A Teachers Tells all about International Moves and Kids with Jessica Lander
Jessica Lander (00:00)
My kids want to invest in their community, and I bet the same is true in communities across the country and across the world. They want to make here home, wherever here is, and our communities are so lucky to have them. so students benefit, communities benefits.
when we're nurturing that sense of belonging.
House Of Peregrine (00:53)
Hello everyone and welcome back to the House of Peregrine podcast. Today's conversation is for anyone who's ever moved countries and felt that strange mix of possibility and disorientation, like you're building a life in a place that doesn't quite have a blueprint for you. I'm thrilled to welcome today Jessica Lander, an award-winning teacher, writer, and author who has spent the last decade teaching history and civics to recent immigrant and refugee students in Massachusetts in the US in a public high school.
Jessica's work lives at the intersection of education, identity, and what it actually takes to belong on paper, but also in everyday life. She's the author of Making Americans, a powerful book about immigrant education and the stories that shape who gets to feel at home. this book was recently recognized with the 2024 George Orwell Award for honesty and clarity in public language.
from the National Council of Teachers of English. also the co-author of Powerful Partnerships, a practical guide to engaging families for student success, and she currently serves as the Reimagining Migration Senior Education Policy Fellow. For our House of Peregrine community, people navigating cultures, systems, and belonging across borders, Jessica brings a grounded, hopeful perspective.
on what integration can look like when we treat it as a shared responsibility and not a solo mission.
Jessica, I am so glad to have you on. It took us a minute because you're a very busy woman, but I'm so happy you came on today.
Jessica Lander (02:21)
It's so lovely to be here. So thank you for having me on to the conversation.
House Of Peregrine (02:27)
Great, well, let's start out with, so my audience knows that my kids go to school in the Dutch system, the Dutch public system, but I'm American. So they've gone their whole entire career as students in a system that I don't speak the language very well. And so I'm having this conversation with you and you're from my country who does, who you're on the ground with kids like mine. And so of course it's different when you are
American in the Netherlands rather than an immigrant in the US. There's a lot of nuance there that I'm skipping over by comparing myself to it, but I feel like I have lot of... I can resonate with a lot of what you're doing so well that I just couldn't wait to have you on. tell us how you got started with this. Did it come from your own travels abroad or what? Tell us the story.
Jessica Lander (03:18)
Yeah, yes and no. So I mean, first and foremost, I'm a teacher. And for much of last decade, had the honor and joy of teaching recent immigrant and refugee students, as you said, in a Massachusetts public high school here in the US. And I, in college, had the opportunity to study school systems and originally thought I would go into Ed Policy.
But decided that I needed a year in the classroom ⁓ If I was gonna take myself serious anyone else was gonna take myself seriously that I needed to be a teacher And the goal was one year I got a fellowship to teach in Thailand at Chiang Mai University in northern Thailand and I went for one year and it was a transformative year and particularly that I like very distinctly remember that last day after my last class and
driving my motorbike to a nearby Watt, a nearby temple ⁓ after our last class and just breaking down in And realizing that the class community and culture and all of the quirks that were present in each of those classes we had was gone. Those never, they could never be recreated ⁓ those group of kiddos would never be together in that way again. And
I realized in that moment that I needed to continue teaching. And so I came back to the US and I taught for a year in sixth grade. And then I actually went back overseas and taught college women in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for a while and came back to the US. Did end up going and studying education policy. But after that and getting my master's realizing, well, you know, I need a year in a public high school in Massachusetts, just one year. And then I'm really going into policy.
And at the time I didn't know what type of teaching I really want to do. I'd done a range of different types of ⁓ teaching at different levels in different subjects over the last number of years, both abroad and in the U.S. But I mean, I applied to positions in English and art and history and all But I had a conversation with folks in Lowell, Massachusetts. And Lowell, which is about 20...
20 to 30 minutes drive from me, but I'd maybe been there once in my Lowell, unbeknownst to me, had the second largest Cambodian community outside of Cambodia. And I didn't realize this, I know. The first is Long Beach, California here in the US, and then Lowell, Massachusetts. And I had no idea, but I had recently lived and worked and taught in Cambodia.
And so I wondered if perhaps I had something to offer a way to connect with some of my students and their families having some sense of the education system in Cambodia. And my two would become former heads of department who are extraordinary mentors to me. They sat down and encouraged me to apply and to come teach in Lowell. ⁓
And so I came for a year to teach history and civics to recent immigrant refugee students. And a decade later, I'm very like ⁓ confident in that this is the work of my life. ⁓ But I hadn't set out ⁓ knowing that I wanted to teach immigrant origin students or to teach history and civics and to see the connections between them and think about how we can reimagine immigrant education. All of this came.
House Of Peregrine (06:41)
Wow.
Jessica Lander (06:55)
the work and the people I met in Lowell.
House Of Peregrine (06:58)
Wow. And so,
so you had the experience of being in a different country yourself. And so that, and of course, the story's always weave in reverse, right? And so you had this connection with the place you were in and somehow it found you when you moved back, which is, I love this magic that happens that that's why we're House of Peregrine. Like it, it's that mystical magical thing that happens with place when you have a resonance with it.
Jessica Lander (07:05)
this.
House Of Peregrine (07:27)
⁓ And so that's part of your story too. love that. ⁓ so what were you, suddenly this place that you resonate with shows up 20 minutes from you, which is awesome. But what, where did it start? So you started teaching, started, what did you start noticing about these kids? Or I can imagine you started, you were on the ground of immigrant kids, like that. that as a parent who didn't really,
I don't know. I didn't really prepare. Well, first of all, I'd never had kids in school before, so that's a new, but then I'd never been an adult in another country. I'd been a digital nomad for 10 years, but I'd never been a settled adult in another country. What were you seeing with these kids? Like, I'm sure you started noticing things that were universal or expected, or tell us what you started noticing.
Jessica Lander (08:18)
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. first and foremost, I just was amazed by the multitude of strengths that my students bring to the classroom. ⁓ My students are cultural and linguistic navigators for their Often for my kiddos, they have the
the highest levels of English in their family, not always, but many of them do. And so they're navigating all sorts of government systems and community systems for their families. They bring such grit and determination having navigated these systems, navigating multiple countries and cultures. And they bring such a wealth of knowledge to our classroom and our study of history and civics of coming from so many ⁓ communities, cultures, traditions that
It just enriched in so many ways the work we are doing in our classroom and then too seeing all the ways in which ⁓ their strengths were supporting their families in our communities. The more I got to work with my kiddos, the more I realized ⁓ that our schools are not often recognizing, investing or valuing these many, many strengths. These are strengths that
are really, really important for any student anywhere. the types of strengths that we value in our kiddos when they go off to college and when they're out in the workplace. But we're not so good often in schools at identifying them and valuing them. But we need to be much better at it. And it was striking for me because my students are often in our schools seen in the deficit-based lens. So they're seen for what they lack.
and not for all these strengths they have. In the US, we talk about our students often, our immigrant origin students who are new to the country as either English language learners or English learners or maybe now more and more we're hearing multilingual learners. for the first two, it's a really, it's a focus on their language acquisition in English and it's a focus on what they don't have. are working on their English versus all of these things they do have.
House Of Peregrine (10:31)
So it's like
the language of standardization, right? Like we need to get them to this baseline so that they can join the standard student. ⁓ Yeah. And so it comes from a good place maybe, but it doesn't take into account the other things our little brains and bodies are doing all day. ⁓
Jessica Lander (10:41)
Correct. ⁓
Absolutely.
mean, and like it will be important for them to learn English. Absolutely. ⁓ However, with that focus on a deficit based lens of seeing our kids through what they lack and not all the strengths they bring, it permeates our curriculum. It permeates the mindset of schools and how they treat and think about kids. I've seen, unfortunately, so many school systems equate our students English acquisition.
to their intelligence. And I've heard so many of my kiddos come to me really frustrated or upset going, my teachers think I'm stupid. They're bored in math class. I've done this math three or four years ago. I can't express it in English. And I'm sitting there bored. And it permeates to how our kids see themselves. They don't always recognize all those strengths they bring. They sometimes see themselves in a
House Of Peregrine (11:20)
yeah.
Yep.
Jessica Lander (11:45)
They've articulated this to me as lesser than their English speaking monolingual American born classmates. And we're a lot.
House Of Peregrine (11:53)
And that's reflected
in the school if they don't have the proper perspective, because kids learn through the reflection that adults give them. And so that's an important lens to have if you're working with international kids is that, yes, it's a definite deficit in language, but it's not a deficit in intelligence or willingness or, yeah.
Jessica Lander (12:05)
Exactly.
House Of Peregrine (12:22)
can sometimes get lost when you're so focused on the things we're focused on in schools and again standardizing everybody, giving everyone to the same speed and the
Jessica Lander (12:32)
So
I get lost too in thinking that, I mean, I think in the US we've really struggled historically in thinking that our immigrant origin students new to the country need to learn English first and then the rest will follow. That, yeah, well, I mean, A, because our curriculum has historically then like taught dumbed down English,
House Of Peregrine (12:46)
that's interesting.
Jessica Lander (12:59)
And then often the content is connected to sort of that lower level of English. So many of our kids talk about being treated like they're little kids and I teach high school and no high schooler wants to be treated like a elementary school kid. And so that's going to have all sorts of profound impacts on whether students feel that they're valued in our school and feel connected to the school.
House Of Peregrine (13:26)
Yep. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And that lack of sensitivity there has effects that you can't measure unless you have that sensitivity. That makes total sense. In my own kids' journeys, the same thing here where it's language first, which is understandable, like you're saying, but ⁓ we really had to get IQ tests to prove their intelligence, even though we know what a flawed test that is.
And that was the key for this system to recognize actual or actually be able to estimate actual potential academically. And so that I'm sure every system is different. But so when you were seeing this, you're seeing it as a systemic problem and it's probably a problem or a deficit or a missing piece of
schools around the world actually that are teaching non, what would you call them? Immigrants, immigrant kids.
Jessica Lander (14:25)
Yeah, they're immigrant or immigrant. It's in the US. So I think about our, no term is going to capture everyone, but I talk about our immigrant origin students. So immigrants are the children of immigrants. And in the United States, one in four students in our schools are immigrants with the children of immigrants.
House Of Peregrine (14:33)
Yep, nope.
Wow, that's a staggering statistic, it? And so for a system...
Jessica Lander (14:46)
It doesn't
always include our Puerto Rican students, which are included in that, but of course our Puerto Rican students are US citizens by birth. However, many school systems and communities on the mainland don't treat them as US citizens. And so there's no one term that correctly captures everyone that I am thinking about and we often work with as teachers of newcomers.
So we choose a term that mostly captures all folks and then we explain the nuance.
House Of Peregrine (15:16)
Yeah, but that's one fourth of the child population that's misattributed or, I mean, it's just not made for them. One fourth of our population of a country that large is a big deal.
Jessica Lander (15:32)
a big deal. it's something then, I mean, it also we can shift it into sort of the positive of we have so many opportunities to think about reimagining and if we did a good job at that reimagining, we could have a profoundly positive impact on so many of our kiddos.
House Of Peregrine (15:49)
Yeah, and positive impact, but right now it's actually negative impact, which that's a profound effect on an entire country. If one fourth of your kids going through your school system are thinking they're one thing and they're not, and we're not, again, getting those positive things. And so the US is a
You know, we have a story of immigration that's like part of our origin story. And so I love the name of your book, Making Americans. I think it's such a great, clever, profound title. congratulations for that. But what was in your mind? And you can tell us a little bit about the book. I think everyone should read it. But tell me when that came about in your story and like what went into theory for that book.
Jessica Lander (16:35)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as I said, I was, as I was working with my immigrant origin students in Lowell, more and more seeing and being amazed by all of these strengths that our kiddos brought and frustrated that our schools don't recognize. I this is schools, I'm not calling out one school in particular, but just so schools generally in the U.S. are not recognizing value and investing in those strengths.
I also wanted to be a better teacher for my kiddos just personally in my own classroom. And I had the opportunity back in 2019, I got an Emerson Collective Fellowship and was able to actually step out of my classroom for a year and travel across the country sitting in the classrooms of set out to do what became the research for Making Americans that came out three years later. I then
continued researching, writing, and editing while fully teaching for two more years during a pandemic. I don't recommend it. I mean, it was, I was driven, very driven, but it was a lot. ⁓ But I very quickly on in the process starting to research what became Making Americans wanted to think about how we could collectively reimagine American education. That I knew it could be better and I knew really it could be outside and needed to be outside just thinking about
English language acquisition. And this too is true for any listener who's thinking about school systems in other countries, not the U.S. of, is it German language acquisition or Chinese language acquisition that it teaching our immigrant origin students and nurturing for them a sense of belonging. And I'll come back to that is so essential. And to do that work, it's got to be more than any focus on any languages acquisition.
And so I knew I wanted to think about what it took to reimagine immigrant education and to do that here in the US. And I would posit that it's probably true in other countries as well is we needed three lenses. We needed to understand our past. us in the US, the laws, cases and movements over the last 150 years that have transformed immigrant education, many of which for those in the US that
We don't know about, we don't teach. Many of those landmark Supreme Court cases and laws, I did not know until I started researching this book. And most folks I talked to do not know, but they need to be known. So there was these stories of the past. Then there are these stories of the present. What ⁓ are the creative, innovative solutions, ⁓ ways of teaching our immigrant-origin students that are happening in communities and classrooms across the country? And so I was traveling across our country.
and sitting in classrooms and learning from colleagues in other states of what are they doing in different ways to support our immigrant origin students and profiled a whole range of amazing educators from a teacher working in a single classroom in North Dakota in northern US to a whole team working in the South in South Carolina in a district and what they're doing across an entire district and sort of
thinking about the different strategies and approaches to reimagining immigrant education. That's the stories of the present, but in addition to those stories of the past and those stories of the present, we also need to learn about stories of the personal, stories of young people coming to our country and their experience of our schools. How do they...
What are their journeys and how does that impact their learning in our schools? And then what is their experience of walking through our halls, sitting in our classrooms, learning with our teachers, because they're gonna give us a ton of insights on what's working, what's not working. And so I think if we're really serious about re-imagining immigrant education here in the US or honestly in any other country, we've got to look at these three lenses, these three sets of stories, stories of the past, stories of the present and stories of the personal. ⁓
And so that's what I did for three years is finding out these stories, learning these stories from so many generous folks, from teachers to activists to lawyers to young people, and then synthesizing that down. And it comes back to ⁓ the importance of nurturing a sense of belonging for our young people in our schools and that schools play such a central role in whether our newcomer students, our American-origin students,
feel that here can be home. And belonging is important for all students and it's important for all folks, old and young, but particularly it is important for immigrant origin students who are creating new homes and new lives
House Of Peregrine (21:17)
And that's one of the questions I wanted to ask you is these kids are having a completely different experience. This is what I even tell adults when they move abroad. Like you can live as integrated as a life as you can. Like you learn the language. You don't stand out on the street. You're not. But you're still living a different experience. Like my parents live a 10 hour flight, international flight away. My neighbors don't have that.
You know, that we're living different lives. We have different, even though we're living in the same place on the same street, because of this international origin, yeah, you need different things. Your needs are different. Your concerns are different. Your holidays are different. And so both can belong, but like you said, you need community and these kids overall, like you said, sometimes they're reading their parents' mail. Sometimes they're.
going to the DMV with them or speaking for them. Their load is different, their gifts are different, but what are some of the things that you could say prepare parents for that maybe they don't think about before they move their kids into a local school? Because there's this big movement of just like move abroad, put your kids in local school, they'll learn a language, it'll be fine. Which is basically what I did and it is fine. But.
But it put a whole bunch of load on our kids that we did not anticipate, right? So they're the front lines of this move. They're the front lines of language acquisition. They're the front lines of whatever. Sometimes Amsterdam and the Netherlands has gone through immigrant welcomeness and less welcome. And so we went through that at school. For instance, like I went to school, they always did our school ⁓ meetings in English. Then one year they just said, no more English. Sorry, we're not going to do it in English without warning us.
And so that, you know, your kids sitting there and they're embarrassed, right? Or they're feeling like they're at odds with their parents and their teachers. And so are there some things that maybe you've seen across the board that are extra stressful for kids that maybe parents could be aware of and maybe plan for better than those of us who did it the wrong way?
Jessica Lander (23:25)
think I would really push the onus and the responsibility on schools and not on families to, I mean, and it's amazing if families have the time and the knowledge to be able to navigate all those systems on their own, but it's really, really complicated. And the onus really should be on schools for...
to be engaging with reaching out and making it welcoming and more accessible for our immigrant origin families in whatever country they're in. I mean, the research is really clear on family engagement that student test scores go up, student graduation rates go up, student discipline and like behavior challenges go down. Actually teacher retention and teacher reported happiness and satisfaction in their job go up.
if there is strong collaborative family engagement. Most schools don't really value family engagement. And when I say value, I mean like really invest in it. So schools might say that family engagement is important and it's a metric they use, but many schools honestly just don't know how to do good family engagement and don't put in the time to do it. And that's not necessarily because they don't want to, it could be that they are
⁓ under trained in how to do good family engagement. It could be that they are being asked to do so many things here in the U S our schools are asked to play so many roles that our communities should be carrying. ⁓ in terms of social service roles and, ⁓ other supports for families and communities that have just been. Shipped into schools. And so schools are asked to do so much, at least here in the U S that it
It's often triage in many public schools here in the And then sometimes it could be just not thinking about it. I think for schools, first and foremost, it's how do we create space to really train schools and staff on how to engage families and put in the real effort? This is not like an hour training and you're good.
House Of Peregrine (25:16)
Well, in my case, they just didn't think about it.
Jessica Lander (25:36)
This is like investing in prolonged ongoing training and then creating the time and space in a teacher's schedule and school staff and leadership schedule to actually invest in thinking about family engagement. And so it could be, I mean, I'm working on a project right now to think about report cards. And I don't know what report cards look like for your kiddos, but if I think about our immigrant origin families here in the U.S. and I can imagine it's true across the board and across the world that if you are a parent,
who has never experienced school in the country you're living in yourself. Understanding a report card that's likely coming back in a language that is not your first language, that has maybe a whole bunch of systems and ⁓ numbers that make a lot of sense if you grew up through that system, but like you're guessing on what they mean. Here in the US, you might see a P.
What does a P mean? It's never explained on many of our report cards. Is it a proficient? I don't know. ⁓ It's really hard to then engage with your kiddos' grades, with your kids' teachers. That shouldn't be a responsibility we ask parents to go figure out on their own. We do often right now require parents to do that, but that should not be on the parent. It should be on the school to think, okay, we have immigrant origin families here.
House Of Peregrine (26:34)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica Lander (26:59)
How are we making sure they're able to access the materials we're giving? Because we want them to access it because our kids are gonna do better in our schools if our families are able to read the report card, able to understand and come to family nights or student grading conversations. But that onus should not be on families. It should be the school taking the lead.
and thinking about how they're reaching out to and creating partnerships with all families, whether the ⁓ language that's spoken in the school is the home language of the parent or not.
House Of Peregrine (27:34)
Yeah. And in our case, it was an empathy, not an empathy problem, but like I lived in the US my entire life till I moved abroad. So if I were a teacher and I never moved abroad, I would have never had enough empathy to realize, ⁓ what this might be like as a parent who's never lived here. And so, again, empathy is not a problem, but that actual experience, if you've never been an international person, would not occur to you. Right. And so
just sending an email saying, hey, by the way, we can't do the meeting in Dutch, bring an interpreter, didn't even occur to them. It wasn't even a mean thing. But it's just those little surprises can have a big impact on kids there's that uncertainty from their parents. And so I think what you're saying is it's worth the investment because of the lack of or the cohesion the child will feel, the lack of trauma, minor traumas they might have because of this.
lack of cohesion or partnership between the parent and the school is well worth the investment because the kid ends up having a more cohesive ⁓ feeling of belonging. And so I wanna go back to the belonging piece because if a kid is the only one that's from abroad, how do we frame this in schools? ⁓ Because of course there's schools like yours that maybe have a...
a large immigrant population, that's one thing, or an international school. So there's some schools in Amsterdam that are internationally focused. And so they have days where everyone brings something from their country. So that's one way. But how do we foster belonging in maybe a minor immigrant-based population? What does that look like?
Jessica Lander (29:11)
I love it. I love that question. And my hope is that like all teachers, all schools are thinking about that. And maybe all parents are asking their schools to think about that. ⁓ I mean, so when we think about belonging, it can be sometimes really nebulous. ⁓ What does belonging mean? How are going to create policies and programs that nurture belonging for any student? ⁓
House Of Peregrine (29:32)
Yeah, just
fit in, speak English, you'll fit in. That's it, right? Like that's the solution.
Jessica Lander (29:37)
but, but it's like, I, I, I recognize that for an educator, that that's a really hard thing to do to think about. Okay. So belonging, how I'm going to sit down and do that. It's not, particularly concrete. Now I want to sort of answer your, your question in two parts. First is thinking about how do we, tackle understanding belonging to then think about policies and programs that could work to start to nurture that belonging. And for me,
As I traveled across the country and learned from these educators, these young people, these advocates, ⁓ I came to tease out what I am calling eight pillars of belonging, and I hope they resonate for folks. But for me, if we can, I think, better understand belonging in our schools, if we think about these eight elements, first, opportunities for new beginnings, second, supportive communities, third, assurances of security.
fourth, to dream, fifth, committed advocates, sixth, recognition of students' strengths and assets. We've talked a lot about that. Seventh, acceptance for who our students are and all their many beautiful identities, and eighth, opportunities for students to develop their voice and for us all to be valuing and listening to their And in those pillars, there isn't one
House Of Peregrine (30:52)
Well.
Jessica Lander (30:56)
set of policies or pedagogies and approaches in the classroom that is going to get at them. Because there are many, many ways to nurture each of those elements. But if we thought about our policies at our school at large or our pedagogies, our curriculums in our that start to positively impact those eight pillars,
I believe we're going to start to nurture that sense of belonging for our immigrant origin students. Honestly, I think all of our students know one thing is going to like transform a student's of belonging totally, but that there are lots of things we can be doing, which is, think, really exciting because there is a lot of impact we can have even if we only have control and power in our own classroom to be able to try to create some impact. We can still have positive impact in whether a student feels a sense of belonging in our schools.
and our And so that's number one of thinking about what are the whole range of things we can be doing that are not just necessarily in how we teach history or how we teach a language or how we teach math, but what's the food served in our cafeteria? What are the words on the hallways of our And those all can have an
House Of Peregrine (32:13)
in
a country like the US, we're just having that mentality that it's one fourth of our population. We're not catering because that's always the question, right? Like, especially in a country like the Netherlands, it's like, well, we want to maintain our culture so we can't cater to internationals. We don't want our language to change. You're here. You should learn Dutch. You should learn our customs. Yeah. But in the US, when you're talking about, again, one fourth of the population, which is
a statistic
I did not know until right now, ⁓ that mentality alone would shape maybe a lot of policy.
Jessica Lander (32:43)
No, it's huge.
Yeah. Now to your question though, in a community where there are less immigrant origin students, think two things are really important for schools to think about. One is how do we frame and think about, because it is true, that migration is a through line of the human experience. Everyone carries with them stories of migration, whether those are stories they carry or stories of their ancestors.
Yes, that is particularly a part of the US history's sort of like guiding identities, the story of migration for folks in the US. But this is true anywhere that there are stories of migration. So when I I talk about stories of migration, when I'm training teachers or I'm talking with my students, I start with, you know, I could tell you many stories of my family's migration. I could tell you about how my family moved from one side of our city.
to another neighborhood in our city when I was 13. I could tell you how my parents moved from one state, New York, to my mother moving to another state, and then the meeting for college in another state, and my dad moving abroad, and then them together moving to Massachusetts where I was born. That's another story of migration. Or I could tell you the story of my great-grandfather Daniel's migration when he arrived in the US in 1906 as a seven-year-old fleeing Ukraine as a Jewish refugee.
Each of those are stories of my family's migration. And all of us, whether those stories of migration cross neighborhood lines, city lines, state lines, country lines, ⁓ all of those impact us. And if we think about those stories, whether they're ones that we experienced, our family experience, we can find connection between us and maybe if...
We've been in a country for longer. Our family's been in a country for longer. And folks who are coming this year, last year, the year before. And thinking about the ways in which or your family experienced places of welcome and belonging and places of exclusion. helped you when you first moved? And that move could be going off to college. It could be moving to another neighborhood. It doesn't have to be moves that bring you across the world.
House Of Peregrine (35:04)
Yep.
Jessica Lander (35:10)
but that all of us have these stories of migration in our history and that this is a connection point between folks. The other is when we invest in our kiddos, all of our kiddos, not only do they succeed, but our communities succeed. And so we come back to that strengths conversation we were having earlier that our students carry so many strengths with them.
House Of Peregrine (35:31)
Yep.
Jessica Lander (35:34)
particularly our immigrant origin students who have lived in so many countries and cultures have navigated these systems and have that grid and determination. All of these are skills we want in jobs. We want in our society. They ⁓ make for more productive, more creative ⁓ thinkers and leaders in our communities. ⁓ students and young people are going to be ⁓
more likely to invest their talents, their creativity, their energy, their skills in a community if they feel that sense of belonging. And so for even a community that an allegiance, ⁓ that you have welcomed me, you have made me feel like here is home. And so I want to invest in my community here. I I see this with my immigrant origin students when we do our Action Civics Project. Each year,
House Of Peregrine (36:10)
Yeah, it builds an allegiance.
Jessica Lander (36:27)
Our class tackles ⁓ a civics project in our community and the ways in which my newcomers, they've been in the country maybe less than three years for some of them, maybe a year for some of them, but they are so passionate about working to advocate for the community, to make their community better, whether it's advocating to ensure that there's no lead in the water in our schools or making sure that their classmates across the school are not going hungry. And so.
One group ⁓ worked with the school system to open up a food pantry that's still running many, many years later. My kids want to invest in their community, and I bet the same is true in communities across the country and across the world. They want to make here home, wherever here is, and our communities are so lucky to have them. so students benefit, communities benefits.
when we're nurturing that sense of belonging. Even if, as you're saying, for your community, maybe there's not so many immigrant origin students. The community is still going to real benefit if they're investing in their kids and nurturing them to feel that here can be home.
House Of Peregrine (37:34)
Yeah. And I think there's something special about a place if you've chosen to go there. There's a different kind of care and they're not exclusively better or worse than the people that grew up there. But I do think there's something special about a place if it's either taken you in as a refugee or if you've chosen it. That is the place you want to spend that chapter of your life or the rest of your life. There's a different energy to that and a different just, yeah, different strengths there.
that I think is a really beautiful symbiosis because I'm a person who grew up in the same house in the same city my whole life till I was 18. You do not look at that place the same when that's the only place you've lived. And so to have someone go, wow, this is a really cool place that I chose to live, also brings perspective to the people who may not, may lack it because that's all they've ever known. And so I really think what you're speaking to is this, it's a different kind of belonging. It's a building, a life belonging.
⁓ and a gratitude to a place.
Jessica Lander (38:35)
And the strengths that come from how we think about nurturing that belonging for our newcomers that have a really positive impact on those who've been here a long time. So I could think about the report cards that we were talking about and how hard it is for our newcomer families to navigate those and understand them. That's also true for a lot of our families who grew up in the U.S. and went through the school systems. They're still hard to navigate.
⁓ But we might not as systems think about, ⁓ those are opaque systems that ⁓ not all of our families can access and understand. And they're highlighted as a challenge for our immigrant origin families. And so if we can fix that, it's actually not just going to benefit our immigrant origin families, it's also going to impact a lot of families who grew up and were born in the US and help them better understand and access their kids' education.
And so I think a lot of the strategies that we could be implementing in our schools to better support our immigrant origin students are also honestly going to have a really strong impact on helping all of our kiddos succeed.
House Of Peregrine (39:44)
It's just like Jane Jacobson city design, right? Like if you design it for women and children, you design it better for everybody. Like there's no disadvantage here. and, and like my mom didn't have, my mom didn't have email when I was going to school. I mean, that's a whole layer that we did not have as a parent. I'm like, why do I have so much email? why is this my second job? Like I think my mom got one thing in a year in my backpack, you know? And so what you're saying is so true. The system is not the same as the one you grew up in.
so yeah, there should be no, the pushback. What is the pushback? I mean, in the world, since you've written this book and since you've been doing this work, the sentiment towards immigration has swung wildly. How is that affecting your kids and your work at this moment and throughout?
Jessica Lander (40:31)
Well, so for here in the US, we're seeing ⁓ just a devastating rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy. ⁓ It is not new. ⁓ There has been, so I've studied the history of immigrant education and immigrant history for the last 150 years here in the US. And sadly, it is not new. ⁓ We go through waves of really virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy again and again in US history.
as is true in other countries, that there are periods of inclusion and periods of intense exclusion. The impact is profound for our students and our families, ⁓ particularly for our immigrant origin families, but also as we've been talking about, this impacts all of our Right now in the US, there's some just really devastating reports that have come out recently interviewing ⁓
hundreds of principals in the US, interviewing schools on attendance. We're seeing 20 to 40 % drops in attendance right now. ⁓ Our kids are scared to go to school, and that is a very legitimate fear. ⁓ Our parents are scared to send our kids to school. our kids safe getting to school? No. Are our kids safe in school? Not necessarily. Protections?
for schools have been taken away in the last year? Is it safe for our parents to bring our kids to school? No. And they might be.
House Of Peregrine (41:57)
because they may be detained and you're talking
about because they may be detained and deported even if they have a legal status.
Jessica Lander (42:05)
Yeah, I mean, are seeing so many, more than 70 % of ⁓ folks who have been detained have no criminal record, are in the process of, in asylum process or in another ⁓ process that is being adjudicated, here legally and...
are working through the system we have. We have a very broken immigration system here in the US. And large majority of the folks being arrested, detained, violently attacked are following this process that we've set up, this really unequal process. And we're seeing
House Of Peregrine (42:49)
And to be clear, before
this year, schools were a safe zone. Like kids couldn't be.
Jessica Lander (42:54)
So for those not familiar with US policy, which is totally fair, mean, as a teacher, we're all learning immigration policy because we have to to be advocates to help try to keep our kiddos safe. For the last decade plus, there was policy in the US that protected schools, hospitals and houses of worship as places where it was really hard for immigration officers to go, that these were protected places. And that policy
was rescinded last January. And so since then, we've seen an increasing, particularly in the last couple of months, an amount of attacks on our schools. So immigration officers circling school grounds, immigration officers the last couple of weeks tackling students and staff and tear gassing students and staff on school property, dragging teachers of schools in front of their students. It's just...
Our schools, our staff, our students are under attack. It is unsafe for kids to be in school, to go to school.
House Of Peregrine (43:54)
the idea is very human, right? That you don't interrupt a child's education or worship because these are lives. They're not numbers. And so the effect on a child while they're, usually children move with their parents, right? That's the whole deal.
They didn't choose to come legally, illegally. They didn't choose. And so what are the effects on a student's life if they have interrupted education and socialization and all that stuff? That's kind of what those policies were in place for, right? To protect, because you don't get another chance to be 12 to 14 again and hit those milestones. And families, to be realistic, aren't going to leave
just because their kid, you know what I mean? Like making school miserable or dangerous for immigrant kids isn't gonna make their family go back to a dangerous country. So that was kind of where the policy came from, right? Like the parents aren't just gonna leave because their kid has a bad time at school ⁓ or yeah, that they could be picked up at school. so what I think we're creating at this moment in time in a lot of countries actually around the world is
We're developmental milestones for kids that are going to have profound and long lasting effects. So can you speak a little bit to those effects? mean, at every age, we have kids in school or with other kids for a reason. What are you projecting that these, besides the trauma that we're all experiencing, what are the effects on kids?
Jessica Lander (45:18)
Absolutely.
I mean this
mean, a huge amount of trauma. And this is for kiddos whose families may be detained and arrested. mean, and right now in the US, there really is a growing sense that no one is safe, ⁓ whether you were born in this country or not, that ⁓ no one is safe. Anyone can be detained and deported is the growing sense here in the US. And that's terrifying.
And this is for kids who have parents who are immigrants and for kids whose parents are not immigrants, whose classmates are immigrant origin. This is profoundly affecting everyone because you, I mean, for our kiddos who are still in classrooms and seeing maybe five of their classmates suddenly not in school anymore.
House Of Peregrine (46:34)
is disappear.
Jessica Lander (46:35)
Right,
they disappeared. ⁓ They're locked up. There was an NY Times, New York Times short documentary video that was released I think earlier this week interviewing Liam's classmates. So for those who might not be familiar with all of what's going on in the US, it's a lot. A five-year-old boy was detained ⁓ and locked up in Texas. He's from Minnesota.
⁓ And he was used as bait to try to lure out members of his family. And there's this photo of him in a Spider-Man backpack and a rabbit, a knitted rabbit hat. His nickname is Rabbit in Spanish. ⁓ And so a video was released this week ⁓ interviewing his classmates, interviewing other kiddos ⁓ in elementary school, talking about how they miss him and how he's been taken.
Um, so this is a profound impact for, course, the kiddos who are now locked up in detention centers in these camps. in, we're, hearing reports of kids being locked in bathrooms for hours and not getting medical attention of not getting, food that is hygienic food with worms in it. not having access to water or, or for babies access to baby food. and so the, all of the, the,
the health impacts for those kiddos and then also the impacts for their classmates left behind of how do you feel? How is your sense of self ⁓ shaken and altered from seeing your classmates taken? Do you feel safe in school? How do you process that? This is gonna have a profound impact on all of our kiddos. ⁓
House Of Peregrine (48:18)
Yeah, because a school or a class is a piece of the social fabric. And so that's what people, think, underestimate if they think, oh, we're just raiding. The people that doing this are tearing the social fabric of children and their sense of safety, reality, what the adults can do, what the adults are doing to each other, hierarchies. It's introducing all sorts of complexity, what we have normally agreed as a society.
Jessica Lander (48:23)
Absolutely.
House Of Peregrine (48:48)
insulate children from at all costs. And so I just, really, my own kids, so my kids are doing something else, which is like my son came home the other day, he's the only American kid in his class. And he said, came home and said, mom, did we invade Venezuela? And I was like, we did that, that did happen. He's like, why didn't you tell me? Everyone at school is looking at me and I didn't know. And I was like, ⁓ buddy, you know, so.
His social fabric is different and of course it's a totally different lens, but his social fabric isn't the same because he's the only American in his class. with the threat of attacking Europe, it's like a whole, these kids don't have the insulation that I had from the social fabric, the tears and the social fabric that are happening.
Jessica Lander (49:39)
We're seeing also ⁓ the tears in the fabrics of our classes. So in this recent report that looks at the real increase in fear in our schools, where we're seeing really heightened attacks on anti-immigrant rhetoric in our schools, anti-immigrant bullying in our schools, both by students and staff, where there was a report that included a story of two, think,
third graders, but kiddos in elementary school who've been in the same class for years. And suddenly one kid is turning to the other and saying, you need to go back to where you belong. Of course, what the hell does that mean? And so kids are taking in the rhetoric they're hearing nationally and applying that to their classmates and suddenly seeing their classmates differently. Kiddos they've been friends with for years and the divisiveness that is infiltrating our schools.
House Of Peregrine (50:14)
Yeah.
There's no faster
way to not feel belonging than to be identified with the country you came from when you've been somewhere your whole life. Nothing shreds belonging faster than that.
Jessica Lander (50:39)
Yeah, it's just me.
And so for me, I think about what are the ways in which schools can across the world and here in the US particularly, really be invested in thinking about the policies, practice and programs that nurture that belonging for all of our kiddos. It's more important than ever right now. just hoping and working towards actively working.
towards what are the policies we can put in place to make our schools places that are safe again. mean, here in the US, we have since 1982, believed that education is fundamental right for all students, no matter immigration status, that this is really important for each kiddo and really important for our nation as a whole, that we invest in young people and their education, no matter their immigration status. That has been a
House Of Peregrine (51:11)
sanctuary.
Jessica Lander (51:33)
essential protection for all of our kids and a promise for all of our kids. This Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe, which I write about in my book since 1982, is just, it's a promise. And it's a belief that as we were talking about, education is fundamentally important for our kiddos and for us as a country. We're now seeing many states put up attacks on Plyler with the
goal, the hope of overturning Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court case here in the US. ⁓ And so we're seeing states in the US try to argue the opposite, that no, education is not important for all kiddos. And that's inconceivable to me that someone would think that kids should not be educated, that this is not important for our kiddos and not important for our country. ⁓
And so how do we collaborate? And I've just been buoyed by so many activists and advocates, just members of the community who are standing up. We're seeing that in Minnesota. If folks outside the US have been watching the news coming out of Minnesota, just the horrendous attacks and murders of US citizens in the streets of our country. But the heroism, the
House Of Peregrine (52:48)
We've been watching.
Jessica Lander (53:00)
courage we're seeing from everyday folks. I was reading a report just this week of a breast milk bank being set up, of we're seeing mothers being detained and their infants being left behind. They're still breastfeeding and women in the community stepping up and sharing their breast milk so that these six months olds can get milk. And so just
horrified by what our government is doing to our communities and ⁓ inspired by the courage, the generosity, and the commitment of our community members to stand up for their neighbors.
House Of Peregrine (53:44)
Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. And as I predicted, we're almost at the end of our time. That went so fast. I wanted to ask you, because you're so good, like you're in every aspect of this, what advice would you give to parents who want to talk to their kids about this? Like, is the frame we can use besides all the adults have gone mad? my frame is like, sorry, I didn't tell you about Venezuela.
A lot's going on, and I'm not sure which of the things to tell you. ⁓ So give us a frame, if you have one, that parents can maybe use for this moment in time when their classmates are being deported and all this stuff is happening that's unprecedented.
Jessica Lander (54:30)
⁓ I mean, there's some phenomenal resources that would be much better than me at talking, giving advice on how parents should navigate this. It's such a good question. And I think first is like, from what I'm seeing from the reports in the organizations that do this work ⁓ of first thinking about like, what age are your kids? And so what types of information is best to share given the age of kiddos? ⁓ So for older kiddos,
I think sharing more, think some of the advice I've heard is ⁓ for maybe middle school upwards of creating space for kids to ask questions, ⁓ not necessarily flooding kids with information, but first asking questions. What are you hearing? What are your questions and how I can support you? ⁓ I think it depends really if we're how proximate kids are to particular policies. And this is also thinking for other ⁓
policies and events that might be happening in the global community that is part of your community and listeners that might be happening. And so not necessarily just what's happening here in the US, but could be happening elsewhere of how proximate are your kiddos to ⁓ those events. And that might moderate how you're gonna talk about it. I think for me, I think about like,
House Of Peregrine (55:52)
Well, I just always find myself saying a
lot of like, I don't know. don't. This is has never happened before.
Jessica Lander (55:58)
Yeah, and that's also okay. I think
it's really important, I mean, as a teacher, I think it's a really important thing to show kids sometimes that you don't know, that we don't always have all the answers. We shouldn't be like lying and pretending we have all the answers. And then maybe sharing some of your thoughts and feelings, again, age appropriately. But ⁓ one thing that I might suggest that sort of
speaking to me in this moment and hearing your question is ⁓ helping students think about ways that they can be playing a positive upstander role. So I, ⁓ in seventh and eighth grade, my amazing seventh and eighth grade teacher spent a year teaching us a curriculum that was centered around the Holocaust. That's a really ⁓ powerful curriculum here in the US put out by an organization.
And a lot of the curriculum is teaching students about what it means to be an upstander. ⁓ And then also the danger of being bystanders. And that curriculum and those lessons have stuck with me my whole life. And so I think for students in this moment, for kiddos in this moment, where there's so much outside of our control, as adults, there's so much outside of our control, are what are the things that we can be doing to be upstanders?
And every age can be upstanders. was at, I was visiting my former preschool the other day and there's a teacher who, or a couple of teachers who created a project for their littles. I mean, their littles are like, what, they're three, four years old where they were learning about food insecurity as four year olds or three year olds. And they all made food for a local
that we have these fridges, these food fridges that are out in the community that neighbors will put food in and anyone who needs it can come just take food out of. And they're in different sort of community centers out just like ones ⁓ right in Harvard Square, right here in Cambridge. And there are all these photos of kids who three or four years old making sandwiches, making cookies, making all sorts of little foods that they can make as four year olds and then walking.
to this food fridge and putting them in. And like, is that gonna transform and like solve food insecurity? No, of course not. But it's teaching kids that they have an important role to be upstanders, to be connected to the community and supporting the community. And those are pre-K kids. Those are babies not yet in like the main school system. And so I think in this moment or any moment that's hard,
for kids to learn both a sense of they have a role to play and can play and that for, to not feel ⁓ a total sense of hopelessness or total sense of fear of thinking about the ways that they can be standing up for others. I mean, there's so many lessons to be learned in teaching kids that they can stand up. They should be thinking about their neighbors, their peers, their classmates. And so,
I would probably partner any conversation I had about some of the harder things we're seeing in the world with how do we take action? And action can look like making sandwiches for the local food bank or thinking about ways that we can invite your kiddos ⁓ who are maybe feeling a little othered in their school into the fabric of the class community more.
And that just creates a way for students to be able to feel they can take action and feel they can be upstanders as well.
House Of Peregrine (59:45)
Yeah, and actually add to a, they can, have the power to add to a fabric the way that they have power. So my last question, which was supposed to come earlier is since you've worked with immigrant families so much, what is some advice you'd give parents to better prepare their kids or themselves before going into a school as an immigrant family?
Jessica Lander (1:00:09)
That's a great question.
House Of Peregrine (1:00:13)
Besides, learn the language and download Google Translate. I mean...
Jessica Lander (1:00:13)
⁓
I think that like, I hope that families know that their skills, their voices, their knowledge is really, really important. mean, families are kids first teachers. They know their kiddos best.
We as schools and as educators have so much to learn from them, even if we are not ready to ask or know to ask yet, if not all school systems are there yet in their learning journey of understanding the importance of family and community engagement. that ⁓ I think particularly here in the US, but I think probably elsewhere too, given the hierarchy of schools, that there's often this hierarchy where families can be made to feel lesser than.
⁓ schools and that I hope that families know that they come with so many strengths and so much knowledge ⁓ and they should be a part of their kids' traditional schooling. So there's of course the schooling that happens in the home and in the community and then the academic schooling that's happening in a school building and that they should be a part of that ⁓ and a school may or may not be ready to
⁓ partner with them and invite them in and that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be a part of it even if the school is not ready and so if they're not able to access the the report cards or the material or they don't feel welcome of are there community organizations or advocates that can help be a bridge to explaining and ⁓ supporting them in getting into the schools to be able to collaborate with teachers
House Of Peregrine (1:02:02)
get pushed out just because you're an outsider. That's such good advice and follow your intuition. Because even for me, it was always, ⁓ you just don't understand our system. You need to just learn more. And finally, I just said, you know what? Nope, I'm the mom. You don't get to tell me I don't know. So don't give away your spot on your kid's team.
Jessica Lander (1:02:18)
Yeah, right. right, exactly.
Exactly,
and that you have so much knowledge and so many strengths that are really, really important that teachers and schools need to know, even if they're not yet ready to ask that, that they need to know that. ⁓
House Of Peregrine (1:02:42)
So you get to be a double advocate for yourself and for your kid. But yeah, that's good advice. Yeah. Well, but it's one of those things like, If you're, the more you know that it's not just you, the more empowering and it might have saved me a few years with my first kid of being like, actually no. Like he had a diagnosis that they just kept saying, no, no, no, no, no. And then I kept saying, and they said, no, no, it's just cause he doesn't know the language. Finally got to the end. And I can imagine he would have a different
Jessica Lander (1:02:45)
And it should be that way. Sometimes it, it probably is right now.
House Of Peregrine (1:03:12)
and of course we worked on it, knowing he was going through in a second language in school with a disability like that. But it took me a long time to be able to stand up for myself. So I would have loved the advice of, no, no, you understand enough. Just because you don't know the language of the system, you're still the parent. So I think it's really actually really good advice. Don't abandon your spot on your kid's team just because you're not from that place. So I love that advice.
Jessica Lander (1:03:35)
I'm recognizing
that like that is like, it's not fair that you have to do that. that you might have to work extra hard that you might be ⁓ treated as lesser than like that's not okay that that's happening. But I still hope it might. It might. might. But hoping that it's not.
House Of Peregrine (1:03:51)
But it might, but it might. Yeah. And it's not you. That's what I want people to, it's not you in the school.
Yeah. So that's the message I would love people to know is just like you're dealing, you don't fit in in the system. So go in with eyes wide open and know that you're going to be advocating a little bit harder for your kids and yourself and your spot.
Cool, well this is amazing. Where can people find you? don't, I'm cognizant of your time. I could talk about this for probably another two hours, but we're not going to. So I would love for people to know what you're working on, what you could use our help with, or what you want people to know you're up to. So just tell us all the things.
Jessica Lander (1:04:29)
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, thank you.
⁓ so, I mean, I, I hope folks will read my book, making American stories of historic struggles, new ideas and inspiration on the immigrant education. ⁓ that, ⁓ there are links throughout the web to go find it. you can also find it on my website, which is just jessicalander.com. and it is in book form at hard and soft and audio, all the versions. I just published.
House Of Peregrine (1:04:55)
Amazing.
Jessica Lander (1:04:56)
an ebook excerpt, which I'd also encourage folks to look at, that is pulling out the chapter on Plyler B. Doe, this court case that I was talking about a little bit ago, that enshrines the right for all students access to our public schools here in the US, no matter their immigration status. And so that historical chapter appears in my award-winning book, but because of the moment, I just think it's really important that folks know this story. And so we pulled it out.
and have a member of the US Congress write an afterwards, an undocumented activist write a forward. And actually this beautiful letter from Lydia Lopez, who is one of the moms and plaintiffs who I interviewed for the case, she wrote a letter to teachers, both in English and Spanish, and that's included as well. If you are an educator or a member of a nonprofit or a community organization, we've created a sort of a
a free resource reading companion guide and we're encouraging folks to do all community reads of that smaller book, Plyler v. Doe, Opening the Schoolhouse Door. And we have a series of guiding questions to lead a conversation around how to process this history and process this present and think about the ways we can be upstanders. And so if folks are excited ⁓ or curious about the story and want to help,
lead people in thinking about the ways they can be upstanders. I hope they'll check out both that smaller ebook and this conversation guide. And then there are, mean, if you are in the US, there are so many phenomenal resources that are happy to connect you with in ways that you can be upstanders right here. ⁓ Or if you're around the world, there are...
I think a lot of lessons ⁓ that we can pull from what we're seeing here in the US and doing here in the US to think about nurturing that sense of belonging for our immigrant origin students, whether it be lessons in our curriculum or structures in our schools. And so I hope you reach out. There's a way to reach out to me on my website or you can follow me on Instagram. I'm JessicaLander9 on Instagram. And I'm happy to share resources. I think one of the things that I
⁓ really took away from the work I was doing in researching my book, Making Americans, was there's just so many great ideas out there and so many committed advocates in classrooms and out in the community. And there's not enough connection between us all. There's a real need for us to be more woven together so that we can learn from each other, we can collaborate with each other. So if there are organizations or projects that
House Of Peregrine (1:07:25)
Yep.
Jessica Lander (1:07:35)
you know of that you think I should know of, I hope you'll reach out. And if there are organizations that I can help connect you to, I hope you'll reach out that we have so much to learn from each other. And there are just so many folks doing work in their community that are not known outside their community. And so if I can in any way help to connect, I would love to play that role.
House Of Peregrine (1:07:58)
Cool. Okay, we'll link everything we have below and please read Jessica's book, whether you're abroad or living in the US, the lessons I think stand and ⁓ we got to do our best for our kids no matter where in the world we are. So thank you so much for your work, Jessica, and for coming on today. You've given me so many perspectives and actually given me an update on my own country that I'm not on the ground there as a parent, student, or any...
I haven't been there for nine years. So thank you for the perspective and the work you're doing in the world. It's beautiful.
Jessica Lander (1:08:33)
Thank you so much for this conversation. It's wonderful to be in conversation and thank you all for listening.
House Of Peregrine (1:08:37)
All right, all right everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the House of Peregrine podcast. I hope you'll tune in next time and please like and follow if you liked this conversation.