Nasty Immigration

Part of my summer reading list is a book by Helen Thorpe titled Just Like Us: The Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America. The books central theme is the immigration debate and people who are living in this country without legal documents. The book tracks the political debate unfolding in Colorado as the four highly successful girls were graduating from high school and wondering what the next chapter of their lives would look like.

I will say that my eyes have been opened. I of course have known about immigration issues but have really only thought of the issue through two lenses. I understand immigration through my own lens of natural born citizen from a family where I am the 3rd generation of natural born citizens. This lens makes me want people who come here to become citizens.

But then I also understand immigration through the lenses of my students and their families. I see through their eyes the struggles that they endure everyday. And while the parents made a choice to enter our country without documents, the children are the ones who suffer the most. Some were born in Mexico, some were born here making them citizens. Either way their lives are filled with strife.

I recently had a parent in my office telling me about his family's situation. Mom was pulled over about a year ago for having car windows that were too dark. She did not have a driver's license with her. She ended up in jail for 22 days and is now fighting to stay in this country - she has been in and out of immigration court for the last year. The child had to drop out of preschool because dad worked two and three jobs to support the family and pay for mom's legal expenses; he had no time to take the child to school. Now at the end of the child's kindergarten year, he is facing a hard reality...mom may be deported back to Mexico. If she is, the child will go with her and dad will stay here to support the family. In Mexico, the child will struggle with school because he is not as fluent in Spanish as his Mexican born peers. Mexican schools do not have the same supports for learning Spanish to succeed in school that schools in the US have for helping students learn English. INS is breaking apart a family and condemning a child to an inferior education. The child is a US citizen. Is that fair?

And what harm are they causing by being in the US? The family pays sales and property taxes, has money taken out of their paychecks to pay taxes, and doesn't collect any federal or state benefits. They are successfully working to support their family. That's more than I can say for some of our native born citizens. In fact, mom cleans hotel rooms and dad works in construction and in a kitchen washing dishes. How many US born citizens are willing to do those jobs? Our country would not run the way it does now without our foreign born population. We need them here...can we find a way?

Ahhh...So it really is about comprehension...

The end of the school year is approaching. I can tell because my calendar is full even though I feel like there is still so much to do. It's time to reflect instead. Time to lay a foundation for my work next year. Time to dream.

My dream begins today with a fresh look at what reading means. I happened to pick up the book Comprehension from the Ground Up by Sharon Taberski. As I flipped through the pages, I discovered the answer I've been looking for to help me frame my thinking about reading and what it means to read. I've never quit felt like the 5 pillars captured all the complexity and pleasure involved in reading. In fact they make me sad. Sad because someone believed that you could boil reading and literacy down to a science with a specific set of skills. Reading is much more. Reading also involves passion, commitment, thinking, and heart to engage the mind and I believe to truly understand or...comprehend. I've never felt like comprehension is one of the five pillars, because without the other four pillars, readers can't comprehend...AND...I've seen plenty of students who seem to have the other four pillars but still don't comprehend what they are reading. There must be something else.


So what does this mean? Well, in the ESL world, this validates what I've been thinking about reading and why our ELs struggle when reading is broken down and taught in discrete scientific units - we are forgetting to engage them in meaning making, taking for granted that they already have this skill. They might, but they need to opportunities to process the language in a way they understand. Hence why I'm really excited that oral language and time to talk and write are incorporated in this model. I'm excited because it gives teachers specific ways that ELs can engage in reading and comprehension when they don't have the same level of academic English as native English speaking grade level peers. And it makes sense - of course we know it's easier to understand something when you have background knowledge, when you can talk and write about it, and when you understand the vocabulary related to the topic. This is precisely why our ELs do well when we preview vocabulary, provide them with experiences to build their background knowledge before we engage them in learning the content, and why we find our own thinking is more clear after we talk about a topic with someone or write our thoughts down.


I still have more thinking to do and I will find time to read the rest of the book, but for now I'm left wondering...How can I leverage this information in my work with teachers next year? This is where the dreaming begins...

Taberski, S. (2011). Comprehension from the ground-up: Simplified, sensible instruction for the K-3 reading workshop. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.