Relevant issues of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and language are addressed explicitly in teacher professional learning and as curricular and social issues at the schools. The schools were designed such that the traditional social structures and outcomes are not reproduced for students whose demographics would likely place them as risk within the context of U.S. schooling. The schools operate from a stance of acceptance as the foundation for an ability-centered, rather than a deficit perspective of students and families. Through an experiential curriculum the schools build up the types of social capital that students of privilege bring with them to school and they draw upon the deep funds of knowledge that a diverse student body brings and as leverage for knowing and successfully teaching all students. These school case studies are important in terms of models of “inclusive education” and offering an alternative model of schooling from those characterized by push-out, “achieved failure” and by working to break the school to prison pipeline by deconstructing what it means to be “at risk” and reconstructing success for language minority, working class and other marginalized students and their families.