Every day in schools across the country, anthropological researchers are at work studying K–12 classrooms. Conducting interviews and observations, these researchers work, according to the American Anthropological Association (AAA), “to advance scholarship on schooling in social and cultural contexts, and on human learning both inside and outside the classroom.”
Our short article series “The Election, One Year Later” presents excerpts from the findings of four members of the AAA’s Council on Anthropology and Education who were working in schools during or shortly after the 2016 presidential election. This winter, they returned to check back in. These “snapshots,” drawn from their notes, provide an outside view of the election’s effect on students and educators—in the days and weeks after its announcement and in the weeks leading up to the anniversary of the inauguration.
March through May, 2017
This high school is a sanctuary for recently arrived immigrant teenagers who have escaped violence and abuse, survived long separations from loved ones, and traveled across deserts and oceans to get to the United States and go to school. Many have been turned away from the other public schools in this East Coast city for being too old, too far behind or undocumented. … The odds are stacked against these students ever graduating from high school, let alone going to college, but year after year, graduates do just that. The educators here carefully balance high academic expectations with extensive social emotional support for students. The 2016 presidential election upended this careful groundwork. …
In the weeks after the election, teachers pacified students’ fears, assuring them that governmental “checks and balances” would keep them safe. Then, in the middle of one night in March, ICE agents began banging on the door of a student’s apartment. Terrified, the family fled and went into hiding. School personnel asked friends of the student to contact the family to offer support. They were able to help the student return to school within a week and help his family members to find refuge. This event terrified students and teachers and made the reality of the election personal. And it was around this time that Santiago,* a high-achieving 11th-grader, walked into the principal’s office, hugged her and informed her he was dropping out.
Santiago had been detained at the border in 2014 and spent a few months in detention before being reunited with his family. He had only attended school through the sixth grade in El Salvador, so he started at the school as a ninth-grader, even though he was 17 years old. He came to the school as a formal requirement of his detention, planning to stay until his 18th birthday and then go to work as a day laborer.
Santiago’s plans changed when he fell in love with school. Three years later, he was in 11th grade and at the top of his class. He was one year away from graduation and would have likely earned a college scholarship. Three months after the inauguration, however, he retreated to the shadows, working dangerous jobs to leave his family with a little money before an anticipated deportation. …
The principal explains, “He ended up dropping out this year. He was one of the top 11th-grade students but decided to drop out because Donald Trump was elected. He came into the office and said, ‘I cannot go back to my country with no money in my hands.’ He told me, ‘I need to leave money for my child here if I get deported.’ … We all cried. We begged. We were like, ‘Please, Santiago. Please stay.’ He’s a great student, great kid … really great kid. But I couldn’t tell him it’s not going to happen. I couldn’t tell him, ‘You’re not going to get deported.’...” In May 2017, educators are organizing “Know Your Rights” workshops and teaching about the history of protest movements.
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June 2017 through January 2018
The impact of the election was felt most profoundly on graduation day, which came in June. In one year, the graduation rate had fallen almost 12 percent. … In her graduation speech to the class of 2017, the principal recalled a year “where we were being challenged at every turn.” After thanking the teachers, counselors, support staff and parents in equal measure, she began, “As you are about to leave us, we are in more uncertain times. It’s a challenging time right now for immigrants and communities of color.”
… In this small school community, it was hard to ignore the fact that almost a third of the students who had begun their senior year would not be walking across the stage. Some students would return to repeat the 12th grade, and others would finish in summer school. But many would disappear into the adult world as construction workers, dishwashers, delivery people, housekeepers and hair washers at the neighborhood salon. The post-election year had heightened an additional, ever-present concern: They might disappear from the country itself.
… When I talked to them next at the start of the 2017-18 school year, educators at the school acknowledged two major changes they had witnessed in the year since the election. First, they said, they felt a sense of responsibility to not stay silent or neutral in conversations about the political climate. Overwhelmingly, teachers said that staying silent was essentially an endorsement of President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Students I talked to had noted this change as well. One student reflected on her surprise when one of her white, middle-class teachers began to speak more openly about her own political orientation: “She is an American. ... like … she’s white. And I was like, why is she [concerned]? I mean, it isn’t going to affect her the same way it’s going to affect us because we’re immigrants. But she made us feel like she was part of us, like she was with us. Why can’t the rest of America think like her?”
The second change educators I spoke with said they had made involved purposeful revisions of their project-based curricula. One teacher told me how fall 2017 had begun: “Our first unit was … ‘Migration and the Immigrant Experience.’ I know that on our team, we definitely felt a greater sense of urgency this year. … We wanted our students to feel that their stories matter, and [for them] to feel welcome and safe in our school community, especially because of the prevalence of anti-immigrant rhetoric that has become so common in our society since the election of Trump. We wanted to make sure that they gained a historical perspective on migration, and that they understood the economic factors surrounding the issue of migration. And we wanted them to feel empowered by their shared experiences.”
Still, the principal noted that despite educators’ best efforts to protect their students from harmful rhetoric, the school has seen an “increase in active deportation orders and voluntary deportations.” … The school knows of six students who have been deported or are facing deportation. One teacher told me that last year, the deportation of a student’s stepfather was bad—but now it is “students and their entire families” facing deportation. This has had a demoralizing impact on the teachers and students, she concluded, adding, “We feel powerless to protect them.”
*This student’s name has been changed to protect his identity.
Miranda taught high school science for seven years. She is now a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership at New York University.
Follow the rest of this series:
Introduction | The Election, One Year Later: Stories From Anthropologists of Education
Second Article | The Election, One Year Later: Fear and Mixed Blessings at a Midwestern High School
Third Article | The Election, One Year Later: Life Goes On at an East Coast Middle School
Fourth Article | The Election, One Year Later: Struggling With Critical Conversations at a Midwestern High School
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