Related Data

• 850 children have arrived in the Bay Area in the last three months unaccompanied. These are children who were detained at the border and were sent to the Bay Area as they await an immigration hearing. There are many more children who have arrived in the Bay Area unaccompanied who were not detained by ICE. There is no official data on this number.(KQED)
• 63,000 unaccompanied minors have been detained crossing the border since October, 2013. Again, there are many more who have crossed into the US without being detained. (NYT, 8-7-14)
• There has been a surge of unaccompanied children since 2012 from Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. (NYT, 8-7-14)
• “Under an anti-trafficking statute adopted with bipartisan support in 2008, minors from Central America cannot be deported immediately and must be given a court hearing before they are deported. A United States policy allows Mexican minors caught crossing the border to be sent back quickly.” – (NYT, 8-7-14)
• After they receive a health screening and immunizations, unaccompanied children stay in a short-term shelter for 35 days and then get sent to live with a relative or sponsor while they await their immigration hearing. (NYT, 8-7-14)

Sample Frame

I’m feeling so good about our week together last week. We did amazing work learning together and preparing ourselves and our school for students this week. I was particularly happy about that given the difficult summer that unfolded while we were on vacation… from the conflict between Gaza and Israel to the struggle in the Ukraine to the crisis of child migrants from Central America.

There are hundreds of children who have arrived alone in the Bay Area during the past two months from Central America. We may be receiving some of them here at our school. I want to speak to this possibility because it illuminates something that I think is essential about our work as educators for equity.

The children that have migrated from Central America left unimaginably horrendous circumstances, endured an extremely dangerous journey through Mexico and the US, and are now in the Bay Area about to attend schools. Why are they here? They are here for two reasons: safety and opportunity. As children alone in the US, they are coming into our arms as their educators seeking safety and opportunity.

How sacred is this responsibility that we have?!?! Some of us in this room hold skin-color privilege, some of us hold gender privilege, some hold socio-economic privilege. All of us here hold education and documented status privilege and the current privilege of serving, guiding, educating, and shaping young people. I would argue that being an educator for equity means, in part, being aware of our privilege and using that privilege responsibly in working with children.

I say all of this to express how careful and diligent I want us to be this year, collectively and individually, in our responsibility to ensure the safety of our students and to ensure, through careful, thoughtful, engaging, outcome-driven instruction, that our students can access the opportunities that we have to offer, the opportunities the next school has to offer, the opportunities available in the higher education world and the work world, and the opportunities in the larger US society. It matters how carefully we have planned our lessons. It matters how prepared we are each day. It matters how engaging our pedagogy is. It matters how thoughtfully we assess our students’ learning. It matters that we make sure they are making steady and adequate progress—their parents, after all, may not come to the parent teacher conferences to demand this of us. Consider these students’ journeys this year when you are thinking about how tightly planned your lesson is, how accessible your instruction is for a diversity of students, and how thoroughly you know the learning levels of each of your students in any given subject area.

We have to be excellent in order to honor the courage and dreams of these young people. They are counting on us! We will work together this year to be excellent.