Location
BCC Oak Room
Start Date
14-6-2012 3:15 PM
End Date
14-6-2012 4:00 PM
Description
The purpose of this presentation is to address the importance of listening to local perspectives of youth who have been relocated from refugee camps in Africa, especially as they enter educational facilities in the United States. Students with interrupted and limited formal education (SIFEs) are a growing, yet understudied, demographic in both K – 12 schools and higher education. As young adults, they are held accountable to the same academic expectations as American-born peers, yet often lack the educational resources to support academic success (cultural, linguistic, & economic). As new Americans, they find themselves navigating double binds between home and school and betwixt two nations – an in-between space of liminality. In this collaborative presentation, a young man from Liberia and the Director of the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University share a story of how their paths crossed and, together, they reconsider history, slavery, imperialism, and how to best empower relocated youth in a post-colonial world.
Session 4E: “A Shadow of Vivid Memories”: Highlighting Local Perspectives of Relocated Refugee Youth within Global Action
BCC Oak Room
The purpose of this presentation is to address the importance of listening to local perspectives of youth who have been relocated from refugee camps in Africa, especially as they enter educational facilities in the United States. Students with interrupted and limited formal education (SIFEs) are a growing, yet understudied, demographic in both K – 12 schools and higher education. As young adults, they are held accountable to the same academic expectations as American-born peers, yet often lack the educational resources to support academic success (cultural, linguistic, & economic). As new Americans, they find themselves navigating double binds between home and school and betwixt two nations – an in-between space of liminality. In this collaborative presentation, a young man from Liberia and the Director of the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University share a story of how their paths crossed and, together, they reconsider history, slavery, imperialism, and how to best empower relocated youth in a post-colonial world.
Comments
Facilitators:
Bryan Ripley Crandall is the Director of the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University. He is a member of the National Writing Project, Literacy Research Association, National Council of Teachers of English Research Assembly, and Critical Friends Group Network and a supporter of Hoops 4 Hope, a non-profit organization that has established youth development throughout southern Africa since 1995. He earned his Ph.D. from Syracuse University in May, 2012, and has been an English Speaking Union Fellow at Cambridge University, a Fulbright Memorial Scholar in Tokyo, Japan, and a Humana Fellow at the Bread Loaf School of English in Middlebury, Vermont, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Victor Harris is a junior at Fairfield University and an accounting major. He relocated to the United States in 2001 from a refugee camp in Ghana. At Fairfield he has been a member of Peer Mediation Club, the Young Male Leadership group sponsored by the Student Diversity Program, a work study employee at the Recplex Center, and a Residential Assistant. He has played soccer recreationally and scholastically, as well.