Education Across Borders

Explores how teachers can effectively educate students who immigrate from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and other island nations and countries.

The practices and values in the U.S. educational system position linguistically, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse children and families at a disadvantage. In this collection, three educators and will draw on research, as well as their experiences as immigrants and educators, to address racial inequity in the classroom. With a focus on Haitian and Dominican students in the U.S., the authors will reveal the challenges that immigrant and first-generation students face. They'll also offer solutions to pressing questions such as:
how can educators support Haitian Creole-speaking students;
how do language policies and social justice intersect?;
how can educators use culturally relevant teaching and community funds of knowledge to enrich school curriculum?

About the Author

Patrick Sylvain is a Haitian-American writer, essayist and poet, and instructor of Haitian language and culture at Brown University's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He has been published in several anthologies, magazines and reviews, including African American Review, Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Haitian Times and Ploughshares. Dr. Jalene Tamerat is the Director of New Teacher Development for Boston Public Schools, where she leads the district's strategy for training, supporting, and retaining strong novice teachers. As a practitioner and scholar, Jalene focuses on the cultivation of teachers who will be able to respond to the instructional and civic needs of diverse urban youth in a globally interconnected world. Dr. Marie Lily Cerat has worked in the K-16 New York public education system as a classroom teacher, a staff developer and a college teacher for over 20 years. Her work examines the effects of the exclusion of Haitian language and culture in the education of Haitian learners and has been published in Rethinking Schools, the Journal of Haitian Studies, and the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, among other publications.