“I know what it’s like to be an inner-city kid, and it’s not always easy. I feel like I can help kids who may not like school, who may see me as part of the establishment. I want to let them know that I’m someone just like them, who ended up accomplishing their goals and actually getting into their career, regardless of what my background was or what people thought I could do,” said Chevalier, a 2020 graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill who will be graduating this May with her master’s degree in adolescence education for social studies from the Graduate School of Education. 

Chevalier grew up in a single-mother household on Bailey Avenue in the Bronx. She attended public schools with many students who looked like her, but she said only two of her teachers were women of color: a Latina second-grade teacher who taught English and a Puerto Rican high school social studies teacher. 

“Those two inspired me to become a teacher because I never had anyone who looked like me in the classroom,” Chevalier said. 

Culturally Relevant Teaching

This past year, Chevalier was a student teacher at IN-Tech Academy MS/HS 368—the same high school she graduated from. She said her goal in all her classes is to create a culturally relevant curriculum where her students feel represented. One recent example is an American history lesson plan where she taught students about not only the 1776 Declaration of Independence, but also another relevant event from that same year—a petition for freedom by slaves. 

“Instead of just teaching my kids about the Declaration of Independence alone, I taught them about how the language of freedom not only inspired the enslaved in the United States, but all over the world, including Haiti,” Chevalier said. “I bring in primary sources that reflect another population that is usually ignored. I want to create a 360-world view of one issue instead of a 180-world view, which is what we’re accustomed to in our history education.”

Her longtime mentor Diane Rodriguez, Ph.D., professor of curriculum and teaching at GSE, said Chevalier is a natural educator who helps her students understand social studies differently.  

“Teaching is not only helping students understand new concepts, but also helping them reexamine how they think,” Rodriguez said. “As a teacher, this is very powerful. In Chantal, it’s innate.” 

As a Fordham undergrad, Chevalier was able to volunteer at a high school in the Bronx, where she taught in a classroom for the first time and realized she was passionate about teaching. This inspired her to pursue her master’s degree in education through the five-year track at GSE, she said. 

“That opportunity provided by Fordham was the catalyst for me becoming a teacher,” said Chevalier, who was accepted to the University through the Higher Education Opportunity Program. 

Anti-Racism Commitment at Fordham Was ‘Life-Changing’

Chevalier said the Graduate School of Education also showed her how to put anti-racism at the forefront of her teaching pedagogy.

“It’s been life-changing to see all of my classes talk about race, especially since many of my classes are Caucasian-driven. They make sure that people who are Caucasian are recognizing the racist ideologies in our society and advocating against them by being anti-racist,” Chevalier said.

A decade from now, Chevalier said she wants to start a nonprofit that provides early internship and college access for inner-city high school students, who often lack opportunities to network and explore potential career paths. For now, her goal is to stay in the Bronx and serve the community she came from. 

“My ultimate goal in life is to make sure that I touch as many students as I can in a positive way, and that students remember me for my rigor, passion, empathy, and ability to connect with them as human beings,” Chevalier said. “I hope I can inspire young Black and brown girls and boys to reach their dreams and to work hard for them, no matter how difficult they are.”

The project began in 2016 with the founding of Every Girl Is Important, a nonprofit that aims to educate and empower young girls in Kenya who struggle to obtain a secondary education.

“One of the biggest challenges for the girls in Kenya is that [many]do not have access to high school … they either have to go to work or get married at a young age,” said Diane Rodríguez, Ph.D., the organization’s co-director and professor in curriculum and teaching at Fordham’s Graduate School of Education. “When women are educated, there are more leaders and more opportunities in those communities.”

The Fundraising Journey 

By spring of 2019, Every Girl Is Important had raised nearly $80,000 to build the new boarding school. Donations continued to come in, including a $10,000 gift from Arthur McEwen, FCRH ’55, a retired vice president of human resources at UPS, but they didn’t close the final gap. Then this past winter, Rodríguez’s partner and EGII co-director in Kenya, Sister Veronica Rop, spoke about their project at Boston College, where she was then a visiting fellow. Sitting in the audience was James Keenan, S.J., vice provost for global engagement and then the director of the Gabelli Presidential Scholars Program at Boston College. Sister Veronica’s presentation inspired Father Keenan to speak with the Gabelli Foundation, which donated the $25,000 needed to complete the first stage of the boarding school. (The Gabelli Foundation is chaired by investor Mario Gabelli, an alumnus and major donor to Fordham for whom Fordham’s business school is named.) 

“I think that what inspired [Father Keenan] was the good of the idea of educating girls in rural Kenya and giving them an opportunity to succeed, led by Kenyans and with Kenyans,” Rodríguez said, speaking in a phone call from North Carolina. 

Since the start of the new millennium, Kenya has improved gender parity in primary and secondary education enrollment, but more than half of secondary school-age girls are still not enrolled in schools, according to the latest data from the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization. 

Giving Back to a Global Society Through GSE 

Fordham has been involved with EGII’s efforts in Kenya for several years. In 2019, Rodríguez and six students from the Graduate School of Education traveled to Eldoret, a rural town in Kenya, where they mentored underprivileged girls and learned how to become more culturally sensitive educators. One of the six GSE students, Diana Baca, documented their experience in an eleven-minute YouTube video. 

The boarding school’s construction was set to begin in April, and a new group of students in Rodríguez’s inaugural three-credit elective, Cross Cultural and Educational Perspectives of Communities of Learning, were scheduled to travel with Rodríguez to Kenya this spring to assist with the construction process. But when the pandemic began in March, all plans were put on hold. 

The novel coronavirus has left Kenya relatively unscathed, compared to other countries like the U.S., according to a recent NPR story. However, it has left many girls more vulnerable to unwanted pregnancies amid the pandemic lockdown. Rodríguez said she hopes her Fordham students can travel to Eldoret in fall 2021 at the latest. 

“[My students are] seeing the opportunities that they have and how can they give back in a global society,” Rodríguez said in a Fordham Zoom presentation on the initiative on Oct. 16. “Giving back not only at home, but giving back to empowering other girls around the world.” 

“A lot of people with Ph.D.s don’t look like me, or sound like me, or have a name like mine,” said Rodríguez, a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of Education who will be the first in her family to have a Ph.D. “I want people to know that just because I’m this little girl from East Harlem with a family that isn’t the most educated doesn’t mean that I don’t belong.” 

In the Neighborhood

For Rodríguez, East Harlem has always been home. In the summers, she spent her weekly allowance on snacks from a little blue truck near her building that sold microwaveable cheeseburgers and juices for a quarter. Sometimes, the local Icee man gave her free ice pops. 

When Rodríguez was a little girl, she wanted to be a medical doctor. Her parents aren’t technically immigrants—her mother, previously a substance abuse counselor, and her father, a construction worker, were born in Puerto Rico—but her family held onto the “immigrant dream” and hoped to see their daughter get a medical degree one day, she said. Little did her mother know that she was inspiring her daughter to become a different kind of doctor.

For many years, Rodríguez’s mother worked as a substance abuse counselor at Rikers Island. Her clients were imprisoned for drug possession, scamming, theft—sometimes worse. When they were released from Rikers, they often ran into Rodríguez and her mother in their neighborhood.

“I remember seeing how happy they were to see my mom and give her updates on how they’re doing well and how they’re committed to their programs [to stay sober], and now they’re clean,” Rodríguez said. “I remember just feeling so impressed by that—how much of an impact my mom had on them and feeling like I wanted to be in a similar position.” 

Rodríguez, now 27, wants to be a psychologist for children and their families. She will graduate this May with her Ph.D. in school psychology from the Graduate School of Education, where she also earned her master’s degree in the psychology of bilingual students in 2019. 

She came to Fordham because she wanted to work with Giselle Esquivel, professor emeritus of the Graduate School of Education, who was known for her work in bilingual psychology. 

“Unfortunately, she was very sick by the time I got into Fordham, and she actually passed away,” said Rodríguez. “But I remember feeling how Fordham really emphasized culture and language and practiced what they preached.” 

In Rodríguez, Equivel’s work carried on. 

A Hard Pill to Swallow

Over the next six years, Rodríguez served as a psychology intern and extern in organizations across New York City, including the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx and the Harlem Child Development Center. She has provided therapy and conducted psychological evaluations for many clients, from infants to adults, with neurodevelopmental disorders like autism and ADHD. 

Sometimes, the possibility of a diagnosis is a hard pill to swallow. There was one mother, recalled Rodríguez, who refused to accept her son might be autistic. Her oldest son is nonverbal and autistic, but because her younger son could speak, she believed he couldn’t be autistic, too. 

“To accept the fact that your child is on the spectrum, in some ways, is like mourning the potential of your child,” said Rodríguez. “Every parent has a dream or vision of how their children are going to be. And I think her defensiveness was really because she wasn’t open or ready to accept that her other child also is on the spectrum—and what does that mean about maybe her as a parent, or what does that mean about this child’s opportunities and the child’s potential?” 

After a year of working together, the mother allowed Rodríguez to refer the boy for a psychological evaluation. Rodríguez’s supervisor later confirmed that he had autism, she said. 

“Not knowing is so difficult. Not understanding why their children are behaving the way they are. And when they have an answer and they have more information, I’ve noticed—sometimes, not always—they feel a little comforted or reassured by that,” Rodríguez said.  

Some days are emotionally taxing. But Rodríguez says it’s rewarding to see people make gains and better understand themselves—especially clients of color. 

“I really love working with people of color and seeing them feel less stigmatized by their diagnoses. There’s a lot of misinformation and stigma behind mental illness. I think that’s a global problem, but it’s even bigger for people of color,” said Rodríguez. “Especially working with Latino populations, I’ve heard a lot of myths and misconceptions and hesitations around therapy. I hope to show people that a lot of those misconceptions are incorrect and that therapy is not for crazy people—therapy is useful for everyone.” 

‘Her First Time’ Presenting

Through Fordham, Rodríguez also traveled to Kenya in 2019 and mentored children. She was accompanied by several students and a longtime mentor, Diane Rodriguez, Ph.D., professor in curriculum and teaching at GSE (to whom she shares no familial relation). For several years, Ashley served as Diane’s graduate assistant. They co-authored a peer-reviewed article in the journal Insights into Learning Disabilities in 2017. That year, they were supposed to co-present their research at the New York State Association for Bilingual Education’s 40th anniversary conference in Westchester County—the first professional presentation for the younger Rodríguez. Diane was unable to attend the conference because her father became very ill, so Ashley presented alone. 

“It was her first time, and I wasn’t there with her to support and guide her … But then my colleagues who went to see both of us were sending me these fantastic, raving emails about how wonderful my graduate assistant was at presenting the data,” said Diane. “As faculty, what you want to see is how your students grow and become these outstanding professionals and do the job better than you. She’s one of those people.”

After graduation, Rodríguez said, she will become an adjunct instructor in bilingual assessment at GSE. She will also continue to work at New Alternatives for Children, a child welfare agency in New York City, where she currently serves as a paid psychology intern. Next year, her title will change to postdoctoral psychologist and she will earn a salary instead of a stipend. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has switched the therapy sessions she does there from in-person to virtual, and it’s not the same—especially for her young clients. 

“I’m hoping that my clients see that even through a pandemic, I’m still there for them,” she said. 

Fulfilling a Promise

When Rodríguez receives her Ph.D. in a few weeks, there’s one person who won’t be around to witness it: her abuela. Rodríguez was close to her grandmother, a woman named Petra Soto, since she was born. Soto was a homemaker who went to school until second grade, when her mother became paralyzed and required constant care. But Rodríguez said she always told her abuela she would receive her doctorate, and her grandmother knew she would become a doctor before passing away three years ago at age 99. 

“I know she was really proud that I’ll be able to serve our community,” said Rodríguez.

“The trip was an educational immersion experience to work and collaborate with educators in Kenya and teach students who are underprivileged with limited resources,” said Graduate School of Education professor Diane Rodriguez, Ph.D., who spearheaded the spring trip. “It’s part of the University’s mission of cura personalis.”

For 12 days in early May, the graduate students learned about classroom instruction and curriculum in Kenya, where the majority of children attend primary school, but nearly half of the country’s population lives below the poverty line. Through visits to four Kenyan schools and one university, the GSE students put into practice the teaching and counseling skills they had learned at home. And through conversations in English and a smattering of Swahili, they found solidarity with students and educators in a foreign country.

Applying Fordham Lessons to Actual Classrooms

The Kenyan children were curious about what life was like in America. Interiano said they peppered the Fordham students with questions: “What does the currency look like?” “Who’s the biggest fashion designer?” Another student, whose school housed farm animals, asked, “Are there cows in New York?”

The six students not only answered their questions—yes, cows do live in New York—but also weaved lessons from their GSE instruction into Kenyan classrooms. At St. Jude Academy, a school where students spoke both Swahili and English, Interiano taught sixth-graders how to make their sentences more expressive.

“Instead of just saying, ‘A man and a woman are getting married,’ [I would suggest] ‘A beautiful bride is marrying a groom,’” said Interiano, who plans on becoming a bilingual elementary school teacher.

Another Fordham student said she used her training from a GSE career counseling course—particularly a lesson on the power of social media—to help Kenyan students chart their own career paths.

“We had a conversation about [what they do on]social media,” said Chelsea Bowens, a master’s student in school counseling. “They like to look at celebrities. So [I told them] you can also use it to explore your interests and find out more about your career options.”

A Warm Welcome

The two cities they taught in—Eldoret and Nairobi—embraced them with open arms, said the GSE students. As they drove from school to school, they waved from their bus window to local townspeople in the streets. Outdoor vendors ushered them inside their stores with a simple Swahili greeting: “Jambo!” And school administrators welcomed them with doughy pastries and roasted nuts.

Kenya reminded them of home, too. Eileen Interiano, a GSE master’s student from Long Island, said she saw buildings as high as Manhattan skyscrapers, though these were bordered by palm fronds instead of oak tree leaves. The city streets were filled as early as 6 a.m. and as late as 9 p.m. And the food—rice, potatoes, boiled cabbage, chicken, and a flaky, fried flatbread called chapati—reminded Interiano of her native Hispanic cuisine.  

“Kenya makes you feel like you’re at home. They welcome you, even if they’re strangers,” Interiano said. “And the kids … they just fill your heart with so much love.”

An Inside Look at the Kenyan Educational System

But the trip wasn’t all about teacher training. Several GSE students said their 12 days in Kenya also showed them the need for equal education in many local schools. They spoke with professors from the Catholic University of East Africa about how many girls don’t continue their education past primary school, particularly in some rural areas. They often cease schooling because their families aren’t able to afford their academic fees or because they’re married young, the GSE students said.

In her journal entries from Kenya, Bowens wrote about meeting a young woman living in the “slums” who, unable to afford school fees, made a living as a housegirl. And Interiano recalled meeting an eighth grader named Valerie—a girl with dreams of becoming a doctor.

“Just being with her for a couple of minutes … it made me emotional,” Interiano said. “I hope that she continues her education. What breaks my heart is sometimes they lack the money or support to get there.”

Bowens, who is working toward becoming a school counselor in a Title I school in the U.S.—a school where the majority of students come from low-income families—said her mentorship experience in Kenya has made her more aware of the different factors that can affect children’s lives.

“As counselors, we sit and talk to the students. The teachers might not see the whole picture, but we’re trying to get the whole picture,” Bowens said. “There’s a child, yes. But behind that child is the parents, schools, teachers, their physical environment, and their mental [environment].”

Building A Boarding School for Kenyan Girls

In 2016, Rodriguez, a GSE professor in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, founded Every Girl Is Important, a non-profit organization that promotes the education of underserved girls around the world, particularly in Kenya. For the past few years, it has been working to raise $100,000 to build a boarding school for girls ages 11 to 17 in rural Eldoret. The organization has now reached nearly 80% of its original goal, and will commence construction once the total amount has been raised, said Rodriguez, who also spoke in a recent interview aired on TV network Telemundo.

Part of the reason why the GSE team visited Kenya this year was to prepare for the new boarding school, said Ashley Rodriguez, a Ph.D. student in school psychology at GSE.

“We wanted to get a sense of what the high-performing schools [in Kenya]are doing, what they aren’t doing so that the school could be comparable [to other high-performing schools],” she said.

The trip also motivated the GSE students to think about how their time in Kenya will shape them as future educators. For Interiano, it means giving her students—both boys and girls—the same opportunities.

“I want to make sure that wherever I teach, kids are getting an equal education,” she said.

This spring, a group of 10 Fordham faculty members traveled there to see it for themselves. From March 17 to 22, they visited the Kino Border Initiative, a consortium of six Catholic organizations in the border city of Nogales—both on the Arizona side and the Sonora, Mexico side. Kino aims to promote border and immigration policies that affirm the dignity of the human person and a spirit of binational solidarity.

The trip was funded by Fordham’s Office of Mission Integration and Planning and featured faculty from arts and sciences, the Graduate School of Social Service, the Graduate School of Education, the Gabelli School of Business, and the Law School. The group raised $13,000 to purchase toiletries and necessities for the migrants and documented their time on a blog.

Big Changes in Just One Year

Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., professor of communications and chair of the Department of Communications and Media Studies, co-led the trip along with Associate Professor of Theology and Acting Associate Provost James McCartin, Ph.D. It was Reich’s second time in Nogales, having worked with Kino in January 2018. Although only 14 months had passed since her last visit, the experience was very different, she said. As before, the group stayed overnight in Arizona and crossed the border to work in a comedor, or cafeteria, in Mexico, that provided meals to people waiting for asylum claims to be heard in the United States.

In 2018, she said, they would typically have one seating of 40 to 50 people—mostly men, a few women, and very few unaccompanied minors. This time, there were multiple seatings with 300 people per meal.

“We spent a lot of time holding babies while people could eat, or entertaining children, or sitting and talking to groups of families that had left Honduras, Guatemala, or regions of Mexico that were affected by gang violence and poverty,” she said.

In addition to serving meals, the group hosted a party at a women’s shelter, met with border patrol agents, and hiked along the border to understand the conditions there. They also attended an “Operation Streamline” hearing in Tuscon, Arizona, where immigrants appear in a group before a judge, who often deported them for being here illegally after two quick questions.

Glenn Hendler, Ph.D., a professor of English and American studies and acting chair of the English department, said he knew a little about the crisis at the border before heading there, but learned a lot from the trip. He was surprised to learn, for instance, that a wall was constructed through the middle of the Nogales in 1994, long before President Donald Trump made building a border wall his signature campaign promise.

‘Never Got to Say Goodbye’

Although he does not speak Spanish, he was able to connect with a 6-year old girl at the comedor whose father was washing dishes nearby.

“It was an incredible joy to make a child who was going through a horrific experience laugh,” he said.

“The next day, we were serving a meal, and I heard a little girl yelling ‘hola, hola,’ and it was the same little girl again. She was happy to see me, and I was happy to see her. But there were so many people there, that they just got rushed out. So, I never got to say goodbye to this little girl. For some reason, that just broke my heart.”

Speaking with the border patrol complicated the picture for Hendler because it showed how difficult the job is, but it did not change his mind about the moral implications of the situation. In fact, he said he now felt more emotionally connected to what had previously been an abstract concept. He also said that the bonding experience he had with the other nine faculty was “very powerful.”

Accompany, Humanize, Complicate

Carey Kasten, Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish, echoed this, saying she was moved by the possibility of future projects at Fordham. Her scholarship touches on issues related to the border, so she was familiar with the situation. But she was moved to learn things like why black water bottles are a must for those crossing the border at night. (They don’t reflect moonlight).

“We were told to accompany, humanize, and complicate. To see those real items that our guide had collected on hikes through the desert, and also to see people get out of a van who’d been deported and go into the soup kitchen we were working in, was something that really stood out,” she said.

She was also shocked at the level of needless suffering taking place. When people are deported to Mexico for instance, they are given back any cash they had on them when they were apprehended in the form of a check. But the checks are only cashable in the United States, so once a week, a nonprofit group called No More Deaths visits the comedor to help people cash them. She also wasn’t impressed with the judge who spoke to them after presiding over the deportation proceedings.

“He said, ‘I’m just carrying out my marching orders.’ And I thought, ‘You’re a lawyer. You could leave and get a different job.’”

She felt more empathy toward border patrol agents. “They have fewer choices, and their job sounds really hard,” she said. “I found it really complicated to parse it all.”

McCartin said the goal of the trip was to give faculty members an experience different from their everyday work life that would also then affect their work life. The group will reunite soon for debriefing and discussion of possible future plans.

One conversation that will always stay with him happened when a man from Honduras asked him if Americans all thought they were criminals.

“I said ‘Oh gosh, no, I have no problem with you.’ This guy was like, ‘Really? I can’t believe that.’ I said ‘No, I can see how you have a sense that that’s how Americans talk about you, and there are plenty of them that do, but there are also a lot of us that don’t really begrudge you trying to have a better life,’” he said.

“This moment of his being surprised that we’re not unified in our attitudes toward people at the border—a lightbulb went on for this guy, and I’ll remember that.”

Carrying Their Stories Back Home

Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president and presidential assistant for planning in the Office of Mission Integration and Planning, said the trip was a necessity, given how immigration is now a major global challenge.

“Because this is such a major social issue and it impacts questions of justice, what we want to be as a society, and how a place like Fordham, as a Jesuit university, tries to develop students, we decided the border would be a great site for this immersion experience for a diverse group of faculty members,” he said.

Reich is making sure the issue lives on, having structured the syllabus of one of her spring classes, Films of Moral Struggle, to include representations of borders and migration. The class is also sending Easter cards to people in detention at the border to bring a little color and humanity into their lives, she said.

Above all, she said she’ll hold onto memories of conversations with the migrants she met, like one with a man at the comedor who was sporting a University of Michigan hat. He’d lived in the U.S. for 22 years before being deported after being stopped for a traffic violation.

“I will always carry their stories with me,” Reich said.

Photos courtesy of Fordham faculty.

The families were hoping to enroll their children in a new high school for disadvantaged Kenyan girls that Rodriguez has been raising money to build.

During the visit, a single mother told Rodriguez that she was recently faced with a tough decision: As she could only afford one tuition, which one of her four teenage girls would she send to school?

“She chose the eldest girl, but the second girl was also a brilliant kid,” said Rodriguez. “When the mom said that, the other girl started crying hysterically and ran away, because she wanted to go to school, too.”

Rodriguez said the experience made her realize how strained the education system is in rural parts of Kenya.

“There are many opportunities for girls to go to elementary school, but [not]many opportunities for girls to pursue a high school education, especially if they’re poor,” Rodriguez said.

In some cases, a girl as old as 16 will remain in elementary school because there are no other options for schooling.

The nuns from the Assumption Sisters of Eldoret, acquired land on which to build a school for high school girls. The project is already registered with the Kenyan government. Rodriguez started an Every Girl Is Important campaign to build the secondary boarding school.

Because many of the girls live far away from the site and can’t afford transportation to get there every day, Rodriguez, who will be serving as the project’s director, said arrangements are being made to house them on school grounds.

If all goes well, Rodriguez hopes to construct four classrooms and a dorm this fall. She said it would take about three months to build the boarding school, which is expected to be opened in January 2018.

“For many of these girls, this is their only hope to change their lives,” said Rodriguez, who explained that Kenyan girls face the obstacles of gender discrimination, abuse, high levels of HIV/AIDS, child labor, and child marriages. “Their parents cannot afford to send them to high school, so that’s often the end of schooling for the girls.”

Documenting the struggle  

In partnership with GSE, Rodriguez has produced a documentary narrated by Harvard scholar, critic, and producer Henry Louis Gates Jr. to bring attention to Every Girl Is Important, a 5013c organization she started to help build the school.

The 20-minute documentary features interviews with some of the girls who want to attend high school. Rodriguez said the goal is to present their challenges and show how the Every Girl Is Important project seeks to improve their prospects for the future.

“If you listen to every girl that we interviewed in the documentary, they say that they want to come back and help their family and their community [when they’re done with school],” she said. “They want to be nurses, doctors, engineers, and lawyers.”

Tackling barriers to education 

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, at least 1 million Kenyan children are denied the chance to attend school.  In 2008, almost all children in Nairobi from well-to-do households had been to school. Some 55 percent of poor girls living in the North Eastern part of the country had never been to school, compared to 43 percent of poor boys, according to the report.

With help from a Fordham Faculty Fellowship, Rodriguez will be training East African educators during the fall semester of 2017. She said she hopes to learn more about the academic hurdles facing the Kenyan community.

“[This]  would not only help train educators in Kenya in the areas of bilingualism and inclusion of individuals with disabilities, but it would also inform the research on how language and culture influence the formation of teacher identity,” she said.

As part of the fellowship, Rodriguez said she will also be helping to prepare, plan, and implement a program of study for the Eldoret boarding school. She seeks to create a “solid and rigorous academic curriculum” that incorporates technology, and prepares the girls for college.

“I want girls to have opportunities to excel in life,” she said.

More than 100 high school students and their families gathered at the Fordham Law School on June 20 to mark the end of the inaugural College and Career Readiness Saturday Instructional Program, sponsored by the Department of Education’s Division of English Language Learners and Student Support (DELLSS).

Over the course of 20 consecutive Saturday mornings, the students convened on Fordham’s Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses and other campuses around New York City, to learn about the college admissions process and get a firsthand look at higher education.

“Many of these English language learners have never stepped foot into a university before, so they don’t even have hope for a college education,” said Diane Rodriguez, PhD, associate professor at the Graduate School of Education, who facilitated the collaboration between Fordham and the program. “This program helps them prepare for college and eventually a career.”

The students—most of whom are recent immigrants—worked with counselors to strengthen their academic English, learn about the college application process, receive SAT/ACT/TOEFL test prep, practice college admission interviews, and create a portfolio of their work.

“The program helps us to decide what we’re going to be,” said 15-year-old Gabriella Ortega, a sophomore at Hillcrest High School in Queens. “I’m going to become a lawyer, and I learned through this program that Fordham has a really good law school. So, now if I want to apply to Fordham, I can put on my resumé that I attended this program.”

The program reconvenes in October. Before then, the students will continue their college and career preparation via PreK-12 Plaza, free educational software they received at the June 20 ceremony. The software is offered in 17 languages and provides academic support for students and resources for parents.

One of the greatest benefits of the extra Saturday instruction was the opportunity to practice and improve their English, said Sandra Cardona, 15, a 10th-grader at Pan American International High School. Cardona said that the 20 weeks of engaging with counselors and classmates has helped her to overcome the language barrier she has encountered since moving to New York City from Honduras.

The program also afforded students the opportunity to reflect on their future goals.

“My main reason for going to college is because in Honduras, most students don’t go to college. Many don’t even finish school. They just start working,” Cardona said.

“I want to change that. I want to go to college to become a teacher, then go back to my country and teach students who can’t afford education.”

Fostering a love of both their new culture as well as their home culture was at the core of the program. A key message was that learning English and adapting to the American education system did not mean that there is any shame in being immigrants.

“Since I came to the United States, my experience has been that we have to learn a new language and fit in with this culture, and I thought I had to change my whole entire background,” Ortega said.

“But we [are taught]that our cultures are a good thing in this country. I realized that I should be proud of where I come from, and that as a Latina I can even be proud of my accent.”

The keynote speaker for the event was DELLSS Deputy Chancellor Milady Baez, who shared her own story about emigrating from the Dominican Republic at age 12. When she came, she did not know a word of English. Today she holds a top position in the Department of Education.

“It’s not easy,” she said. “Many times you have to go to the dictionary, or reread a book more than once, because what comes easily for other students might take double the time for those of us who speak English as a second language.

“But I made a commitment to myself to go to college, become a teacher, and become a professional. And I did it.”

Now imagine that you are 9 years old and you need to start school in this new country. You’ve always loved learning, but you quickly realize that now you can’t even follow what the teacher is saying or ask a classmate for help. Chances are you won’t excel this school year. You wonder if you’ll ever catch up.

An associate professor at the Graduate School of Education and a longtime bilingual education instructor, Rodriguez tells her graduate students that much more than learning English is needed to help immigrant children thrive in the American education system. These students need a comprehensive and individualized educational plan to help them acclimate to their new learning environment, as well as to their new home’s culture.

“For students to thrive academically, it’s not only about language, but also about culture,” said Rodriguez, who is a Fordham alumna. “It’s about understanding who these children are and the community they come from, why they are here, and what they expect of—and hope for—in their education.”

Biography-driven instruction: learning who our students are

Rodriguez advocates for an approach that combines biography-driven instruction with use of children’s native language, which she says is critical for cognitive and emotional growth. She offers a native language instructional model in her recent co-authored book, The Bilingual Advantage: Promoting Academic Development, Biliteracy, and Native Language in the Classroom (Teachers College Press, 2014).

To a teacher who is not versed in this model, non English-speaking students may appear to be fundamentally limited in English proficiency. Rodriguez, however, considers these students to be “language enriched pupils” who are able to draw on their native language while learning English and content knowledge. When teachers utilize the strengths that these students have already acquired through this enriched sociocultural and linguistic background, the students do better.

To access these strengths, though, teachers must first identify them. Many bilingual education teachers are already employing biography-driven instruction, Rodriguez said, For instance, she knows teachers who create biography cards for each student that list useful tidbits such as family information, first and second language proficiency, reading and writing levels in both languages, and cognitive abilities.

This is a good start, she said. But if teachers are to truly empower their culturally and linguistically diverse students, there is more important information yet to capture.

“We need to identify students’ individual learning styles—what motivates them, what makes them laugh,” she said. “It’s about embracing all of the cultural knowledge and awareness that they bring into the classroom.

“When you get to know your students, you’re able to develop and modify instruction for your group of students,” she continued. “It takes time—you have to put an effort in as an educator to get to know your audience.”

The intersection of bilingual education and special education

In addition to making bilingual instruction more effective, Rodriguez studies the impact that cultural and linguistic diversity have on special education. Her interest in this area began while she was teaching special education in New York City. She noticed that a number of her immigrant students had been diagnosed with learning disabilities when, in fact, they were merely struggling to learn English.

To that end, Rodriguez recently directed the Bilingual Special Education Summer Institute at Fordham to provide additional training to educators involved in both special education instruction and bilingual services—a dual service needed by as much as 22 percent of New York City students.

The institute attracted more than 150 participants to Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. Over the course of a week, the teachers were immersed in the latest research and methodologies for teaching English language learners with special needs, especially in light of the diversity of cultures, languages, abilities, and socioeconomic statuses of these students.

“All of these factors are integrated, and you have to take all of them into consideration when you’re developing an educational plan for a child,” Rodriguez said.

“Nelson Mandela once said that when you speak in a language that someone understands it goes to his head, but when you speak in his native language, it goes into his heart. That’s what happens for many of the children who are acquiring a second language in this country—when you speak to them in their native language [that is, in a way that respects who they are and where they come from]they will always remember.”

Watch an interview with Diane Rodriguez

The Graduate School of Education will host the Bilingual Special Education Summer Institute at the Lincoln Center campus from July 1 to 3, and on July 7 and 8.

The institute “will provide an overview of the latest research-based knowledge on effective practices for learners diverse in culture and ability,” according to a brochure. Experts in bilingual education will present on several topics including strategies for bilingual special education students, the ways in which teachers can use students’ native languages to promote learning, and the importance of bilingual special education.

Diane Rodriguez, Ph.D.

“Research shows that teachers working in urban settings must be prepared to implement both theoretically sound and culturally responsive teaching because their students are extremely diverse in culture, language, ability/disability, and socioeconomic status,” said Diane Rodriguez, Ph.D., associate professor at GSE, in an interview posted on the graduate school’s blog.

Of the more than 150,000 English language learners in the New York City school system, 22 percent are special-needs students, she said.

The institute is open to educators, graduate students, parents, school psychologists, school counselors, administrators, and professionals in the area of special education. The registration options include single-day attendance and professional development credits.

“Bridging the intersection of bilingual and special education will provide insights into the multifaceted complexity of language, culture, and the continuum of ability/disability for positive social, affective, cognitive, and academic outcomes,” Rodriguez said.