Chapter 3: Mainstreaming New Immigrant Students: The Struggles of an African 5th Grader

The issues regarding language and minority students in the classroom have often been linked to the marginalization of their linguistic and cultural background in their school setting (Gonzales, 2005; Ogbu & Simmons, 1998), their age at immigration, the language of their countries of origin, their communities of residence, their pre- and postimmigration experiences (Espenshade & Fu, 1997), and classroom practices (Harklau, 1994; Nieto, 2002; Valdes, 2001). The existing literature, however, discusses issues regarding children from Hispanic and Asian backgrounds, while issues regarding African immigrant children remain unexplored. Besides, African immigrant students are often invisible in school data. They are lumped into the larger group of African Americans, English language learners, or simply immigrant students. This minimizes the presence of that student population and could account for their slow academic, social, cultural, and linguistic adaptation in the classroom.