“I Am Not a Shelter!”: Stigma and Social Boundaries in Teachers’ Accounts of Students’ Experience in Separate “Sheltered” English Learner Classrooms

Abstract

This study investigates how teachers interact with immigrant-origin youth in school-based contexts of reception that mediate youth's educational opportunities. One understudied context is sheltered instruction, where English learners (ELs) are placed into separate content-area courses to target their linguistic needs. This qualitative study highlights the unintended consequences of ELs’ placements by examining 3 teacher cases in depth. Teachers’ accounts reveal that EL content courses designed to increase access were, in fact, stigmatizing spaces where students made social distinctions and engaged in impression management to mitigate perceptions that they lacked intelligence because of their programmatic placements. Teachers also managed stigma in distinct ways, representing different orientations and communication strategies in response to students’ experiences of stigma. This investigation raises questions about the tensions embedded in how language status, race, and classification intersect with the very solutions intended to ameliorate inequalities, as well as teachers’ roles in the education of immigrant EL-designated youth.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I sincerely thank the teachers who opened up their classrooms to me and from whom I learned a great deal. I also thank Laurie Olsen for discussing some of the dilemmas presented in this article, and enriching my thinking. I also thank those who provided insightful comments on analyses, drafts, or both, including: the anonymous reviewers, Megan Bang, Adrian Bankhead, Filiberto Barajas-López, Heather Hebard, Ann Ishimaru, Reva Jaffe-Walter, Helen Maniates, Hugh “Bud” Mehan, Joshua Meidav, Kenzo Sung, Jessica Thompson, Manka Varghese, Rose Vilchez, and Sarah Woulfin. Finally, I thank Aliza Fones for research assistance, and Sarah W. Freedman, Paul Ammon, Judith Warren Little, Alex Saragoza, and Carola Suárez-Orozco for important feedback on the project's research design. All oversights and errors are my own.

FUNDING

This research was supported by grants from the University of California All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (UC ACCORD), the UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute (LMRI), the Center for Latino Policy Research (CLPR), and the Spencer Foundation's Research Training Grant Program. Opinions reflect those of the author and not necessarily those of the grant agencies.

Notes

¹ English learner is a term used to describe students who are speakers of other languages who have yet to be designated fluent English proficient. The term is problematic because it does not capture students’ emergent bi- or multilingualism, yet it is currently the most commonly used term within US policy discussions of this population of students. Other terms include emergent bilinguals, second language learners, dual language learners, and English speakers of other languages (ESOL).

² In sheltered instruction, teachers ideally make adjustments to their teaching to make the same academic content comprehensible to ELs (for example, with the use of additional visual aids, language development objectives, and other instructional modifications [Echevarría, Vogt, & Short, 2004]). Bilingual or native language instruction is another alternative that is less common in secondary schools. Despite its problematic connotations (Wolfe, 1999), I use the term sheltered because it was most frequently used at school sites.

³ All teacher, student, and school names are pseudonyms.

⁴ For more detail about the process of redesignation, see Linquanti (2001). Redesignation procedures for determining when students change their classification from English learner to fluent English proficient vary widely by state and district contexts. Often they involve English proficiency tests, standardized achievement tests, and grades.

⁵ A-G requirements are the minimum requirements necessary for admission to the University of California (UC) and California State University college system.

⁶ Throughout the interview, Ms. Singh referred to sheltered classes and the students in them as ELD (English language development) even though ELD typically signifies English language classes, not content area courses. Perhaps the logic of this label is that the ELD category follows the students, even when they are not actually in ELD classes. (Within the school sites, ELD was more commonly used than ESL to describe these language courses.)

⁷ For more about the Puente college-access program, see Moreno (2002) and Gándara and Contreras (2009).

⁸ See Rueda and Mehan (1986) for a lucid discussion of the phenomenon of passing as related to academic identities (in this case with respect to learning disabilities).

⁹ The term sureño, at its most basic and general meaning, translates as southern; norteño translates as northern. However, within the local and specialized uses of the word, it also referred to two distinct gangs representing different regions of California. Additionally, norteño was associated with US-born Latinas and Latinos and sureño was linked to recent immigrants from the south. Mendoza-Denton (2008) has analyzed how young people use language to reinforce social distinctions and found that norteños’ use of exaggerated Spanish accents when mocking sureños rendered them as “backwards” and “uneducated.”

¹⁰ An exception is Lucas and colleagues’ work (Lucas, 2011; Lucas, Villegas, & Freedson-Gonzalez, 2008).

¹¹ However, Olsen (2012) argued that even long-term ELs who appear to be fluent still benefit from targeted specialized supports, but with most of their time spent in mainstream settings.