The Inner World of the Immigrant Child
Note: This entry fulfills the “Reflection” requirement for the reading of The Inner World of the Immigrant Child. It will also be made avaiable as an APA-formatted paper for submission in class. I may make a few changes before submitting it.
When I was 15, my family moved from suburban Salem, Oregon to a rural corner of the state some 250 miles away. At the time, it seemed like a culture shock, and I was certainly affected by my change of scenery at the time. Really, though I was just an English-speaking kid moving from one (mostly) white school to another (mostly) white school in another part of the state. I didn’t even cross state lines.
Some 25 years later, I work in a school where roughly one third to one half of the students have family roots somewhere besides the United States. Most of those students are either first or second generation Mexican immigrants who have had to adapt to or overcome language and cultural barriers in the school setting. My little trek across the state when I was 15 hardly seems much more than a blip on the radar screen any more.
It is with those eyes that I read The Inner World of the Immigrant Child, by Cristina Igoa. This is a book written by a well-educated and professionally accomplished teacher who was once herself an immigrant child from the Phillipines. In the first half of the book, Dr. Igoa profiles some of her students, and follows them from entry in their class, their progress as struggling immigrant students, and their accomplishments through high school and into adulthood. The counselor in me was most interested in her use of “filmstrips”, or story boards that her children used to tell a story. Very often, these stories conveyed deeper meanings about the children’s perception of their new surroundings. A girl from Hong Kong tells the story of the “Upside Down Morning”, in which nothing around her makes sense and she winds up exhausted after a day of these experiences. A girl from the Phillipines draws a story of a lonely bear, and in the process conveys her own confusion and depression.
Dr. Igoa has the rare opportunity to follow up with these students and talk about their stories through older, more mature eyes. It was through her own PhD program that she was able to reconnect with these students and track the progress that became the material for much of this book.
One theme that weaves through this book almost constantly is the importance of an adult-child connection to the potential success of that student. Ioga indicates that for most of these children, that important adult is the teacher, and not a counselor or administrator in the school. Indeed, it is the rare therapist that is able to track their students into adulthood.
In the second half of this book, Dr. Igoa presents the importance of the Cultural/Academic/Psychological (CAP) dimensions to be addressed in an immigrant child’s development. This three-pronged approach to working with immigrant children is vital to their success, and all three components interact with each other. One way of validating cultural customs and norms can be accomplished by allowing children a setting in which they have previously experienced education. “I learned that my immigrant students learn quickly if they feel ‘at home,’ not only with me but in our room,” she explains. That academic success improves the students’ psychological well-being, which in turn helps them grow stronger cultural roots in their new locale.
One important task that Dr. Igoa presents is that of the classroom teacher understanding the teaching environment in which the immigrant child was raised. Do students from that country normally wait to be called on before they speak? Are they normally punished for what we would consider to be trivial infractions? As an educator in a school with a large immigrant population, this is a factor I hadn’t considered before now. She also includes a chart that teachers can use to track the school environments that a child has experienced since kindergarten.
Dr. Igoa also stresses the importance of the home-school connection in the success of the immigrant student. I believe that this is an important factor for ALL students, but perhaps most so for children who are struggling to make those connections. As an educator, I learned fairly early in my career that many families were more receptive to staff visits at home than if they parents needed to make that trip to school. For a variety of reasons, there are some families that don’t come to school.
Finally, Igoa recognizes that many students come to this country with some strengths already developed. I was most struck by this statement:
These students have three things in their favor: the [sic] fact that many of the schools in their native countries taught them the art of memorization; the fact that many believe that if they put in enough time and effort they will succeed; and the fact that they arrive with curious minds.
It would be fitting to close this journal reflection by commenting on the remarkable career of Dr. Igoa. An immigrant child from the Phillipines herself, she began her career as a teacher of immigrant children. After completing her PhD in Multicultural Education from the University of San Fransisco, she returned to the classroom to teach in a sheltered SLL program. Her unique perspective as a former immigrant child and PhD student allowed her to create the close ties with the students who were profiled in this book, and to follow them through high school and into adulthood. To borrow a line from Yogi Berra, she’s half educator, half professor, and half cultural anthropologist.
