Educating African Immigrant Youth

This book illuminates emerging perspectives and possibilities of the vibrant schooling and civic lives of Black African youth and communities in the United States, Canada, and globally. Chapters present key research on how to develop and enact teaching methodologies and research approaches that support Black African immigrant and refugee students. The contributors illuminate contours of the Framework for Educating African Immigrant Youth which focuses on four complementary approaches for teaching and learning: emboldening tellings of diaspora narratives; navigating pasts, presence, and futures of teaching and learning; enacting social civic literacies to extend complex identities; and affirming and extending cultural, heritage, and embodied knowledges, languages, and practices. The frameworks and practices will strengthen how educators address the interplay of identities presented by African, and by extension, Black immigrant populations. Disciplinary perspectives include literacy and language, social studies, civics, mathematics, and higher education; university and community partnerships; teacher education; global and comparative education, and after-school initiatives.

Book Features:

• A focus on honoring and affirming the range of youth and community's diverse, embodied, social-civic literacies and lived experiences as part of their educational journey, reframing harmful narratives of immigrant youth, families, and Africa.
• Chapter authors that include Black African scholars, early-career, and senior scholars from a range of institutions, including in the United States and Canada.
• Chapters that draw on and extend a range of theoretical lenses grounded in African epistemologies and ontologies, as well as postcolonial and/or decolonizing approaches, culturally relevant and sustaining frameworks, language and literacy as a social practice, transnationalism, theater as social action, transformative and asset-based processes and practices, migration, and emotional capital, and more.
• A cross-disciplinary approach that addresses the scope and heterogeneity of African immigrant youth racialized as Black and their schooling, education, and civic engagement experiences. Implications are considered for teachers, teacher educators, and community educators.

Contents

Foreword Awad Ibrahim vii

1. Introduction 1
Vaughn W. M. Watson, Michelle G. Knight-Manuel, and Patriann Smith

Part I: Schooling and Classroom Perspectives and Contexts
Sandra Boateng and Vaughn W. M. Watson

2. Toward a Reckoning and Affirmation of Black African Immigrant Youth in U. S. P-12 Schools 21
Omiunota Nelly Ukpokodu

3. Africanfuturism and Critical Mathematics Education: Envisioning a Liberatory Future for Sub-Saharan African Immigrants 43
Oyemolade (Molade) Osibodu and Nyimasata Damba Danjo

4. African Lives Matter Too: Affirming African Heritage Students' Experience in the History Classroom 54
Irteza Anwara Mohyuddin

5. A Narrative Inquiry Into Experiences of Black Women in Undergraduate STEM Disciplines in Ontario 68
James Alan Oloo and Priscila Dias Corrêa

Part II: Participatory and Communal Approaches to Learning and Civic Engagement
Michelle G. Knight-Manuel and Dorothy Khamala

6. Always Remember What's Behind You So You Can Reach What's in Front of You: The Transnational Civic Engagement of a West African High School Student 87
Patrick Keegan

7. An Affect-Centered Analysis of Congolese Immigrant Parent Perspectives on Past-Present-Future Learning in School and at Home 99
Liv T. Dávila and Susan A. Ogwal

8. Imaging and Imagining Activism: Exploring Embodied and Digital Learning Through Filmmaking With African Immigrant Girls During the Pandemic 110
Maryann J. Dreas-Shaikha, OreOluwa Badaki, and Jasmine L. Blanks Jones

9. Social Cohesion, Belonging, and Anti-Blackness: African Immigrant Youth's Civic Exploration in a Culturally Relevant-Sustaining, After-School Club 129
Michelle G. Knight-Manuel, Natacha Robert, and Sibel Akin-Sabuncu

Part III: Literacies, Languages, and Learning: Toward Emerging Practices and Approaches
Patriann Smith

10. Unboxing Black Immigrant Youth's Heritage Resources 147
David Bwire Wandera

11. Opening Space to Participate-One Nigerian Girl's Use of Visual Arts to Navigate School-Based Linguistic Discrimination 161
Lakeya Afolalu

12. Theorizing Rightful Literary Presence and Participatory Curriculum Design With African Immigrant Youth 173
Joel E. Berends, Vaughn W. M. Watson, and Dinamic Kubengana

13. Conclusion 191
Vaughn W. M. Watson, Michelle G. Knight-Manuel, and Patriann Smith

References 197