Discover how to create a sense of belonging and connection for your immigrant and refugee students. This timely book, written by four award-winning teachers, offers compelling stories and practical applications to help you reach your students in the classroom and beyond. Topics covered include advocacy, using literacy to create a welcoming environment, connecting with families, building staff capacity and best practices for virtual learning. You’ll also find easy-to-implement lesson plans, as well as reflection questions throughout to help you on your journey. Appropriate for K-12 teachers, English Learner specialists and school leaders, this inspiring and useful book will help you make the necessary changes to create more positive outcomes for your immigrant students.

A leading expert shows how, by learning from refugee teachers and students, we can create for displaced childrenÑand indeed all childrenÑbetter schooling and brighter futures. Half of the worldÕs 26 million refugees are children. Their formal education is disrupted, and their lives are too often dominated by exclusion and uncertainty about what the future holds. Even kids who have the opportunity to attend school face enormous challenges, as they struggle to integrate into unfamiliar societies and educational environments. In Right Where We Belong, Sarah Dryden-Peterson discovers that, where governments and international agencies have been stymied, refugee teachers and students themselves are leading. From open-air classrooms in Uganda to the hallways of high schools in Maine, new visions for refugee education are emerging. Dryden-Peterson introduces us to people like JacquesÑa teacher who created a school for his fellow Congolese refugees in defiance of local lawsÑand Hassan, a Somali refugee navigating the social world of the American teenager. Drawing on more than 600 interviews in twenty-three countries, Dryden-Peterson shows how teachers and students are experimenting with flexible forms of learning. Rather than adopt the unrealistic notion that all will soon return to Ònormal,Ó these schools embrace unfamiliarity, develop studentsÕ adaptiveness, and demonstrate how children, teachers, and community members can build supportive relationships across lines of difference. It turns out that policymakers, activists, and educators have a lot to learn from displaced children and teachers. Their stories point the way to better futures for refugee students and inspire us to reimagine education broadly, so that children everywhere are better prepared to thrive in a diverse and unpredictable world.

A landmark work that weaves captivating stories about the past, present, and personal into an inspiring vision for how America can educate immigrant students Setting out from her classroom, Jessica Lander takes the reader on a powerful and urgent journey to understand what it takes for immigrant students to become Americans. A compelling read for everyone who cares about America’s future, Making Americans brims with innovative ideas for educators and policy makers across the country. Lander brings to life the history of America’s efforts to educate immigrants through rich stories, including these: -The Nebraska teacher arrested for teaching an eleven-year-old boy in German who took his case to the Supreme Court -The California families who overturned school segregation for Mexican American children -The Texas families who risked deportation to establish the right for undocumented children to attend public schools She visits innovative classrooms across the country that work with immigrant-origin students, such as these: -A school in Georgia for refugee girls who have been kept from school by violence, poverty, and natural disaster -Five schools in Aurora, Colorado, that came together to collaborate with community groups, businesses, a hospital, and families to support newcomer children. -A North Carolina school district of more than 100 schools who rethought how they teach their immigrant-origin students She shares inspiring stories of how seven of her own immigrant students created new homes in America, including the following: -The boy who escaped Baghdad and found a home in his school’s ROTC program -The daughter of Cambodian genocide survivors who dreamed of becoming a computer scientist -The orphaned boy who escaped violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and created a new community here Making Americans is an exploration of immigrant education across the country told through key historical moments, current experiments to improve immigrant education, and profiles of immigrant students. Making Americans is a remarkable book that will reshape how we all think about nurturing one of America’s greatest assets: the newcomers who enrich this country with their energy, talents, and drive.

This edited volume investigates how the role of leadership in education in various countries from around the world have been designed and implemented through educational policies and national cultures to meet the needs of new, displaced, and mobile groups of migrants and refugees.

"In Australia and internationally much still needs to occur to promote inclusive practices in education and society with many educators not feeling equipped to recognise or appreciate diversity or cater effectively for inclusion. With embedded audio-visual components, this open textbook is designed to enhance the quality of the reader's experience with each chapter posing key understandings underpinning inclusion and diversity. Readers are encouraged to answer questions on culture, special learning needs, varied educational contexts, gender diversity and more. The key expected outcome of this open textbook is to engage readers in making meaning of inclusion and diversity and applying their learning to their own individual contexts."--BCcampus website.

Recent immigrants and refugees — both children and their families — often struggle to adapt to Canadian education systems. For their part, educators also face challenges when developing effective strategies to help these students make smooth transitions to their new country. In Immigrant and Refugee Students in Canada, researchers join educators and social workers to provide a thorough and wide-ranging analysis of the issues at the preschool, elementary, secondary and post-secondary levels. By understanding these issues within the unique Canadian context, educators can work more effectively with newcomers trying to find their way. This book pursues three lines of inquiry: What are the main challenges that immigrant and refugee children and families face in the Canadian education system? What are the common aspects of successful intervention? What can we learn from the narratives of researchers, educators, social workers, and other frontline workers who work with immigrant and refugee families?

This book provides a framework to guide mental health providers who work with refugees and immigrants. Nearly 70 million people today are refugees or forcibly-displaced migrants. More than half of them are children suffering from the effects of dislocation and violence. The authors describe the unique needs and challenges of serving these populations, and offer concrete steps for providing evidence-based, culturally-responsive care. Using the socioecological model, the authors conceptualize the developing child as living within concentric circles that include family, school, neighborhood, and society, embedded within a cultural context. Mental health providers identify and provide targeted support to combat disruptions within any or all of these ecological layers. Chapters examine the complex ways in which culture impacts the refugee experience, barriers to engagement in mental health practice and strategies for overcoming them, assessment, collaborative and integrated mental health interventions, and efforts to increase resilience in children, families, and communities. The book is an essential guide for mental health providers, and all who seek to help children in need.