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Abstract
This article examines the approaches of a public high school for newcomer youth, Oakland International High School in California, that provides holistic wrap-around services to students. By not isolating students from the larger context of their families and communities, the school’s approaches allow for greater reciprocity between school and home. This article presents examples of the intentional practices the school engages in within and outside the classroom to foster mutual learning and community engagement, resulting in greater support for the socio-emotional, academic and material needs of students. Implications for practice are woven throughout in the description of how Oakland International High School leverages community partnerships and flexible design of their curricula, support structures, and family engagement strategies to meet the needs of its immigrant and refugee students.
Additional Resources
1. Cervone, B. and Cushman, K. (2015). Belonging and becoming: The power of social and emotional learning in high schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
Cervone and Cushman interviewed high school students and teachers in several urban areas, including at Oakland International High School, about their school experiences and compiled their insights and advice to teachers in this book.
2. Markham, L. (2017). The far away brothers: Two young migrants and the making of an American life. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
This nonfiction biography of two unaccompanied minors, who are brothers who travel on their own from El Salvador to the United States, offers an in-depth glimpse into the reasons for migration, the journey itself, and the difficulties of adjusting to life and school in the US.
3. Nazario, S. (2007). Enrique’s journey: The story of a boy’s dangerous odyssey to reunite with his mother. New York, NY: Random House.
A true story of a young boy from Honduras who makes the dangerous journey alone to rejoin his mother in the United States, based on a series of Pulitzer Prize winning articles about the same story in 2002
Notes
1 All students have been assigned pseudonyms to ensure confidentiality.
2 When looking at college readiness rates at Oakland Unified School District and the district as a whole, the picture is even clearer: Only 24% of ELL students across the district graduate A-G compliant, meaning that they have completed the coursework necessary for admission to a four-year state university. For the district as a whole, 46% of all graduates in OUSD have completed all their A-G requirements. For OIHS, 51% of their students graduate A-G compliant, more than double that of their ELL peers across the district (OIHS WASC Report, Citation2016).
