Cultivating Capital for High School Newcomers: A Case Study of an Urban Newcomer Classroom

Abstract

This qualitative case study examines how students in a high school newcomer program experience the development of social and cultural capital. Newcomer programs are created by K-12 schools with large influxes of refugees and immigrants. This case study data stems from a larger ethnographic study of a newcomer program at Georgetown High, an urban secondary school in the Northeast region of the United States. Using Bourdieu’s (1986) social and cultural capital theory as a framework for the study we provide an overview of the literature on the importance of helping newcomers build social and cultural capital. Themes arising from the data as representations of the experiences of newcomers building capital and the role of the teacher in that development is explored further. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of the case for research, policy, and practice.

The Role of Organized Activities in Supporting Youth Social Capital Development: A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis

“…When staff are unified under a shared mission, a High-Quality Staff Retention In order to effectively meet the needs of young people and support their social capital development, it is essential that organized activities retain and support high-quality staff and volunteers (Hall et al, 2020). For example, a newcomer program (i.e., programs designed in K-12 settings to support large influxes of refugees and immigrants) that served immigrant and English learner students grappled with low retention of qualified educators, and had to staff classrooms with educators who did not have Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) training, and who were certified in other subjects than the one they were assigned to teach (Hos et al, 2019). Conditions like these make it exceedingly difficult for organized activities to adequately meet young people's needs.…”

“…In contrast, when organized activities retain high-quality staff with effective training and experience it can lead to a profound impact for youth participants. For example, the newcomer program described a teacher, Mrs. Smith, who was particularly gifted at supporting student needs by explicitly drawing on students' lived experiences and using effective modeling techniques (Hos et al, 2019). Organized activities with successful staff retention efforts are also better positioned to establish long-term youth-adult relationships and trust within the communities they serve.…”

“…When staff demonstrate belief in young people's potential, they empower youth to imagine other possible selves. Staff also recognized and valued the resources and support that youth, their families, and communities already possessed (e.g., encouragement, high expectations, being held accountable), and found ways to leverage these assets by building strong relationships with youth's families and communities to fur-ing resources (e.g., access to education and job opportunities, financial support) to help overcome systemic barriers in programs for Thai refugee youth and Chinese American youth (Hos et al, 2019;Wong, 2008). It is important to note that in some of the organized activities, staff were able to be culturally responsive to youth because they themselves were from the same communities and/or had experienced the same life events (e.g., Cox, 2017); whereas in other organized activities, staff who did not share these same life experiences were educated through their interactions with young people (e.g., Ramirez, 2021) and/or through explicit training (e.g., Sanchez et al, 2022).…”

Supporting students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE): Effective policies, practices, and programs

“…Strengths of SLIFE include their funds of knowledge and expertise from their own lived experiences and backgrounds that can help to activate prior knowledge; existing proficiency in their home language(s); informal learning skills that may traditionally be undervalued in formal education settings; oral language skills, including interpersonal skills; cultural assets, including skills and values associated with students’ cultural backgrounds that may help them acclimate well to working collaboratively in the classroom; and resilience from the often challenging circumstances they have experienced, which can help them to persevere and express agency when faced with challenges in their education (Barba et al, 2019; DeCapua & Marshall, 2011; Hos et al, 2019).…”

Middle school outreach efforts to involve immigrant parents: what are the perceptions of school personnel and immigrant parents?

“…Student Achievement-Sense of Belonging (SA-BEL) was the next most frequently used code. Research supported when students possessed a sense of belonging in their schools, student achievement increased (Hos, Murray-Johnson, & Correia, 2019).…”