Interlude I

On a sweltering June day in 2014, I accompanied Ms. Daniela’s students, along with three other fifth-grade classes from P.S. 432, on a field trip to their neighborhood high school. Aurora, Catalina, Hazel, Pita, Jenni, and Tere were among this group of fifth graders on their way to interview student leaders of the Vista High School Dream Team. The Dream Team was a mixed-status group of high school students committed to building solidarity by advocating for equitable educational opportunities and immigration policy reforms that would provide a pathway to citizenship for their undocumented peers. The fifth graders had been building toward this moment for months. Since the start of the yearlong curriculum, entitled Resistencia (Resistance), they had studied different historical moments in which groups of people had resisted injustice and advocated for their rights. Now, they were working on a final unit entitled Causas de Quinto (Fifth-grade causes).

After researching contemporary social causes that they would be (in Ms. Daniela’s words) “willing to fight for,” these ten- and eleven-year-olds were going to visit Vista High to talk with local teenagers about a cause they had chosen to learn more about: immigration reform. (Recall that while teachers cannot ask about students’ immigration status, immigration is considered a standard part of social studies curricula.) In order to support Ms. Daniela in her planning, I had introduced her to Ms. Janet, a teacher at Vista High School and faculty advisor to the Dream Team, in the hopes that they could bring their students together to talk more about youth-led participation in the immigrant rights movement. The interview that Ms. Daniela’s students conducted with Ms. Janet’s students—the focus of chapter 4—was the culminating project in the Causas de Quinto unit. For now, let’s walk alongside the children and listen to what they notice on the four-block walk from P.S. 432 to Vista High School.

Before we set out from P.S. 432, Ms. Daniela and the students gathered in the hallway outside of the cafeteria. I pressed record on the Voice Memo app on the iPods that Aurora, Catalina, Pita, and Hazel were wearing just as the teachers tried and failed to arrange dozens of students into two straight lines. The students clamored to leave the stuffy hallway and scolded one another before embarking on their short walk: “Don’t lose that pencil,” “I was next to her,” “No you stand over here,” and “Who is using the f-word?” When a handful of students lined up near Hazel whispering about a note being passed around—“Pick it up, pick it up! did they give it to her?”—Hazel sternly admonished one of her classmates: “My God, forget it. No Christi gave it to Jenni, Jenni gave it to Martin to throw it out. But you don’t know what happens. They could be writing about you, me, anybody. So that’s why before I throw anything out that’s a paper, I read it.”

Childhood routines like passing notes in school accrued a sense of urgency in a community where the state might demand to see your papers at any moment. For Hazel, reading and interpreting papers was a serious responsibility. She expressed concern not about the specific content of a note being passed among her peers but about “anything that’s a paper” containing information about “anybody.” (As we’ve have seen in chapter 2, interpreting and translating school forms and safeguarding papers relating to immigration are crucial components of the spiraling curriculum of citizenship.) After Hazel’s warning, we filed out of the school.

We walked down one of the main north–south avenues cutting through the neighborhood while the children offered a running commentary on the people and places we passed. English, Spanish, and Mandarin—the three main languages that make up the linguistic landscape—were visible in the local businesses and shop signs. Within just one block, we passed Lucky Noodle Kitchen in Chinese characters and in English, Vega Deli Grocery, legal offices with the signs “Attorney/Abogado” and “Real Estate,” and Angel Restaurant, which specializes in “carne y pescado” (meat and fish). When Ms. Daniela gestured toward a looming building—“this is where we’re going”—Aurora was incredulous.

How is it, I wondered at the time, that Aurora didn’t know it was a school, that she thought the building was a “building or a factory or something like that?” Unlike her peers, Aurora had never been to the high school, even though she passed it regularly when she entered the subway station just one block over. This was not because her parents weren’t invested in her education. They had taken her to visit the neighborhood middle school she’d be attending next year; they had received and carefully read school correspondence regarding extracurricular activities held at Vista High. However, not only did Aurora’s work schedule prevent her from attending such events—Aurora worked three out of five days a week with her parents selling textiles at a flea market—but her parents also felt uncomfortable, given the uncertainty associated with being undocumented, leaving Aurora in the care of others. Aurora’s inability to see the building as a school struck me as a metaphor for the difficulty of imagining a future education, given her family responsibilities and the risks that attended her lack of papers.

Once it became clear to Aurora that this building was a high school, she began, with excitement, to imagine one day attending it. “We’re gonna be here in like four or three years,” she said as she set the school’s name to a tune that she sang as we entered the building lobby. “I would love to go to this high school,” she cooed, and a student named Brandon who was standing next to her agreed. Meanwhile, Ms. Daniela worked to reorganize the children into line formation as we waited for Ms. Janet, our host. Having been instructed to stand at the front of line beside each other, Brandon and Aurora took in their surroundings.

For the next four minutes, while she stood directly in front of the security desk in the center of the school lobby, Aurora’s voice and actions changed dramatically. Here, a school safety agent—an employee of the New York City Police Department assigned to work in a public school—sat behind a desk covered in signs addressing visitors. Some of the signs directed behavior (“You must sign in and show ID to enter”); others invited visitors to aid the police in prosecuting those accused of graffiti or vandalism (“REWARD for arrest and conviction”). Observe the changes in Aurora’s demeanor as Brandon began to read a sign in Spanish and Aurora became aware of the officer’s gaze.

As the students’ excitement increased, the school lobby grew noisier. Ms. Janet instructed us on how we’d arrive at the classroom on the fourth floor. She directed small groups of students to head toward the elevator, while Brandon and Aurora continued their exchange near the security desk.

Aurora shushed Brandon as they stood in the gaze of the school safety agent whose uniform and disposition were hard to distinguish from those of the police officers they passed outside on the street. When she failed to silence Brandon, she became silent herself. For several minutes, Aurora’s mic caught only the sound of her classmates bantering.

Finally, Ms. Janet called Aurora’s group. We walked past the security desk and waited for the elevator as Ms. Janet explained the rules of elevator use at Vista: high school students were generally forbidden from taking it, but the school had made an exception for P.S. 432’s students. We stood and watched the floor numbers light up as the elevator descended. Once we were in the elevator and the thick metal doors had closed, Aurora seemed to gain a sense of safety as we gained distance from the police officer.

As she moved farther away from the security desk, Aurora’s confidence and talkativeness returned. Compare Figure 1 with Figure 2. While in the officer’s line of sight, Aurora tried to make herself small, but here—on the fourth floor of the school—she looked straight ahead at the camera, making a sweeping gesture, as she led her peers down the hallway.