Let a Thousand Teachers Bloom. A Response to Creating Communities

Public education in the United States is nominally inclusive and open to all, but is also nuanced and complicated, particularly for students with special learning needs or for English language learners. For refugee students, who may also belong to either or both these two groups, the challenge can be compounded by previous traumas to themselves and their families. Roxas’s description of teacher Patricia Engler illustrates how complicated, but ultimately doable, is the work of educating refugee youth. The key strategy that the article illustrated was the need for attention to connections between school and home life. The students experienced these and other cultural intersections as affirming and consistent, further strengthening the community-school linkages