Speech or Silence at School

Catalina

Let’s first take a close look at Catalina’s unpublished personal memoir. This untitled story describes living in Mexico with her abuela when her mother migrated to the United States. Catalina was three years old when her mother left Mexico, and it was several years before Catalina was able to join her in New York.

Sin titulo

Mi primera vez que mi mama me dejo sola en Mexico no mas lloraba y lloraba en la noche tambien al segundo dia yo casi no lloraba visitaba a los vesinos pero las noches lloraba porque mi mamá no estuvo con migo ese dia y aveses me portaba bien. Tambien siempre perdia las chanclas de mi mar abuelita porque jugaba con ellos y despues se me olvidaban donde los dejaba. Me portaba mal porque no me dejaba bañarme mi abuelita me decia que me bañara y yo no la obedecia tambien yo me despertaba temprano y pedia tacos para comer me sentia sola porque mi mamá no estuvo con migo tambien porque no tenía con quien jugar y. Un dia mi abuela dijo “que no haga esto y lo hice” porque yo queria poner masa en la tortillera para hacer tacos y despues por acidente meti mis manos en la totillera y me machuque. Y me dolio muy fuerte mis abuelos me llebavan por todo el pueblo para ber tiendas y beia la grande iglesia tengo una prima yo no me llevaba bien con ella porque hagarraba mis jugetes y no me gustava siempre me peleaba con ella no le emprestaba mis juguetes y un dia cuando mi tia se hiba a la escuela yo no quería que se fuera y yo la abrasaba y mi abuelita decia que la deje que se le hacia tarde para la escuela y no queria dejarla y me regañaron. Me senti muy triste cuando mi mama me dejo cuando tenia 3 años.

Untitled

The first time that my mom left me alone in Mexico I just cried and cried in the night also the second day I almost didn’t cry I visited neighbors but at night I cried because my mom wasn’t with me that day and sometimes I behaved. Also I always lost my mar grandmothers slippers because I played with them and then forgot where I left them. I behaved badly because I didn’t let her bathe my grandmother said bathe and I also didn’t listen because I would wake up early and asked for tacos to eat I felt alone because my mom wasn’t with me also because I had no one to play with and. One day my grandmother said “don’t do that and I did it” because I wanted to put the mix on the tortilla maker to make tacos and then by accident I stuck my hand in the tortilla maker and I got smashed. It hurt me very badly and my grandparents took me all around the town to see stores and a big church. I have a cousin I didn’t get along well with her because she grabbed my toys and I didn’t like it I always fought with her and she didn’t borrow my toys and one day when my aunt was going to school I didn’t want her to go and I hugged her and my grandmother said that I let her leave she’s going to be late for school and I didn’t want to let her go and they scolded me. I was very sad when my mom left me when I was three years old.

Asked to write about an important moment in her life, Catalina recounted part of the origin story of her mixed-status family. The story opens with Catalina being left in her grandmother’s care in Mexico when her mother migrated north to the United States. This event marked the beginning of Catalina’s own migration story, because her mother, Jimena (whom we met in chapter 2), left Mexico for the United States with the goal of establishing herself and sending for Catalina.

The first line of Catalina’s narrative begins with feelings of sadness (“I cried and cried”) and foreshadows that the rest of the passage will focus on her own conduct (“and sometimes I behaved”). Catalina recounted a series of events that she described as misbehaving in the care of her abuela. She provided six examples in all: losing her grandmother’s slippers, not allowing herself to be bathed, waking up too early and asking for tacos, cooking without permission, fighting over toys with a cousin, and hugging an aunt for too long, causing her to be late for school. This last detail is consistent with the rest of the story while also marking a different vision for her future: Catalina clung to her aunt who was running late and had to leave; in so doing, she expressed a longing to be held closely by a loved one whom she did not have to separate from. The final sentence of the story returns to Catalina’s mother, whom she missed dearly and wanted to be reunited with.

Catalina’s tender personal memoir checked all of the boxes for detail and descriptive language that the assignment required, but she decided not to publish it. Catalina instead chose to draft a different personal memoir to submit for wider circulation. As we will see in the next story, her published narrative focused on celebrating her younger sister’s birthday a few years later in Brooklyn. Examining her writing over time, we find a significant elision between this first story and the second: Catalina never accounted for how she went from Mexico to New York City, and she makes no mention of her own immigration experience or juridical status. This is not to say that she never talked about these things. In our grupo de análisis, Catalina shared, “Yo no tengo papeles, pero yo vine en avión. Porque me prestaron papeles. Me prestaron un papel. Sí por mí yo no vine caminando” (I don’t have papers, but I came by plane. Because they lent me papers. They lent me a paper. Yes, for me I didn’t come walking). Although she shared her story of crossing the border during our small research group meetings, she decided not to share those details in the personal memoir assignment, which she knew would be viewed by her classmates and teachers.

Catalina’s published personal memoir details her family’s efforts to prepare a birthday celebration when her younger sister turned three. In her writing notebook, Catalina explained why she chose to publish this recuerdo: “Yo elejí esa memoria porque es muy especial para mi cuando conoci a mi hermanita era mi primer hermanita que tenia esta muy alegre” (I chose this memory because it is very special to me when I met my sister. She was my first sister and I was very happy). Catalina’s shift of attention to her U.S.-born sister’s birthday didn’t erase immigration as a topic. Instead she encoded it. Without ever referring directly to migration or citizenship, the excerpt below pinpoints stark differences in their early childhood experiences linked to their respective immigration statuses.

El primer cumpleaños de mi hermana

MANA!!! AY grite “Feliz cumpleanos Karla” le dije a mi hermanita “hoy es enero 6” dije, mi mamá y papá estaban decorando la casa pense por mi misma ohh hoy van a hacer los cumpleanos de mi hermanita ya habian puesto las mesas para que los invitados se sienten mi mamá dijo a mi y mis hermanos que nos quedemos en la casa porque hiban a hir a comprar unas cosas para poner en la mesas y hiban a comprar una piñata. Mi papá me dijo “limpia las mesas porque hestan susios” “ok” dije. agarre baunty y windex para limpiar cuando termine me fui a mi cuarto a ber (Goosebums) ese era mi mejor show cuando mi papá y mama bino vi que compraron una fonda de mesa y unas flores que briyan y tambien compraron una piñata tenia un dibujo de una persona de caricatura que se llama (pitufina). Despues pasaron minutos y despues tocaron la puerta Nok Nok abri la puerta y era mi madrina bino para ayudar a mi mama a cosinar comida cuando mi papá vino habia traido chiken nugets mi mamá nos dio comida que era espageti y chiken nugets despues cuando habia terminado de comer tocaron la puerta otraves me pregunte quien sera?. Lo abri la puerta era mi hamiga que conosia nosotras estuvimos. Juntas desde Kinder hasta terser grado yo le dije vamos a jugar mi 3PS nos fuimos al cuarto y empezamos a jugar despues le hablo a su mamá vamos a comer ella se fue a comer. . . . Jugamos con mi hermanita porque no tenia con quien jugar. Mi mama me dijo que le ponga su vestido porque vamos a tomarles fotos le puse su camiseta y sus zapatos despues su vestido azul con blanco. Mi papa siempre le compra vestido azul porque como mi papa le gusta el color azul cuando termine de cambiarla mi mamá la peino y le puso su corona que tenia el numero 3 despues mi papá saco el pastel era de Hello Kitty con un muñequita que prende en la noche.

My sister’s first birthday

SIS!!! OH I screamed “happy birthday Karla” I told my little sister “today is January 6” I said, my mom and dad were decorating the house and I thought to myself ohhhh today is my sister’s birthday and they had already set out the tables for the guests my mom said to me and my brothers that we would stay at home because they were going to buy somethings to set on the tables and they were going to buy a piñata. My dad said “clean the tables because they are dirty” “ok” I said. I grabbed baunty and windex to clean when I finished I went to my room to watch (Goosebums) that was the best show when my dad and mom came I saw that they bought a table cloth and flowers that shine and they also brought a pinata that had a cartoon on it named (Smurfette). Then a few minutes passed and they knocked on the door Nok Nok I opened the door and it was my godmother who came to help my mom cook when my dad came he bought chicken nuggets my mom gave us food which was spaghetti and chicken nuggets after we finished eating someone else knocked on the door and I asked myself who could it be?. I opened the door and it was my friend who I’ve known we’ve been. Together from kindergarten until third grade and I said let’s play my 3PS we went to the room and started to play then her mom told her to come eat and she went to eat. . . . We played with my sister because she didn’t have anyone to play with. My mom told me put on her dress because we are going to take pictures I put on her t-shirt and her shoes then her blue and white dress. My dad always buys a blue dress because he likes the color blue and when I finished changing her my mom combed her hair and put on her crown which had the number 3 after that my dad took out the cake made of Hello Kitty with a little doll that lit up at night.

I am struck by the important detail—mentioned quickly toward the end when Catalina described her sister’s birthday outfit—that Karla was turning three years old. The fact that she was the same age here as Catalina was in the previous story intensifies an implicit contrast between the sisters’ childhood experiences. Against this backdrop, the birthday party served as a site for Catalina to think through the meaning of birthright citizenship. In her family, U.S. citizenship was celebrated as the fulfillment of the promise of migration, affording Karla a range of opportunities unavailable to Catalina and her parents as undocumented immigrants. Catalina managed to express all of this for anyone capable of reading between the lines while also hiding it from those she feared might use knowledge of her juridical status against her.

The symmetry of the protagonists’ ages underscores other key points of comparison between Catalina’s and Karla’s childhoods. The two stories convey opposing sentiments. The first begins with Catalina crying into the night because her mother had left, while the second begins with screams of joy because it is her sister’s birthday. In addition, the relationships depicted suggest that Catalina felt less of a sense of belonging in her pueblo than in New York City. She described fraught relations with her grandmother, cousin, and aunt, whereas in Brooklyn she was surrounded by her parents and siblings along with her godmother and a close school friend. Finally, Catalina described her own behavior quite differently before and after her own migration. Whereas in Mexico she was a mischievous young child who lost her abuela’s slippers, in the United States she was an obedient older sister who cleaned the house and tended younger siblings. In both narratives, Catalina communicated her desire for a future characterized by family closeness uninterrupted by separation across borders.

The differences in these personal memoirs produce contrasting portraits of citizenship and childhood. It would be misleading, however, to conclude that Mexico is only characterized by sadness and scarcity whereas the United States is only filled with love and abundance. In fact, Catalina relished many aspects of her grandparents’ care, and she often longed for them, the land, and the animals that surrounded her in their town. She, Jenni, Tere, and Pita could remember being young children in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador, and they often lamented that Brooklyn life meant being cooped up in apartments without the freedom to play on their own like they once could.

In choosing which story to publish, Catalina encoded her complex knowledge about citizenship without explicitly disclosing her own immigration status. The spiraling curriculum of citizenship not only influences what a young person knows about birthright citizenship but also what she does with that knowledge—if and when and how she shares it with others. A reader who assumed Catalina was too young to understand citizenship’s significance would miss how much insight her narrative communicated about growing up undocumented in a mixed-status family. We’ll turn now to another birthday story told by Pita, the eldest sister in her mixed-status family.

Pita

Pita, like Catalina, also came to the United States as an undocumented child, and she also wrote a personal memoir recounting her younger U.S.-born sister’s birth. This is Pita’s unpublished and untitled personal memoir:

Sin titulo

Era un día soliado escuche el telefono.—¡Halo! ¿Hola mamá como esta?—Yo le pregunte. Ella me dijo—Bien bien! ¡Y sabes que, que voy a tene un bebéééé!—No lo pude creer. Entonces le pregunte—¿n verdad?—Yo brinque y brinque!! ¡Grite de emocionamiento! Yo le pregunte—¿Va hacer niña o niño?—Ella me contesto—¡Niña!—Yo me emocione más en lo que estaba. El dia siguiente me desperte fui al baño me lave los dientes y me di un baño caliente. Y cuando sali le pregunte a mi papa con encanto—¿Podemos ir hoy a visitar a mi mamá al hospital por favooor?—Y el dijo—ok—todavia dormitado. . . . Cuando llegamos yo le entrege el telefono a mi papá. Yo le pregunte a una muchacha (enfermera)—¿Adonde queda el cuarto de Amaya?—Ella me contesto—¡Recto al final a la derecha!—Yo le dije—¡gracias!— . . . Cuando entre no lo podia creer mi mamá estaba en la cama con mi hermana en los brazos. Yo le pregunte—¿Mami puedo aguantar mi hermanita?—Ella me dijo—¡¡Claro que si!!—Y esa fue mi primera vez que yo la aguante y la sigo aguantando hoy día, presente!

FIN!

Untitled

It was a sunny day I heard the phone. “Hello? Hi mom how are you?” I asked her. She told me “Fine, fine! You know I’m going to have a babyyyy!” I couldn’t believe it. Then I asked her “really?” I jumped and jumped!! I screamed with emotion! I asked her “Is it going to be a boy or girl?” She answered “Girl!” I got even more excited than I already was. The next day I woke up I went to the bathroom brushed my teeth and took a hot bath. And when I came out I asked my dad with joy “can we visit my mom in the hospital pleeease?” and he said “ok” sleepily. . . . When we arrived I gave my dad his phone. I asked a woman (nurse) “where is Amaya’s room?” She told me “straight to the end on the right!” And I said “thank you!” . . . When I entered I couldn’t believe it my mom was on the bed with my sister in her arms. I asked her “Mom can I hold my little sister?” She said “Of course!” And that was the first time I held my sister and I continue holding her until this day, presently!

END!

Even though this story doesn’t narrate migration across national borders, it is nevertheless saturated with questions of citizenship. The narrative begins with Pita receiving a call from her mother, Amaya, who delivers the news of Pita’s sibling’s birth. Pita then navigates the short but significant journey from her home to her mother’s bedside in the hospital. As the linguistic and cultural broker between her father and the institution, Pita was responsible for speaking with the nurses and asking for her mother’s hospital room. It was her presence that enabled them to arrive quickly and joyously at her mother’s side. It is notable that Pita ended her memoir with a subtle but significant detail that extends this memory into the future: by holding on to her U.S.-born sibling, Pita also symbolically held on to the promise of obtaining U.S. citizenship. Like Catalina, Pita’s desire for belonging within her family was inseparable from the caregiving role that she had for her younger sister.

In contrast, Pita’s published personal memoir, entitled “Frontera,” is a marked departure from the subtler references to migration that we have read thus far. Here, she explicitly narrated a story that she recounted at many points throughout the study to me, in our small group data analysis meetings, and to her class. This is an excerpt from Pita’s story of crossing the U.S.–Mexico border on her way from El Salvador to the United States to reunite with her mother.

Frontera

Cuando yo cruze la frontera primero me llevaron a una casa para que descansara. Despues agarramos una troca y empezamos a recorrir. El sol estaba más caliente que agua hervida. 2 dias despues en la frontera, alguien vino corriendo y a la misma vez gritando—¡¡la patruya viene!!—Todos empesamos a correr. Yo y la muchacha no corrimos caminamos rapido. El policia nos agarro. Nos dio agua, un sandwich de queso y jamon. Y despues nos scepararon y fuimos a un lugar quenos cuidan mientras alguien viene para recogernos.

Border

When I crossed the border first they took me to a house in order to rest. Then we grabbed a truck and started the trip. The sun was hotter than boiled water. 2 days later on the border, someone came running and at the same time screaming “the police are coming!!” We all started to run. Me and the girl didn’t run we walked fast. The police grabbed us. They gave us water, a ham and cheese sandwich. And then they separated us and we went to a place where they take care of us while someone comes to pick us up.

Pita’s border crossing story recalls the birth story reproduced above through its step-by-step chronicling of a significant moment. We can almost imagine that her sister’s birth story—tinged with urgency and uncertainty even amid happiness—was an allegory of her own migration experience and reuniting with her mother in the United States. In both cases, she moved from one place to another, traversing boundaries: crossing a border from one country to another, and crossing a threshold from the domestic space of her home into the institutional hospital setting. Here too it is striking that her narrative ends with being picked up—a phrase with multiple meanings that echo across her stories, from lifting her sister in an embrace to waiting for someone to come for her at the border. These narrative moments express a desire for a future in which family members could be permanently united.

Unlike Catalina, who quietly omitted any mention of her own migration experience from her personal memoirs, Pita expressed a strong sense of responsibility to share this story with others. Pita was motivated by a desire to improve the public’s perception of immigrants and was enabled by the comparatively higher degree of safety she now had as a permanent resident.

As she explained to me many times:

Yo decido compartir esta historia para que gente sepa que yo fui una de esas, que yo pasé por eso, que no soy una niña que crece acá. Tengo una aventura que no todos tienen. Cuando gente ya sabe dice—oooh—y cuando van a la casa y se quedan pensando, y suena el teléfono y dicen—yo escuché este cuento de una niña—y la gente escucha y pasa, para que otra gente lo conozca bien.

I decide to tell this story so that people know that I was one of those, that I went through that, that I’m not a girl who grew up here. I had an adventure that not everyone has. When people know they say “oooh,” and when they go home they keep thinking, and the phone rings and they say “I heard a story about a girl,” and people hear this and it spreads, so that other people know this well.

The new privileges that Pita had acquired as a lawful permanent resident were accompanied by a sense of accountability to her mixed-status family and community. Having participated in the process of changing her own immigration status at such a young age, she was keenly aware that she no longer faced the risk of deportation—even though loved ones close to her did—and she thought that she could help other immigrants by changing public perception of them.

The moral undertones of Pita’s immigration narrative are inextricable from the experience of getting her papers. The year I met Pita—the same year she wrote these recuerdos—she had just obtained her green card (officially called “lawful permanent resident” status).4 Although Pita was no longer undocumented, her mother was still actively involved in the process of applying for a green card for herself. These firsthand experiences were at the forefront of Pita’s mind and shaped her understanding of the importance of birthdays and birthplace. During our many conversations over the length of this study, Pita explained to me that in order to obtain her residencia, she and her parents had to meet with lawyers and go before a judge to pedir el perdón (ask for forgiveness). This entailed appearing in court in person, answering questions about her life and family (for example, the name of the school she attended and her sister’s birthday), and waiting for the judge’s decision regarding their case. This notion of asking for forgiveness for wrongdoing is built into the language of the immigration process and made a lasting impression on Pita. It left her with this idea that obtaining papers consisted of more than following steps in a legal process; it was also an act of moral repentance in which the migrant asks for forgiveness and the state absolves them of wrongdoing.

When school reopened after spring break that fifth-grade year, Pita shared with me that she had obtained new papers with a stamp signifying her change in immigration status. She told me that once she had the official documents, “mi mamá me dio un abrazo y me dijo—oh, ahora que tienes tus papeles te sientes mejor” (my mom gave me a hug and said to me “oh, now that you have your papers you feel much better”). Pita was to feel better not only because she was safer with papers but also because she could set aside the shame and guilt that she and her mom had expressed to me in other moments. For Pita, the experience was complicated: “En verdad me sentí muy oh my God. It’s like, there’s no feeling for that. Es como un montón de cosas, confused, excited, porque en verdad uno no sabe lo que van a decir, si le van a preguntar una cosa que uno no ensayó o algo así. So it was really lucky” (The truth is I felt very oh my God. It’s like, there’s no feeling for that. It’s like a bunch of things: confused, excited, because really you don’t know what they’re going to say, if they’re going to ask you something that you’re not prepared to answer or something like that. So it was really lucky). Pita expressed her excitement, but also her sense of being “lucky” that she was granted a green card instead of being stumped by unexpected questions from an immigration judge. Bypassing the moral vocabulary of good and bad, we have seen how Pita carried concern for those who haven’t been so lucky.

Catalina and Pita made decisions surrounding speech and silence—choosing to disguise or disclose their immigration experiences—according to their juridical status. Their understanding of the significance of citizenship and the risks involved in revealing their immigration status shaped their decisions about what stories to publish for the personal memoir unit. Catalina, aware of her vulnerabilities as an undocumented student, encoded her status in the story of the birthday. Pita, with the confidence and sense of obligation surrounding being one of the lucky ones with papers, used publication as an opportunity to support and advocate for her community. Both girls reacted to the pressure of publication and publicity with a sophisticated understanding of risk. We have come very far indeed from a notion of young people as ignorant of the implications of immigration status.

Defining Diversity

In the activity that follows, the teacher asked students to work in small groups to define the term diversity. Aurora, Nellie, and Sara—with some guidance from the teacher—worked together to create a word web on a large sheet of chart paper that would be displayed for the class to see. They wrote the word “diversity” in the center of the chart paper and drew a big circle around it. As they brainstormed ideas associated with that keyword, they added lines radiating out from the circle. Aurora held the marker and wrote down her group’s ideas.

For students in this mixed-status, mixed-race classroom, skin color, national origin, and language were some of the first themes to emerge. The opening lines involve multiple negotiations: choosing to write the words “countries,” “immigrant,” or “cultures” and debating the phrases “skin tone” or “color.”

At this point, we have some sense of how many of the words and concepts mentioned during this brainstorm evoked questions of birthright citizenship and juridical status for Aurora. We find her in the highly charged situation of negotiating—and transcribing—in real time her feeling of what topics are permissible or too risky. If we listen carefully, we’ll hear her tactically change the topic or simply refuse to write down anything at all. Nellie started off with the word “countries,” and Aurora reframed with “cultures” instead. Although she ultimately wrote down “countries” in turn 8, this was her attempt to shift the conversation away from connotations of nationality and birthright citizenship and instead toward a reference to culture, which can separate belonging from birthplace.

Aurora became more explicit in her decisions about what to write when Nellie introduced the word “border” and explained her reason for bringing it up.

As we can see, Aurora responded strongly when asked to write about border crossing, choosing not to write down the word “border” in order to avoid any risk of inviting further discussion about different ways of entering the country and, by extension, the range of immigration statuses that might be represented in her classroom. When Nellie said the word “border” in turn 17, she explained that some people “cross the border” while others “didn’t.” In turn 21, Aurora rejected this idea, putting an end to the conversation by decisively saying she would not write it down. Nellie dropped the subject, and Aurora resumed writing a moment later when Sara said “independence” (turn 22). Aurora reentered the conversation switching to a more neutral topic—“games”—that steered the interaction in a different direction (turn 24). The activity came to a close just as Sara offered “language” and “immigration” in turn 26, and Nellie emphasized “language” in the following turn. Aurora ignored the word “immigration” but did repeat and write down “language” (turn 30).

As her peers called out terms for Aurora to write on the chart paper, she had to make real-time decisions about how to represent these ideas for her group. This exchange demonstrates just how hard Aurora worked to steer the conversation away from states and borders to other ways of belonging (culture and language) that do not depend on national boundaries. Any discussion of this type of diversity could run the risk of drawing attention to her undocumented status, so Aurora redirected the topic or outright refused to write in several important moments.

When I recently reviewed the transcript and recording with Aurora, asking her to reflect on her refusal to write down the words “border” and “immigration,” she emphasized the risks involved in disclosing her undocumented status in school. She explained, “Still to this day this [kind of conversation] makes me feel like you want me to stand out, be identified, be spotlighted,” especially if we are sharing and I have to say, “I relate to this.” For Aurora, being spotlighted can open on to two kinds of threats: first, people’s “stereotypical judgments” about what she can or can’t do, and second, and even worse, to the fact that “anyone knowing could ruin the life that I have here.” For Aurora, “having to choose between answering or not answering is really hard,” so her strategy was to avoid the subject altogether.

This fleeting but formative moment is representative of many that Aurora encountered in elementary school. Classroom prompts about diversity meant to foster students’ personal connections by drawing on their prior knowledge often served to make Aurora retreat. She was at once central to the activity—serving as her group’s scribe—and marginalized by the conversation itself. Depending on the students’ and their families’ citizenship status, the stakes involved in broaching these topics was quite different. When Nellie, who is Puerto Rican, raised the subject of the border, Aurora chose nonparticipation. And when Sara (a first-generation U.S.-born child of Dominican descent) offered up “immigration” and “language,” Aurora ignored the former and wrote only the latter. This moment of silence only becomes audible when we recognize how much Aurora knows about the broader sociopolitical context of her own immigrant childhood.

Seeing Diversity

During diversity panels at P.S. 432, teachers arranged for students to visit different classrooms throughout the school to talk with their peers about the harmful effects of bullying. On this day in June, a teacher brought a panel of first graders to visit Ms. Daniela’s class to talk about their experiences. After the panel discussion, the teacher asked all of the boys in the class to stand up in order to “see how diverse we really are.” As the male-identified students stood before their peers, the teacher summarized the lessons she hoped children would take away from this activity:

Difference is part of life. We need to really have freedom for who we are and respect one another. Even if you don’t agree, even if you don’t like it. It’s important to just accept who we are. It’s a world that’s not gonna change. It’s important to embrace everyone and to learn about each other. To learn. Ask questions that are meaningful and important and say I’m sorry that was not- that was ignorant of me. And you know, please forgive me but I want to learn, and I make mistakes. But at least be real and not make fun and take responsibility.

The teacher’s goal in producing a visual display of classroom differences was to foster students’ acceptance of them. In her view, social categories like gender were fixed and unchangeable; as a result, she advocated for resignation and tolerance. Turning to the children who remained seated, the teacher asked, “So what do you notice girls, women?” Instead of listing out gender-specific descriptors, students reframed the prompt and began to share ideas about diversity that echoed the word web activity conducted just a few months earlier. Maysi began with, “Um most of the things that are differences between us, um well there technically all of us not just among the boys is skin color, uh, the country, size.” Aurora added, “Feelings, uh, uh, feelings, point of views, heights, cultures.” Just like she had done during the diversity word web activity, Aurora replaced the word “country” with the word “culture” in order to avoid talking about birthplace.

Picking up on the word “country” from Maysi’s list, the visiting teacher proposed a final activity where she would name countries of origin that she believed to be represented among the students in the class. Hazel added that they should all stand up when they heard their country called, but no one clarified what it meant to “come from” any of them. Let’s observe how Aurora, Catalina, Jenni, and their peers responded to an activity explicitly focused on identity, country of origin, and belonging.

For these knowledgeable students, the question of what country one is from immediately evoked birthright citizenship. Within a public school setting where teachers might assume that children were unaware of or unconcerned with questions of immigration status, this visiting teacher’s activity was premised on the misguided idea that evoking national origin would simply produce a sense of cultural pride. It might be an easy assumption to make in an immigrant community like Vista, where flags of several different Latin American countries hung in storefront windows, were painted on food trucks, and were used as curtains in apartment windows. But these expressions of affiliation are quite different than being asked to share your birthplace in a school setting.

This kind of pedagogy—attempting to foster student participation in school by asking them to draw on knowledge they bring from home—is not uncommon when teachers try to be culturally relevant in their teaching. In this instance, however, the educator was underestimating the students’ knowledge. We see a clear collision between students’ spiraling curriculum of citizenship and the educator’s assumption of their innocence. The students were cognizant of the risks involved in revealing immigration status, but the teacher was apparently unaware of these vulnerabilities. We saw evidence of this in chapter 2 with the oral history homework assignment, which Aurora also experienced as threatening. In this mixed-status classroom context, the activity proposed by the visiting teacher instilled a range of feelings in students ranging from pride to anxiety to fear.

As the teacher called out country names, students had to decide whether to stand or remain seated. This was similar to other moments in which being asked to stand was synonymous with expressing national pride: “All rise for the singing of the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’” for instance, or, “Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.” The children in Ms. Daniela’s class knew each other so well at this point in the school year that they began to call on each other and the adults present when they thought they should stand. The command párate (stand up) became an important part of this activity, as we can see in turn 6, when Mexico was called and Brandon turned to Aurora and told her to stand up. Aurora replied in disbelief, preferring not to draw attention to herself by remaining seated. After quickly rising and sitting again, Aurora began humming loudly to herself, as if to drown out the discussion. In contrast, when the Dominican Republic was called next, Jenni jumped up excitedly to the sounds of cheering and clapping from her peers (turn 10). These various ways of participating in the activity are indicative of the focal students’ different views on what is at stake in displaying their nationality: to be from Mexico implied an experience of border crossing, whereas to be from the Dominican Republic did not conjure up questions of immigration status. The next country was Puerto Rico. This time Hazel called my name as though she were awarding me a prize in a pageant (“and the winner is . . . !”) and I stood up (turn 17).

In the last minutes of this “countries we come from” roll call, a number of children in the class vocally challenged the teacher’s narrow focus on birthplace and nationality as tied to immigration. Having noticed that the two African American students in the class had not had a chance to stand up, one student called out “African American,” and another followed with “United States!” Let’s take a close look at two more stretches of talk and the impact of this activity on Aurora and Catalina in particular.

The visiting teacher’s question—“but that’s what we have in common, right?”—either indicates her own assumption that all of the students in this classroom were U.S. citizens or, and I believe this is more likely, indicates her belief that children of this age would be unaware of the connections between birthplace and immigration status. In turn 23, a student made explicit what the teacher proposed to be a shared characteristic of everyone in the class—“we were all born here”—at which point the teacher was ready to move on (turn 24). But Aurora and Maysi refused to move on, refuting that false universalism. First, Aurora quietly challenged this claim, her words inaudible to everyone except Maysi, who repeated Aurora’s words (“not all!”) loud enough for everyone to hear (turns 25 through 27). The children themselves resisted a facile notion of diversity that would have dissolved their actual differences into an imaginary American melting pot.

Quickly improvising one last set of instructions that would give students not born in the United States a chance to stand, the teacher called out, “Stand up if you were not born in this country.” The teacher assumed that this would be a noncontroversial directive, but she was wrong.

Aurora’s participation in this activity is revealing of the anxiety that accompanied it. Despite having called attention to the fact that not everyone in the room was born in the United States, Aurora refused to stand (turn 32). This—like the previous—moment of refusal is all the more significant when we contrast it with Aurora’s ongoing participation in the activity. In keeping with the classroom role of language broker for newcomer students that Ms. Daniela had assigned her at the beginning of the year, Aurora turned to her classmates to translate the teacher’s directive. She rightly assumed that the nuances of this conversation were hard for Jenni to understand, so she repeated the teacher’s prompt in Spanish (turn 35). And just like above, a student commanded, “Párate.” Jenni stood up in a comic way that garnered laughter from her classmates (turn 36). Jenni, a newcomer student from the Dominican Republic for whom revealing birthplace did not correlate as strongly with juridical status, rose without hesitation.

Jenni and others stood up and sat back down; the air was full of the sound of chairs dragging across the floor as Aurora maintained her position and did not rise. Seated across the room, Catalina, who was Aurora’s counterpart in their shared Mexican origin and undocumented status, also chose to remain seated. Whispering strongly and hissing loudly so that Catalina would hear while also keeping her volume low enough in the hopes of staying under the radar, Aurora addressed Catalina in a way that could have potentially revealed her nationality.

Aurora began to call out Catalina’s name, asking her if she was born here (turn 38). Her quiet but assertive bids for Catalina’s attention made it clear that Aurora wanted to communicate directly with her without anyone else’s noticing. Catalina, however, ignored Aurora and kept silent until she grew tired of Aurora’s attempts to get her attention. Finally, Catalina turned back to Aurora, saying her name and giving her a stern look that silenced her (turn 40).

As the teacher regained control of class and issued a closing prompt, Aurora lamented “ay, ay, ay, ay, ay” (turn 43)—perhaps because she realized that she’d upset Catalina, or perhaps because the teacher’s invitation to “tell your [immigration] story” was the last thing she wanted to do. Finally, the teacher invited the children to reflect: “What did you think about this experience? What did you think about sharing?” (turn 47). Aurora shared her thoughts with the whole class: “I think it’s a good experience because you might be like maybe you knew something about this, but you never said it and right now you feel like you feel terrible and—” Interrupting Aurora, the teacher thanked her for sharing and offered her own commentary: “Now you feel that you’re sorry cuz you offended anyone.” Aurora was remorseful, whispering “yeah” into the microphone. In this—the only moment that Aurora spoke up in class—she was, in fact, speaking to Catalina and apologizing for drawing attention to her in an upsetting way that she understood all too well. Aurora knew that she had potentially revealed an aspect of Catalina’s identity that she was supposed to guard in confidence.

Throughout this exchange, we have witnessed a profound disconnect between the teacher’s imagination of what it might mean to evoke birthplace in this classroom and the students’ sophisticated awareness of the risks involved in displaying their nationality in a public setting. Although the teacher worked to make differences visible while fostering inclusion through the sit/stand activity, the undocumented children in the room experienced the activity as threatening. Educators may assume that students will feel comfortable talking about their identity during activities meant to elicit multicultural perspectives designed to honor their culture and experiences in school. However proud students may be about their nationality, these kinds of classroom conversations can actually serve to marginalize rather than foster inclusion for undocumented students.

The assignments and interactions we’ve examined throughout this chapter make it clear that children’s awareness of the significance of citizenship saturates school life. We’ve seen how a student’s awareness of her juridical status influences her classroom participation—what she shares, encodes, or withholds. For example, Pita’s change in status prompted her to tell her border-crossing story in the hopes of positively influencing public opinion on immigration. And Catalina, while writing nothing explicit or potentially incriminating about immigration in her published story, nevertheless encoded her hopes and fears about citizenship status in sophisticated, if implicit, ways. During classroom interactions, Aurora and Catalina maintained a protective posture as undocumented students, while Jenni, who at the time possessed a visa, did not hesitate to publicly proclaim her birthplace.

For all the inquietud the students might experience, I want to emphasize their agency here. The girls protected themselves and their families by refusing certain topics of conversation (like Aurora’s choosing to not write the word “borders”); they rejected simplistic assumptions that public school students are all born in the United States (as seen in Aurora and Maysi’s exchange about “not all” children being born “here”). As we will see, these students’ speech, along with their purposeful silences, regarding immigration status only grows more complex as they approach their elementary school graduation.