YOUTH-LED PROGRAM DESIGN
Language Navigators:
In Oakland Unified School District, International (newcomer) students are underserved in the school community by a number of factors: access to technology, mono-lingual English-speaking teachers, and the systemic barriers of navigating being a student in the United States and specifically Oakland. To begin to alleviate the ….. and uplift the cultural wealth of these students, OCELOTL began to develop programming to address these young people’s needs.
What is the most culturally appropriate and trauma-informed way to support these students? As the experts in their experience, these students have learned English as a second language while inside of a culturally unresponsive system.
We worked with youth to create a trauma-informed and culturally responsive intervention to support our newest students. Mutli-Lingual students use their expertise to help build a classroom push-in strategy that creates a safe space for International students to have their questions answered, receive support, learn systems and, most importantly, to be held with compassion and empathy. International students are able to be themselves (and valued) to increase their comfort in learning and using English. Language Navigators bring their own lived expertise as multilingual students with English fluency as well as successfully navigating an Oakland public school experience.
