Fighting for Language Access in our Education System: Partnership with ImmSchools

In partnership with ImmSchools, Respond Crisis Translation has worked to translate dozens of key resources for undocumented and mixed-status families navigating the educational system. In this interview, ImmSchools founders Viridiana Carrizales and Vanessa Luna discuss the critical importance of language access to their work. They include pieces of feedback from families, from a survey that Respond translated for them. This survey showed language access to be the key barrier preventing mixed status and undocumented families from feeling confident about their children’s school experiences. 

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your story?

Our co-founders have more than 15 years in combined experience as educators working in the intersection of immigration and education. Co-founder and CEO, Viridiana, has spent more than 12 years advocating for the DREAM Act and supporting undocumented youth as an immigrant activist. As the founding Director of the DACA initiative at Teach For America, Viridiana pioneered the organization’s efforts to recruit and support DACA teachers nationally.  Through her leadership, as well as with the support of our current CSO, Lorena Tule-Romain, the program grew from 2 to 240 corps members teaching in 22 cities across the country. Similarly, as one of the first DACA teachers in Los Angeles and NYC, our Co-founder and CPO, Vanessa, advocated for immigrant students and families by implementing an immigrant friendly curriculum, holding immigration clinics, and leading parent and teacher trainings in her school and charter network. She has also contributed to research on the impact of the threat of deportation on middle school students as part of her award-winning master’s thesis. The leaders of our organization have the lived experience and wealth of knowledge in education and equity to achieve our overall goals. They bring with them the empathy, skills, and critical analysis necessary to help all students achieve their full potential.

 More on our stories:

When Viridiana was 17, a counselor not only told her she needed a social security number to attend college, but inadvertently reported her family to ICE in the attempt to secure one. It was only after receiving the guidance of an undocumented student that she applied and received acceptance to the University of Texas. Vanessa pursued a career in education to ensure her classroom was a safe haven for undocumented students like herself. After receiving DACA and months after graduating from college, she became a public school teacher through TFA. During her first months of teaching in an immigrant neighborhood in LA, one of her 6th grade students tearfully shared that her father had been detained. During this time of crisis, the school had limited resources and support for this family, who within months was deported. We are fostering the resilience of our immigrant students and families by creating knowledge and power building spaces, strengthening the leadership capacity of educators in order to address the holistic needs of undocumented students, and creating systemic change with the passage and implementation of pro-immigrant policies in school districts ensuring that no family has to be “lucky” enough to find support and that no teacher or school staff is left without the tools to help their students fulfill their dreams. 

Can you tell us about ImmSchools, its mission, and your team? What is your role and what is your day to day like?

ImmSchools is the country’s only immigrant-led organization in the United States focused on ensuring equity for all individuals, no matter their immigration status, by utilizing the K-12 education system as a vehicle for change. It is our theory that by uplifting the inherent power of undocumented students and families, strengthening the leadership capacity of educators and dismantling the oppressive systems in our schools, we will transform our K-12 education system to create a liberated world for all.  ImmSchools' three-pronged approach of activating families, educating teachers and school staff, and enacting policies and procedures in school districts to protect a student’s rights at all times, provides an intersectional solution ensuring that every student and their family has the right to a foundational platform from which they can achieve anything.

In what ways has the collaboration with Respond Crisis Translation helped your work or allowed you to do new things that you couldn't have done before? 

As an immigrant led organization, we find every opportunity to not only uplift the diverse voices of our immigrant community, but ensure those voices are prioritized when informing policies and support systems in our schools. The support we have received from Respond Crisis Translation has been instrumental in transforming our schools into safe and welcoming places where families can receive and access information in their home language. From translating education focused resources to providing interpretation services for our programming, Respond Crisis Translation has made it possible for us to expand our reach and make sure thousands of undocumented and students in mixed-status families understand their rights and access in our schools. 

What are the greatest challenges inherent in your work? Can you share the language-specific challenges and context that come up frequently? What would you like to share about language access in the U.S. education system? 

Students and families in our schools have indicated through surveys, 1x1 conversations and ImmSchools’ programs, that language access is one of the biggest challenges they experience in our schools. Immigrant families have shared not feeling welcomed by their schools because they are not able to connect and interact with school staff, teachers, and administrators who only speak English. We have also heard language access as one of the main reasons parents don’t participate in school events or meetings, as often these meetings do not have interpreters available. Here are some quotes about these challenges from families:

“I say that sometimes one of the barriers, as Anabel said, is the language. There are many parents who cannot communicate with the teachers because they do not know English. I have a friend, she is Mexican, and she tells me that she has many, many problems - she can hardly participate with anything from the girl because practically everything is done in English, and she does not speak English. So it's one of the things that bothers me the most.”

“I can say that I do and I don’t participate because I don’t speak the language, I can’t read it. Sometimes, they come home with I have no idea what it says. The reason I said I participate is because I got them someone who can help them with homework, other than that I don’t know anything”

“What is happening I have a problem - I don't know, maybe many won't understand very well what I'm talking about. I am just learning to speak Spanish because I speak a different language from my town in Oaxaca, so I struggle every day.”

Anything else you’d like to add about the importance of language access to your work at ImmSchools specifically, or just anything else you´d like to share about yourself / your work in general? 

Quotes from ImmSchools families re: language access & power

“I am not going to be held back because I do not know English- I knock on any door, it does not matter. I go anywhere, where English-speaking people enter, Spanish-speaking people can enter. If we all cannot know English, then we’ll knock on those doors in Spanish anyway-- we’ll make our inquiries.”

“I come from a town in Oaxaca where they don't speak Spanish. I sometimes feel so bad here when they discriminate against us, people humiliate us.”

“Those who are teachers who use two languages, help us to see how to make it possible for our children to succeed.”