The Second Class: Providing Space in the Margins

A teacher researcher reflects on a student’s migrant narrative in order to illustrate the challenges and possibilities of developing literacy curricula sensitive to the life experiences and cultural identities of children in an educational climate of standardization and high-stakes testing. He conceptualizes a “second class” that occurs during the margins and in-between periods of the school day, an alternative pedagogical space where teachers potentially reconcile bureaucratic demands with the individual needs and capacities of diverse students.