Critical English Language Education to Transform English into a Tool of Agency for Immigrant Students in Minnesota

By Swopnil Shrestha

By: Swopnil Shrestha, EdVoices Cohort Member, Student, Educator, Advocate

“This is the oppressors language, yet I need it to talk to you”
Adrienne Rich, The Burning of Paper Instead of Children 

I’ve navigated educational spaces as a student, educator, and advocate, and I continually find myself invested in exploring two both personal and collective truths: immigrant communities’ dislocating experiences in education here in the United States, as well as their unwavering belief in the radical possibilities of education. I’ve questioned how educational spaces could be answerable to the complexities of these truths, in order to be truly responsive to immigrant communities’ needs and desires. And as I learned about critical educational pedagogies such as Ethnic Studies and Culturally Sustaining Education, I became curious of how they could exist as possible pathways to this answerability, specifically in the realm of English language education, which exists as a site of struggle. 

The historical and current-day realities of the English language as a tool of Western colonization and imperialism and its identity of access and privilege, implicates English language education as deeply political. At its current state, the U.S. education system exists as a burial-site for non-English languages, as schools place immense pressure on immigrant families to prioritize English language acquisition to ensure students’ “school readiness”. This designation of English language proficiency as markers of educational and life outcomes characterizes heritage languages as hindrances to students’ academic success and long-term survival in the U.S., leaving immigrant families to make profoundly difficult decisions to suppress or even abandon heritage-language usage at home. Given the powerful influence of home and community environments in heritage language maintenance, the impacts of such suppression and abandonment are insurmountable. 

Alba et al.’s (2003) research on language attrition in multilingual communities showcases that by the second generation, children from multilingual households demonstrate a decline in mother tongue proficiency and a gradually emerging English dominance. By the third or later-generation, children become English monolinguals, “who have at most fragmentary knowledge of a mother tongue” (Alba et.al, 2023, 480). This heritage-language loss entails not only the erasure of entire cultural and communal knowledge systems which are embedded in and carried through language, but also fragmentations and ruptures in family relations, making English language acquisition a deeply intimate experience for immigrant families. As Jenny Liao (2021) writes, “Emotional connections between a child and parent are weakened if the only language they share is also the language being forgotten. This is the case for many children of immigrants; to ‘succeed’ in America, we must adopt a new language in place of our first – the one our parents speak best—without fully considering the strain it places on our relationships for the rest of our lives” (7). For immigrant communities, we know that English carries with it more weight than it is even capable of holding.

I hold this knowing, alongside the understanding that immigrant communities in the U.S face material realities that necessitate English language acquisition. The language’s capital in gaining access to higher education, employment, and citizenship in the U.S. situates it as undoubtedly interconnected to security, access, and protection for immigrant communities. As long as U.S. systems uphold the language as an entry condition and marker of belonging, to learn the language is ultimately a matter of survival. Immigrant students’ experiences in English language education is thus informed by the significance of language acquisition for themselves, their families, and their future in the U.S. 

I must name now though that writing all of this, as an immigrant who has lost much of her heritage language, is incredibly difficult. As I argue for an understanding of the English language as political, of English language education as intertwined with systems of oppression of immigrant communities, I struggle with the knowing that I am writing this all in English. So much of this will be inaccessible. I wish that I did not speak the language with such proficiency, but I know these are immense privileges and that only further problematizes how I exist in the English language. But I do exist in English, and though this should disempower me as the U.S education system designed for it to, I owe my unwillingness to falter to my educators who have equipped me with the tools to negotiate, resist, and recompose within the English language as an immigrant, multilingual, low-income, woman of color. It is because of them, and the learning environments they created, that I have reinstated myself within this language, so that it fulfills my own desires. I talk to my friends about love, community, and liberation. I support my students with compassion and empowerment. I grieve for the ways I cannot exist in my heritage language, Nepali, the places in myself and my ancestry that I cannot access anymore, and I worry for how this immense loss will reverberate for generations after me. But still, I work to recompose my existence in Nepali, with the fragments of what I do have. And I dream, constantly, of possibilities for an otherwise world, and I find immense joy in manifesting those visions in any way that I can, now. Though all this occurs in English, I am guided by a critical awareness of the language’s deeply political nature as well as my own necessities for agency and hope as a marginalized person in this world. 

I don’t think English is a liberatory language, it feels incompatible with liberation to imagine English as a lexicon of such radical possibility. As Audre Lorde reminded us, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. But, what might it look like for English to no longer serve as the master’s tool? Language also exists as a relationship, intertwined with who we are. As Gloria Anzaldúa wrote, “I am my language”. As the current federal administration dehumanizes immigrant communities through its xenophobic and fascist policies and ideologies, it is becoming increasingly imperative for immigrant communities to be equipped with an English language education that enables us to nurture a relationship with English language centered on agency. A relationship where we can actively participate in the language to navigate and negotiate inaccessible systems, and to advocate and resist against our dehumanization. At its current state, English language education fundamentally does not, and cannot, serve immigrant communities, for it maintains our relationship to the language as one of conformity and survival. But immigrant communities’ necessities for English language acquisition go beyond survival, but are rather grounded in desires for agency, advocacy, empowerment, and resistance. What might it look like to develop a relationship to the English language that speaks truth to the loss and injustice we experience with it, but also to speak truth to our whole, complex selves? How can English language education be answerable to immigrant communities’ holistic desires for English language acquisition? How can it create expansive possibilities for our existence in the English language? How can it speak to our political realities, needs, and desires as marginalized people? 

The past couple years in Minnesota educational policy has shown transformative strides towards creating education systems that are reflective of our diverse communities’ lived experiences, languages, and knowledge systems. Policies such as the implementation of Ethnic Studies across Minnesota schools and heritage language programs and teaching certification pathways are revolutionary steps in actualizing an education that nurtures, humanizes, and empowers all students in Minnesota. Beyond policy, education justice advocates are practicing and embodying culturally sustaining and asset-based pedagogies in the creation of curriculum, teacher education, and classroom teaching practices. These critical pedagogies ultimately seek to empower teachers, students, and communities, with the educational tools and perspectives necessary to identity and dismantle systems of power in their lived experiences, relations, and local/global contexts. They view education as a political activity, one with the power to exist as a system of oppression or a practice of freedom. Critical pedagogy serves as fertile grounds to reconstruct an English language education that is concerned with the relationship between language learning, power, and social change. 

I propose a critical evaluation of English language education pedagogy in Minnesota K-12 Public Schools, focused on assessing what political ideologies it is grounded upon and how it actively empowers immigrant students beyond English language competence. Minnesota is home to diverse newly immigrated and established immigrant communities. Within the Hennepin and Ramsey school districts alone, students from immigrant households make up about 40-60% of the overall student population (Camrota et al. 2023). In 2022, English language learner students made up 9% of the overall enrolled Minnesota student population, a percentage that has steadily increased (Minnesota Department of Education 2024). 

Immigrant students deserve to dream and desire beyond the limited existences that U.S. schooling subjects us to. We deserve an education that empowers us to advocate for ourselves and our communities, to exist unwaveringly as whole people, and to build sustainable futures for ourselves and those who will come after. English language education for immigrant students as a practice of freedom, seems at odds with what we know of the language and the practice of teaching it.

But the long legacies of immigrant communities’ resistance in the U.S showcases how we rupture worlds through language, create new ones as well. We always have, and so I ask policy-makers, school administration, teachers, curricula developers, and community members, to situate themselves in the margins, and participate in world-making in solidarity with immigrant communities. English language education in Minnesota should be critically examined for the deeply political and intimate reality it orchestrates for immigrant students and their communities. The legislature and school officials can collaborate with educators, students, families, and communities to reconstruct English language learning that is directly responsive to immigrant communities. 

References 

Alba, R., Logan, J., Lutz, A., & Stults, B. (2025). Only English by the Third Generation? Loss and Preservation of the Mother Tongue among the Grandchildren of Contemporary Immigrants.

Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands = la frontera : the new mestiza. Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

Liao, J. (2021). Forgetting My First Language. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/forgetting-my-first-language

Camarota, S. A., Griffith, B., & Zeigler, K. (2023, June 20). Mapping the impact of immigration on public schools. CIS.org. https://cis.org/Report/Mapping-Impact-Immigration-Public-Schools  

Minnesota Department of Education (2024). English learners in Minnesota Report 2023. https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2024/other/240747.pdf