Blog post #2

Matthew Berdysiak 

Professor Shutkin

ED253

28 February 2020

This week’s reading was about undocumented immigrants in the education system. These immigrants come to the united states looking for a new start and once they step over the border they are in danger of getting deported. Getting deported has a psychological and physical effect on the child. 

It is a constitutional right to be able to go to school. 5.3 million youth (10%) are unauthorized or live with one unauthorized parents. Thousands of undocumented students go to school everyday and wonder if their family is gonna be their when they get home. There is always a threat of the student’s parents getting deported when they are at school. With losing a family member, the kids experience many negative psychological effects. 

Not a lot of research has been done on this situation because of ethical, ethical, and logistical problems. But there was a pilot study done on undocumented immigrants. The Study showed that having a family member detained or deported has the same psychological impact as being homeless. At school the students are insecure as well as being more prone to being bullied, both physical and mental. 

The immigrant youth has a higher chance of experiencing interpersonal, socioemotional, health and substance problems. The kids that are experiencing these struggles are targeted for mass deportation. These kids have grown up in very hostile environments. Growing up in hostile environment can make you socially awkward, lead you taking advantages for substances, and aggressive out lashings. Along with this unauthorized families report low feeling of social belonging resulting in mental health issues. Being unauthorized also has a negative impact on your education. 

Our learning community decided to emphasize the main points of the article. The social, psychological, citizenship, and programs to school enrollment and citizenship. We thought these were the most important points mentioned in the article. These are what effect the children the most and the most beneficial ways have success in America. 

As a group we decided to make a power point and have an activity where we all think of a question and people write their answers on the board. My question was Do schools specifically for immigrant (ESL) students help integrate students into society? My favorite answers were along the line of “ Absolutely , every student deserves a safe, comfortable learning environment.” And “yes, but it does not integrate them into American society.” I liked the second one a lot because it was a mixture of both a safe learning experience, but also the student needs to integrate himself into American society. My responsibilities were going over parental detainment and deportation, psychosocial impacts, academic impacts, along with coming up with a question for the discussion. 

As a whole this was a very powerful article informing the community about undocumented families. This is a large part in politics today and extremely relevant in todays society. This is important for us teachers in training to read about because we have to be informed about our students. I think it is very important to help your students inside the classroom but also outside the classroom. My favorite teachers always cared about me personally.