Welcoming Migrant Students

In the spring of 2022, I sat down with my first-grade co-teacher and Lucia, the mother of one of our newcomer students, Andres.* We pulled up three chairs on the classroom rug to talk about how we could work together to help Andres transition to school each morning. Andres and Lucia had recently migrated from Colombia, and this period of adaptation had been hard on Andres. Lately, he had been crying and would only come into the building holding my hand. It would take him the better part of the morning to feel comfortable enough to take off his coat, hang up his backpack, and join his classmates.

Conferences like these were not new to me. I’ve been a bilingual teacher in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) for 15 years. I am currently the English learner program teacher at my school. My job is not only to provide bilingual education and English as a second language services but also to coordinate our school’s program (with over 220 multilingual learners), collaborate with my coworkers on professional development, and increase family engagement. However, this particular conversation had a big impact on me because it led me to see the gaps in how well our school truly understood many of our students’ families.

In short, we found out that Andres’s family was escaping ongoing rural violence in Colombia after his father had been tragically killed. We also learned that Lucia was an early childhood educator in her native country. Through tears, we brainstormed ways we could help Andres feel more comfortable at school. But silently I was contemplating other questions. What had kept me from understanding more about Andres and his family’s life experience up to this point? And why had I never thought to relate to Lucia as someone with whom, despite our disparate experiences, I might actually have a lot in common? After all, I now knew, she was a fellow teacher.

CPS received close to 9,000 migrant students between August 2022 and April 2024,¹ and nearly 80 percent of the migrant influx came from Venezuela.² My current school welcomed over 30 Colombian and Venezuelan students in that span. Inspired to better help our school welcome these students—students like Andres—I decided to apply for a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching Research to study migration and education in Colombia. I sought to learn more about the context of education and migration there, specifically regarding the education of migrant students in the region. By researching this topic in this particular place, I also hoped to develop my familiarity with the cultures, politics, and international contexts that were increasingly relevant to my own local school and district.

Challenges

I carried out my Fulbright project in Medellín, living there with my family from September to December 2023. I partnered with a host institution, Universidad de Antioquia, and received guidance from a mentor in the education department. I spent my mornings at Institución Educativa Fe y Alegría Luis Amigó (Amigó), a public school in the neighborhood of Moravia, where I observed classrooms; conducted interviews with students, staff, and families; and taught the occasional lesson as a guest teacher. Afternoons were spent visiting other schools, meeting staff at community organizations, or meeting over coffee with families and teachers to ask them more about their experiences. In between, I transcribed and coded interviews or sat at my desk at the university to read everything I could about migration and education in the region.

More than 6.1 million refugees and migrants have left Venezuela in recent years, the largest mass migration in South America’s recent history.³ Colombia is home to the largest share of these migrants, with over 2.8 million Venezuelans living there as of January 2024.⁴ Such a large-scale movement of people has affected all aspects of Colombian society, not least of which has been the nation’s school system. In Medellín, the arrival of roughly 33,000 Venezuelan students over the past five years has introduced challenges and opportunities at all levels of policy and practice.⁵ Venezuelan migrants now make up 10 percent of Medellín’s population.⁶ As of 2020, Venezuelan migrant students made up 7 percent of children in the city’s schools.⁷ Despite the influx, no new schools have been built, so the existing schools are straining to meet all of their students’ needs.⁸

National policies in Colombia have gone a long way to help regularize and integrate migrant families, especially children. Yet, adequate resources for the schools are not being delivered. Federal policy only gets you so far. Juan Felipe Aguirre, education director at Intégrate, a social service agency that works with displaced people in Medellín, described schools with close to 50 students in a classroom. “There are schools with principals and teachers who are very flexible. They take students past the margins of what they can accommodate, all to uphold the social mission of education. But all this takes a toll on the quality of the education being offered.”⁹

A local principal highlighted the contradiction in the schools’ nutrition program. She receives 200 servings of milk daily for a student population close to 10 times that size. At Amigó, a school that serves over 100 Venezuelan students, the principal showed me classrooms that had been closed off for over a year due to the dangers of crumbling ceiling tiles.¹⁰ And in the final stretch of the semester, at a time when schools were busy re-enrolling all families for the following school year, Medellín’s schools lost internet for a week and were at risk of running out of funds to maintain custodial and security staff.¹¹

At the schools where I spent time getting to know teachers, students, and families, there were also challenges regarding the school experiences of newcomer students and their families. After migrating, families often struggle to locate the certificates and paperwork needed to enroll their children, and there are significant discrepancies between Venezuelan and Colombian school levels and credentials. All this leads to huge barriers to enrollment, with families often turned away because they cannot provide necessary paperwork, or students placed in inappropriate grade levels and classes. Meanwhile, some students and staff adopt the anti-immigrant and xenophobic sentiment that is a growing undercurrent in much of the society at large.¹² Students reported to me that a foreign classmate might be chastised if they stick out in any way, whether in the type of sandals they wear, the regional language they use, or their accent.¹³

Almost every Venezuelan student I spoke with described the isolation and embarrassment they felt whenever they were called veneco, a slang insult for a Venezuelan living in Colombia. But that word, a lexical joining of the names of both countries, also hints at their shared history of regional struggle and solidarity. After all, a generation ago, Colombians were the ones migrating to Venezuela seeking a better life.¹⁴ The schools and spaces that were most inspiring during my time in Medellín were the ones that embraced this sense of shared history while refusing to give up their demands for more support for all. As Moravia community leader Gloria Ospina told me, “The saying goes, ‘Dónde comen dos, comen cuatro.’ [‘Where two eat, four can eat.’] Yes, we practice great solidarity in this neighborhood. But still people die of hunger here. One should not have to always take from their own mouth to feed their neighbor. What we need is more bread.”¹⁵

Coexistence and Community

Mornings for my family in Colombia started just how they always did in Chicago, with my partner and I scrambling to get our two young children (then ages three and five) ready for school. First, one of us would drop Isaac off at kindergarten; he went to a local school with other middle-class Colombian students from the neighborhood. Then we would cart Rosa to her local daycare, which she attended with about 20 other kids from the high-rise development where we lived. Finally, I would take the metro to a downtown stop and walk 20 minutes through Moravia to my school placement.

I walked alongside the trickling ravine that cuts through the neighborhood, passing vendors selling fresh bananas and avocados, corner stands selling arepas de choclo and buñuelos, and countless murals depicting the history of this unique area of the city. Moravia has always been a home to people searching for a better life. In the 1950s, it attracted Colombians fleeing poverty and violence in the countryside. New arrivals built shacks and simple homes out of found materials, forming a bustling new neighborhood practically from scratch.¹⁶ Seventy years later, with its proximity to the city’s bus station, Moravia continues to be one of the first stops for migrants arriving in Medellín. With this dynamic of migration and relocation, the neighborhood’s schools are critical institutions for the practice of convivencia, a concept that loosely translates to “coexistence.”

The first time I heard convivencia was October 3. That morning, the academic coordinator at Amigó announced the first day of the school soccer tournament, a yearly tradition. All students and teachers gathered on the school’s patio, many observing the makeshift pitch from second-floor balconies surrounding the courtyard. Teams of younger children were to be coached by older students, with a few additional classmates serving as referees and announcers. The school’s academic coordinator kicked off the games by addressing the crowd: “The reason we hold these games each year is to improve our school’s convivencia, to work toward peace, toward the respect that we each have for our classmates.”

Convivencia is a catch-all term whose meaning has evolved over decades; it has come to represent a shifting set of civic qualities, including moral values and positive habits, school climate and violence prevention supports, democratic and citizenship education, community building, and education for peace.¹⁷ It has been growing in importance as a theme in Colombian schools since the mid-1990s, when a federal law dictated that all schools must develop and publish formal plans for how they will establish positive school climates.¹⁸ In 2004, national citizenship standards were released, recognizing a growing systemic need to teach students how to live in community, a further expansion and operationalization of convivencia.¹⁹ In 2013, another federal law further detailed how schools should work toward these goals, including by establishing school-community convivencia committees.²⁰ That year, a text and training professional development module were published to support the furthering of classroom and school-based practices.²¹

To my outsider eyes, it seemed that the national and local emphasis on convivencia was an effort to define schools as the essential civic institutions that will help Colombian society move beyond its violent, conflict-ridden past (due largely to the country’s history of drug trafficking). Indeed, this view was corroborated by multiple educators and university education faculty. In this way, it’s similar to the critical role that antiracist and culturally sustaining pedagogies play to address societal inequalities created by centuries of colonialism, slavery, racism, economic inequality, and anti-immigrant policy in the United States. The key difference, however, is the extent of the agreement about convivencia as a critical goal for Colombian schools and society. Yes, economic inequality is entrenched and there are those who cling to xenophobic sentiment. Nonetheless, I came across convivencia everywhere during my time in Colombia. This concept wasn’t just one of the many buzzwords or trends floating around school campuses. It often seemed as if educators and families alike conceived of convivencia as the central goal of education itself.

In recent years, the goal of welcoming and integrating Venezuelan students into Colombian schools has become a new context in the convivencia paradigm. In the face of extreme societal inequality and infrastructural challenges, teachers and school leaders are making important efforts in their school communities to achieve this goal. Through my research, I found this work fell into two categories: schoolwide and individual educator practices.

Schoolwide practices:

• Effectively carry out national policies and programs toward convivencia.
• Promote a philosophy of inclusion that becomes part of the school’s reputation in the community.
• Serve as a community ally through organizational partnerships.
• Create extracurricular opportunities for artistic and cultural expression among students and families.

Individual educator practices:

• Develop positive relationships with students by trying to understand their experiences.
• Intervene directly in cases of xenophobia or bullying.
• Create classroom communities that bring students together across differences.
• Use teaching practices that make learning accessible for all.

Schoolwide practices often had a positive influence on the mindsets and practices of individual educators in the school community. However, even when these school practices were not taking place, individuals could still establish welcoming and supportive experiences and environments with new students and families. In the following vignettes, I attempt to provide a snapshot of educators and school communities engaged in this important work:

Known in the neighborhood. Amigó is known as a bona fide community institution. Its principal and academic directors are famous in the neighborhood; there’s a graffiti mural of one of the directors on a local storefront. Next to the school’s main entrance, a mosaic of the history of Moravia depicts community leaders and images of residents building their homes from the ground up. Of all the schools in Moravia, Amigó has done the most to maintain a thriving partnership with the nearby Centro de Desarrollo Cultural de Moravia. There, kids can attend wraparound extracurricular classes. Students’ families take job development courses or simply spend time in a safe space using free Wi-Fi. Families have the choice of attending a few local schools, and while Amigó is in worse physical condition than some of its neighboring institutions, most families want to send their kids there. As one teacher told me, “Students and families feel that their realities and conditions will be understood here.”²²

Student authors. At Institución Educativa Presbítero Luis Rodolfo Gómez Ramírez (Ramírez), teachers recognize that one of the characteristics separating Colombian and Venezuelan students is their different regional vocabularies. Some of the words they use—for everything from foods to classroom materials—are so distinct that they can generate a barrier within their shared language of Spanish. A team of teachers brings a group of students together in the library to share about their language and experiences. What results, a year later, is a professionally published dictionary full of the direct translations for colombianismos and venezolanismos as well as an appendix of lesson plans and activities about cultural exchange and community building. It’s called Chamolandia. (Chamo is a slang word young people use to refer to their friends.) You can find plenty of copies in the school library, a testament to these student authors and their work to build community across culture and language.

Revamping an annual festival. Manuel López Ramírez, principal of Institución Educativa Eduardo Santos, pointed to his heart and told me, “With all of the migration happening, it’s starting to revitalize that little supremacist that many people carry inside.”²³ One way of combating the resurgence of xenophobia at his school is rethinking the school’s annual festival, which historically only celebrated the regional Paisa culture.²⁴ They will now call it a “Cross-Cultural Festival of Colombia and Venezuela.” They will celebrate not just local traditions but also cultural expressions from Venezuelan regions, and customs practiced by many Afro-Colombians at the school who come from the coast. The principal of Amigó has moved his school in the same direction. At last year’s Colombian/Venezuelan festival at Amigó, Colombian and Venezuelan families danced the joropo together, a folk rhythm that unites both countries.

Lighting a candle. Yolida Ramirez, a teacher at Institución Educativa Héctor Abad Gómez, truly sees her migrant students and their classmates. One day, she explained to me the practice that I had observed her do with her second-grade students when I first visited her class. Each morning, after attendance, she lights a candle with her students and leaves it burning throughout the morning. Why? The candle represents all the students who have left. “Migrant students are often transient,” she told me. “Students often see their classmates suddenly pick up and leave for the United States. It would be strange not to acknowledge that.”²⁵ That day, I noticed a student, Kevin, who the class greeted especially warmly. He and his family had been gone for weeks, attempting to get to the United States by crossing the Darién Gap (which Human Rights Watch has described as “one of the most treacherous migration pathways in the world”²⁶). This was his first day back. The candle had been burning.

The Outsiders

The stories above—and many more like them—show whole-school communities and individuals following a common framework to welcome newcomers and work toward greater convivencia. First, they recognized when a member of the community felt in some way like an outsider. Then, quite simply, they did whatever it took to bring them in. Alongside what I observed as a teacher-researcher in schools throughout Medellín, it was, unexpectedly, my family’s acute awareness of our own outsider status in our children’s new schools that brought this lesson to life.

The first week of kindergarten in Colombia, Isaac’s school had spirit week. We had very few clothes with us, certainly nothing “wacky” for Wacky Day. I walked the kids to the corner paper goods store to buy Isaac pipe cleaners to tie around his shoelaces. But was Wacky Day here the same as Wacky Day in Chicago? Isaac was anxious every day that first week, wondering how he would stick out, whether we would send him to school wearing something that would make him the laughingstock of his class. As parents, my partner and I were always one step behind the rest. What saved us was the WhatsApp group for class parents. A few generous parents befriended us and helped us navigate the culture and customs that would have otherwise left us doubtful and confused. We began to feel a little less like outsiders.

Still, the transition was hard. When my partner picked up Isaac from his new school one afternoon, he was walking around by himself, she said, kicking rocks in the dirt. Across the yard, the rest of his classmates smiled and chatted as they waited for their grown-ups. I felt guilty about how alone he and my daughter must have been feeling in school. At the same time, I felt insecure about how much to take up the school staff’s time with questions about his adjustment. Isaac and Rosa were healthy, well-adjusted kids coming from an economically advantaged background. They had experienced zero trauma in their temporary transition to a new country. And still I had these doubts as a parent. When a teacher began the routine of hugging Isaac to say goodbye when I picked him up from school, I breathed a little easier. She wasn’t even his teacher, but she saw his need for connection to the community.

Meanwhile, I felt just as much like an outsider in my role as teacher-researcher. My life of privilege in the United States had acclimated me to feel comfortable in schools. I am a cisgender white male who was in Colombia as a researcher from a country with a history of power and intervention in South America.²⁷ Nonetheless, schools are institutions with their own in-group dynamics and unspoken expectations. From day one, the discomfort of not knowing the rules hit me like a bucket of cold water.

At Amigó, for example, I seemed to never know the schedule. I was always just short of grasping the class rotations, the timing of whole-school assemblies, and even which holidays meant a day off for students and staff. There were many times I almost found my footing, but there was always something that kept me from asking the other educators for help. In retrospect, I think I was scared to stick out. I didn’t want to reveal my own ignorance. Plus, I found myself thinking their jobs were hard enough. I would feel guilty even bothering them with a question. But whenever he saw me, Principal Walter Vélez took a few moments to genuinely ask how I was doing and what I needed. His warmth and generosity made a huge difference. Back home in Chicago, my memories of Walter inspire me to reach out to my fellow coworkers, especially those who may, for reasons of language or culture, also feel like outsiders in our school community.

Of course, the real story is not how my family or I felt being new to a place. It’s the experience of migrant students and families that matters. At Institución Educativa Arzobispo Tulio Botero Salazar, high up on the outskirts of Medellín, teachers and students described a school going to great lengths to systematically include Venezuelan migrant students in all aspects of their experience. There are regular induction meetings for new families. Peer tutors help students who have arrived with interrupted previous schooling. Schoolwide artistic events and talent shows are seen as opportunities to bring Colombian and Venezuelan students together. One teacher passed me her phone to show an ongoing chat she maintains with some of the Venezuelan moms in the neighborhood. “It’s an outlook, an attitude that you have to have as a teacher,” she told me. “Because, as they say, ‘borders… we create them ourselves.’ ... But at the end of the day, between you and I, there’s no difference between us as human beings. And I think in our school, we have achieved this understanding.”²⁸

Victor Acevedo, a teacher at Amigó, expressed this same sentiment during a conversation one morning in the school library. For him, it all begins with the work of liberatory educator Paulo Freire: “Freire spoke of popular education. For us, that means that we always think of inclusion, of opening our doors to the world. First and foremost, that’s our educational philosophy here.”²⁹ Victor recalled when two indigenous students moved to Moravia from a rural region, knowing little Spanish and unable to communicate with their peers or teachers. Victor has a talent for macramé; he used this hobby as an inroad to encourage the students to share their cultural textile traditions with him and others at the school. Notably, two members of the custodial staff also mentioned these students to me, sharing how they did their best to look out for the students when they first arrived.

Daniela, a college student at Universidad de Antioquia, recounted that she was the only Venezuelan student in her Colombian high school. She was at her breaking point in 10th grade when she met a teacher who intervened on her behalf. He spoke to the students in small groups and even held workshops for the community to understand the situation in Venezuela that was causing new migration patterns. “The community realized more and more that we are all different, but no one deserves to be judged or discriminated against.... He helped change the image of Venezuelans for others.”³⁰ Daniela’s story shows that welcoming new students sometimes requires finding the courage to engage in political education to challenge stereotypes and foster solidarity within the community.

At the end of each of my interviews, I always asked, “If you could send a message to US educators who are working with families and students from Colombia and Venezuela, what advice would you give them?” The answers often were the same: Love them. Have patience with them. Try to understand what they are going through. Looking back on my own temporary status as an outsider in Medellín, I realize that the people who most helped me and my family in Colombia were those we met through the schools. Even in our privileged position, we relied on schools to find our way. And reflecting on the experiences of students, families, and educators I met in Medellín, I see that the importance of school communities cannot be overstated.

Connections

My time in Medellín helped me see what it means to lean into school-family-community connections. Since returning to Chicago, the first way I do that is by sharing my contact information through WhatsApp with new families. On day one, they have someone to whom they can direct their school questions, often the same questions I experienced during my short time as an outsider in a new country. Our school now has a WhatsApp group with Spanish-speaking families; often, families who have been here for a little while can offer guidance to families who have just arrived. Last year, our school’s bilingual advisory council elected as its president a mother who has been in the country for just two years. In our work together, she and I have mobilized involvement in the school, driven school volunteer opportunities among newcomer families, and organized resources such as healthcare benefits workshops and school visits from community organizations that serve immigrant communities.

In my own work with newcomer students, I keep in mind the recommendations of the mother of a fourth-grade student at Amigó. “Welcome them, embrace them,” she told me. “Show them stability. Show them love.”³¹ This year, we organized a bilingual career day, where newcomer students met members of the community who also arrived in the United States as young people. Taking a page from the students at Ramírez, I gathered newcomer students and some of their US-born bilingual peers into small groups to learn from each other about Colombian, Venezuelan, and US languages and cultures. I made time for their questions during each session. In our end-of-year survey, students said that these moments of personalized interaction and support were far more meaningful and useful to them than lessons from the formal curriculum.

One of the most critical things our school administration has done to support newcomers has been to hire bilingual paraprofessionals who themselves are recent immigrants to the United States (this began before my study in Colombia and, thankfully, continued upon my return). Recent research shows the positive academic effects that bilingual paraprofessionals who speak Spanish and English can have with students who speak Spanish at home.³² More than anyone in the building, these educators understand the mix of social, emotional, and academic support that our newcomer students need. They are the best equipped to connect with families. Shortly after I returned from Colombia, our team organized a successful orientation for newcomer families and a winter coat and boot drive. I help support the work of this team, but just as much, I learn from them about what it takes to do the work well. Given the daily emotional labor they do to provide a sense of safety and well-being to the students, one of these educators likes to remind me that she’s their “mom” at school. This is what it can feel like to look out for our students and their families as fellow human beings. We can all do our part to invite outsiders in.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire writes, “Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”³³ In my ongoing pursuit of knowledge, I have benefited greatly from joining the systematic work being done by the amazing educators and organizers of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). By fighting for the rights of immigrants alongside longtime Chicago residents, we are stronger and more effective together.

In the summer of 2023, when thousands of migrants were arriving by bus to Chicago and sleeping for weeks on the floors of police stations, our members were some of the first into the stations to personally enroll children in schools for the upcoming school year. A network of our members has volunteered our time at “free stores,” where newly arriving families can get clothes and toiletries for the whole family, plus toys and books for their kids. Meanwhile, members of our union’s bilingual education committee created a welcome packet to be tailored and used by any member at any school to provide resources and guidance to newly enrolled families. Our members have spoken at roundtables with elected officials about the need for more funding and staffing to support schools that have received large numbers of new students. As we bargain for a new contract, we have sent hundreds of members to the seat of our state government in Springfield to lobby for more funding for our school budgets to meet the needs of all students in Chicago Public Schools.

Because the truth is, just as community leaders in Medellín told me, we cannot keep taking from some to feed others. We need more bread for all. Our yearslong fight for Sustainable Community Schools, for example, has led to the creation of schools in immigrant and Black neighborhoods that are true community hubs, promoting educational equity, health, and well-being. When we fight for high-quality bilingual services for newcomer students, we don’t just do so for their sake, but for nearly 90,000 English learners in Chicago who have gone without true bilingual education for far too long. When we advocate to protect access to affordable housing in our contract negotiations, this is for newcomer families and for the Black families who have been victims of housing discrimination for decades. And when our community partners help newly arrived Venezuelan families enroll for work permits, we recognize that we also need work authorization for the more than 400,000 long-term undocumented immigrants in Illinois.³⁴

In our increasingly interdependent societies, where more and more people are “on the move” across the globe, our daily lives and experiences are constantly changing. This is true not just for migrants but also for all of us who welcome them into our communities. In Colombia, I saw and experienced the powerful role that schools have in welcoming and validating the experiences of those who are new to a place. It should be our goal as educators to connect with our students as fellow human beings, to go above and beyond to humanize and make connections. We should never underestimate the power of our own interventions in the lives of students and their families. And we should always be looking to systematize these efforts, just as we do in the CTU, to advocate for our students in schools and the broader community.

I look back on my student Andres and his mother Lucia with regret that it took me so long to get to know them and their circumstances. But the beauty of working in schools is that there is always another chance. Within the seasons of our profession lies the opportunity for reinvention, for renewal. And from my experience in Colombia, I find myself recommitted to the work of building the schools our students and families deserve—both for newcomers and for those who were already here. Because as Freire said, we must pursue our work together: “In the world, with the world, and with each other.”  

Joshua Lerner is a National Board–certified teacher in Chicago Public Schools, where he has taught middle school mathematics and elementary school bilingual education. He now serves as the English learner program teacher at Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies. For the Chicago Teachers Union, he is a school delegate and serves on the executive board as an elementary functional vice president.

*Pseudonyms are used throughout this article for students and family members. When full names are provided, they are not pseudonyms. (return to article)

Endnotes

1. S. Smylie, “Chicago Public Schools Estimates Between 9,000 and 17,000 Migrant Students Are Enrolled, Depending on Who Is Counted,” Chalkbeat, April 17, 2024, chalkbeat.org/chicago/2024/04/18/chicago-and-illinois-count-migrant-students-differently/?utm_source=Chalkbeat&utm_campaign=66eabcac33-Chicago+How+many+newcomer+students+are+enrolled+at&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9091015053-66eabcac33-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&mc_cid=66eabcac33&mc_eid=cd4b835b10.

2. N. Shukla, “Supporting Migrant Children in Chicago Public Schools: A Model for Inclusion,” Data-Smart City Solutions, February 2, 2024, datasmart.hks.harvard.edu/supporting-migrant-children-chicago-public-schools#:~:text=Since%20August%202022%2C%20the%20influx,works%20to%20safely%20accommodate%20migrants.

3. International Organization for Migration, “Venezuelan Refugee and Migrant Crisis,” United Nations, iom.int/venezuelan-refugee-and-migrant-crisis.

4. J. Freixes, “More Than 2.8 Million Venezuelans Live in Colombia,” Colombia One, January 17, 2024, colombiaone.com/2024/01/17/venezuelan-immigrants-colombia; and International Organization for Migration, “Venezuelan Migrants Drive USD 529.1M Boost to Colombia’s Economy: IOM Study,” United Nations, April 25, 2024, iom.int/news/venezuelan-migrants-drive-usd-5291m-boost-colombias-economy-iom-study#:~:text=Colombia%20hosts%20the%20highest%20population,Colombia's%20economic%20and%20cultural%20wealth.

5. N. Mantilla, “Conversemos Sobre Migración y Xenofobia,” Juntos Aprendemos at Centro de Innovación del Maestro, Medellín, Colombia, October 26, 2023.

6. City Paper Staff, “Medellín Leads Colombian Cities with Venezuelan Migrant Population,” City Paper, June 21, 2024, thecitypaperbogota.com/news/medellin-leads-colombian-cities-with-venezuelan-migrant-population/#google_vignette.

7. F. Aliaga Sáez et al., “Dificultades y Desafíos de Integración de los Estudiantes Venezolanos en Colombia desde la Voz de Sus Docentes,” Foro de Educación 20, no. 2 (2022), forodeeducacion.com/ojs/index.php/fde/article/view/1006.

8. Mantilla, “Conversemos Sobre Migración.”

9. J. Aguirre, interview by J. Lerner, Intégrate, November 1, 2023.

10. W. Vélez, interview by J. Lerner, September 21, 2023.

11. El Colombiano, “Falta de Pago a Profesionales, Escasez de Insumos y Entidades Tiradas,” December 4, 2023, elcolombiano.com/medellin/denuncias-en-la-alcaldia-de-medellin-hospital-general-metrosalud-bomberos-y-colegios-NE23274339.

12. M. Bellino and M. Ortiz-Guerrero, “‘The Worst Thing That Could Happen to Us but Unfortunately They Have Nowhere to Go’: Colombian Students’ Contradictory Views on Venezuelan Migration, Democratic Crisis, and Xenophobia,” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies (July 2023), higheredimmigrationportal.org/wp-content/uploads/formidable/25/Bellino-OrtizThe-Worst-Thing-That-Could-Happen-to-us-.-Colombian-students-Contradictory-Views-on.pdf; and J. Ordóñez and H. Ramírez Arcos, “(Des)orden Nacional: la Construcción de la Migración Venezolana como una Amenaza de Salud y Seguridad Pública en Colombia,” Revista Ciencias de la Salud 17, no. Especial (August 27, 2019): 48–68.

13. Fifth-grade Amigó students, interview by J. Lerner, September 25, 2023.

14. A. Mejía Hernández, “Understanding Migration as an Asset: The Colombian Case,” OECD Development Matters, May 5, 2021, oecd-development-matters.org/2021/05/05/understanding-migration-as-an-asset-the-colombian-case.

15. G. Espino, interview by J. Lerner, September 22, 2023. Espino (like it says here) or Ospino (like it is in the text)?

16. S. Dyson, “How One Medellín Neighborhood Transformed from Landfill to Thriving Community,” CNN, October 29, 2021, cnn.com/travel/article/medellin-moravia-landfill-neighborhood-colombia/index.html; and Knight Lab, “1950–1960: Caminar el Tiempo en Moravia,” Northwestern University, cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1CAlKZEzTx75L686d-efzin_Ej7qVCXNM3D3_zVFDyk8&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650.

17. G. Tabares and E. Teresa, “La Convivencia Escolar en Colombia: Discursos, Prácticas y Usos 1991–2019,” Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Escuela de Educación y Pedagogía, Facultad de Educación, Doctorado en Educación, 2022, repository.upb.edu.co/handle/20.500.11912/10574.

18. El Congreso de la República de Colombia, Ley 115 de Febrero 8 de 1994, “Por la Cual se Expide la Ley General de Educación,” mineducacion.gov.co/1621/articles-85906_archivo_pdf.pdf (copy of the 1994 law).

19. C. Vélez White et al., Formar para la Ciudadanía… (Bogotá, Colombia: Revolución Educativa and Ministerio de Educación Nacional República de Colombia, 2004), mineducacion.gov.co/1621/articles-75768_archivo_pdf.pdf. These are the citizenship standards themselves, showing the publication year of 2004, which I reference in the body of the text.

20. Ministerio de Educación Nacional, “Decreto No.: Por el cual se Reglamenta la Ley 1620 de 2013, que crea el Sistema Nacional de Convivencia Escolar y Formación para el Ejercicio de los Derechos Humanos, la Educación para la Sexualidad y la Prevención y Mitigación de la Violencia Escolar,” mineducacion.gov.co/1759/articles-327397_archivo_pdf_proyecto_decreto.pdf (copy of the 2013 law). Translation: National Ministry of Education (Colombia), “By Which the National System of School Coexistence and Exercise Training for Human Rights Education for Sexuality and Prevention and Mitigation of School Violence Is Created,” global-regulation.com/translation/colombia/6405244/by-which-the-national-system-of-school-coexistence-and-exercise-training-for-human-rights-education-for-sexuality-and-prevention-and-mitigation-of-sch.html.

21. Ministerio de Educación Nacional (Colombia), Ley 1620 de 2013 – Decreto 1965 de 2013, “Guía No. 49: Guías Pedagógicas para la Convivencia Escolar,” contenidos.mineducacion.gov.co/ntg/men/pdf/Guia%20No.%2049.pdf.

22. IE Fe y Alegría Luis Amigó teachers, interview by J. Lerner, November 22, 2023.

23. M. López Ramírez, interview by J. Lerner, IE Eduardo Santos, December 4, 2023.

24. Colombian Way, “Who Are the Paisas?: The Origin, Identity and Culture of the Paisa People,” 2022, thecolombianway.com/en/magazine/who-are-the-paisas.

25. Y. Ramirez, interview by J. Lerner, November 28, 2023.

26. J. Pappier and C. Yates, “How the Treacherous Darien Gap Became a Migration Crossroads of the Americas,” Human Rights Watch, October 10, 2023, hrw.org/news/2023/10/10/how-treacherous-darien-gap-became-migration-crossroads-americas.

27. Associated Press, “Before Venezuela, US Had Long Involvement in Latin America,” January 25, 2019, apnews.com/article/2ded14659982426c9b2552827734be83.

28. Institución Educativa Arzobispo Tulio Botero Salazar teachers and staff, interview by J. Lerner, November 10, 2023.

29. V. Acevedo, interview by J. Lerner, Amigó, October 23, 2023.

30. Daniela, interview by J. Lerner, University of Antioquia Urabá, November 16, 2023.

31. Anonymous Amigó parent, interview by J. Lerner, October 24, 2023.

32. M. Aurora and G. Farkas, “Paraprofessional Instructional Assistants Raise the Reading Performance of Latina/o First Graders in a Low-Income District,” Remedial and Special Education 44, no. 4 (August 2023): 308–18.

33. P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. M. Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 2005): 71–72, envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf.

34. A. Cardona-Maguigad, “Can Illinois Provide Work Permits for Migrants?,” WBEZ Chicago, April 19, 2024, wbez.org/race-class-communities/2024/04/19/work-permits-for-migrants-in-illinois#:~:text=Chicago%20Mayor%20Brandon%20Johnson%20along,long%2Dterm%20undocumented%20Illinois%20residents.

[Illustrations by Carolina Peláez]