A PEDAGOGY OF CARE, EMOTIONS, AND ADVOCACY: AN INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS OF HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER AND ESL STUDENT PERSPECTIVES By Hima Rawal A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Second Language Studies —Doctor of Philosophy 2023 ABSTRACT English as a Second Language (ESL) students constitute the fastest growing student population in the U.S. K-12 education system (National Education Association, 2020). They represent an array of diversity related to their linguistic, cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition, ESL students embody their unique lived experiences, expectations, and imagined learning environments. The multitude of nuances related to their backgrounds, identities, and needs poses great challenges to teachers in K-12 settings, especially in mainstream classes which comprise the majority of English-speaking students with a few ESL students, however. While many mainstream content teachers hold a deficit- based mindset towards ESL students, and view them as a problematic student population, some teachers adopt a pedagogy of care, advocate for their ESL students, and strive to empower them by leveraging their linguistic and cultural repertoires. However, there is still a gap between teachers’ intentions behind caring pedagogical practices and student’s interpretations of those practices. With an aim to explore mainstream teachers’ and ESL students’ perspectives of caring pedagogical practices in a high school setting, I adopted the theoretical framework of an ethic of care, emotions, and advocacy. The focal participants in this U.S. high school-based case study were two mainstream teachers (Biology and English Language Arts) and two ESL students. I collected data from classroom observations, artifacts, field notes, and personal journals, but my primary sources of data were interviews with my focal participants over an entire academic year. My findings reveal the diverse ways in which the teachers intended, enacted, and communicated the pedagogy of care to their students. Advocating for their ESL students' mental health, creating, and cultivating care circles, and being trauma-informed were some of the manifestations of their pedagogy of care. However, they believed that they needed to be culturally responsive in their caring practices. Their caring practices resulted in emotion labor and emotion rewards. Similarly, the findings also showed a whole gamut of student emotions that were discursive in nature and that stemmed from their experiences of being ESL students in and outside classroom contexts. Whereas emotions of hurt and devastation emerged from microaggressive behaviors from some teachers and peers, the emotions of joy and satisfaction emerged from their agency of being multilinguals. In addition, the focal teachers intended to teach their ESL students to advocate for themselves when the students still needed some linguistic tools and strategies to advocate for themselves and their fellow ESL students. Based on my findings, I call for critical reflections on the intricacies of care, emotions, and advocacy in mainstream content settings from both teachers’ and students’ perspectives. The findings have implications for mainstream teacher preparation programs and school administrations to adopt culturally responsive care, to see caring practices as a space for emotion regulation, and to find restorative ways of handling explicit and implicit microaggressive behaviors towards ESL students. Copyright by HIMA RAWAL 2023 This dissertation is dedicated to my mother and my two children. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is the fruit of a collaborative journey of intentionality, action, nurture, care, and encouragement of multiple people who have supported me during my entire doctoral journey. First of all, I am deeply grateful to my advisor, Dr. Peter I. De Costa, whose class on Identity and Ideologies that I took during my MA TESOL program instilled in me a passion for qualitative research, and for bringing forth second language learners’ and teachers’ unique stories and lived experiences to inform and expand on the existing applied linguistics literature from a broader socio-political perspective. During both my MA TESOL and PhD in Second Language Studies programs, I have collaborated with Dr. De Costa on multiple interesting projects related to teacher emotions, study abroad, critical multilingual language awareness, ethics in research, and many more. Through all these projects, I’ve not only learned a lot about the process of research, but also connected with many amazing people, some of whom have become my good friends beyond the projects. Beyond my academic journey, Dr. De Costa has consistently shown immense kindness, grace, and understanding through my entire graduate school journey at MSU. I am thankful to the rest of my dissertation committee members who have inspired, supported, and encouraged me in multiple ways in my personal and professional aspects of life. I would like to begin with Dr. Susan Mary Gass to whom I am eternally grateful for her selfless support for many years before I had even dreamt of pursuing my higher studies in the United States. Her caring gesture was one of the reasons I decided to come to MSU for my studies under a Fulbright fellowship from Nepal. Ever since I arrived in MSU, I have been constantly awestruck by her energy, presence, and contribution to the field of Second Language Acquisition. During my time as her editorial assistant in the Studies in Second Language vi Acquisition (SSLA) journal, she not only helped me learn the process of editorial work, but also supported me in my journey of expansion through service on College councils and boards. The space of the ‘energy family’ of SSLA, which she created, has been a closely knit community that treats each other as whole humans beyond work. In addition, I feel honored to have been the inaugural recipient of the Susan Mary Gass award for teaching conferred by MSU in 2020. A special thanks goes to my other committee member, Dr. Paula Winke, Director of the Second Language Studies PhD program, for encouraging me to apply for a PhD after my MA TESOL program. She is one of the most soulful human beings I have ever met in my life, who always reached out to me as a human first, and then a student in the PhD program. She took me with her to my first ever conference in Chicago during my MA TESOL program. She introduced me to her parents, her sisters and their families, as if I was a very special person in the whole world. She was the first person to invite me to be a co-author in an Encyclopedia entry on teaching large classes, which got published a couple of years after the journey began, and that was the start of my special academic journey. I am also immensely grateful to my last but definitely not the least committee member, Dr. Koen van Gorp, who kindly accepted my invitation to serve on my committee at the last minute despite his super tight schedule of work and parenting two little boys. Beyond his support on the committee, Dr. van Gorp has been a very inspiring figure in my journey of cultivating critical understanding in my research and teaching through this support and model during my work with him as part of a multi-year critical multilingual language awareness project along with Dr. De Costa and other colleagues. My visits to the refugee development center with Dr. van Gorp as part of the project helped me understand and learn a lot from his humanizing aspects of being a scholar and researcher. vii I must extend my deepest gratitude to two teachers (Ms. Rosa & Ms. Eva), and two students (Zaynab and Spring) for volunteering to be part of my dissertation research for a whole academic year and beyond. Although our relationship started as a researcher and participants in the beginning of the project, the depth of connection each and every one of them co-constructed with me over the entire year was beyond what I had imagined and expected. I am thankful for the soulful conversations about teaching, learning, life, dreams, aspirations, reflections, and a myriad of emotions that organically emerged during the interviews. What I have learned from each and every one of them is my real treasure of this dissertation research. Just a thought of them makes me tear up with the purest bliss and joy in my heart. They have helped me consolidate my decisions to adopt caring practices in my teaching, research, and everyday life. One special person that also deserves my deepest gratitude is Dr. Stefanie Baier, Director of Instructional Development for Graduate Students and Postdocs at MSU’s Graduate School. Thank you, Stefanie, for creating a community of graduate teaching assistants during the pandemic, for nurturing it with your constant support, genuine care, and advocacy, and for making me part of this interdisciplinary community of emerging educators. I am grateful to you for being there for and with me in very challenging times and crises related to my personal wellbeing, the COVID 19 pandemic, and the horrible mass shooting on campus on February 13, 2023. Thank you for encouraging me to apply for teaching cohort fellowships that have been my most cherished spaces of professional development. I am grateful for your helping me change poison into medicine by supporting me in my journey to receiving my trauma informed-care certificate from the School of Social Work and for helping me arrange the pieces of a puzzle together around my intentionality to bring my heartful works of teaching, applied linguistics, and research together. viii I owe a debt of gratitude to every faculty member at MA TESOL program and SLS PhD program for always supporting me, for constantly checking in on my and my children’s wellbeing, and for believing in me that I could thrive in any efforts and attempts related to teaching, research, service, and beyond. My special thanks also goes to our department’s academic program coordinator, Benjamin Lampe, for his incredible help all these years. I have knocked on his door more than anyone else’s for tons of work. He has shown and taught me patience and grace. Thanks a lot Ben! Apart from Dr. Gass in the SSLA energy family, I am also very grateful to other members, Dr. Luke Plonksy and my SSLA sisters Elizabeth (Lizz) Huntley and Aysen Tuzcu for creating tons of beautiful moments of joy and incredible stories of life, travel, family, and so on. Lizz and Aysen deserve my special thanks for being my writing buddies for multiple weeks towards the end of the dissertation writing journey and for cheering me on every little step towards reaching the goal. I am also grateful to my dear friends, Irina Zaykovskaya, Kathy Kim, Wendy Lee, and Dustin Crowther who have always been willing to be of all kinds of support for me and my children. Dominik Wolff deserves my special thanks for introducing me to the philosophy of the school of life and Eckhart Tolle that helped me cultivate mindfulness practices to my daily life and more importantly, for being an integral part of my support system. Thanks for constantly sending Mara’s energy my way! I am also supremely grateful to Magda Tigchelaar and her family for not only introducing me to the concept of ‘soul treasure’ but also adding unlimited soul treasures to my family with their model of an elevated level of conscious living and being. Likewise, I must thank my dear friend Lorena Valmori for constantly checking in on me all the way from Italy and for our conversations about micro and macro pictures of life. ix I am eternally grateful to my solid support system on campus. A big thank you to my Graduate Teaching Assistant Advisory Group - Arya, Chase, Ellen, Samara, Seth, Sewwandi, and Titi - for sharing their most authentic academic and personal experiences that have enriched my life. I must also acknowledge and thank Marybeth Heeder, one of the most compassionate and influential educators I have ever met, for her love, care, and models of compassionate teaching. I am grateful to Lisa Laughman for her Spartan resiliency training and essential skills sessions throughout the calendar year that helped me in my journey of healing and graduate school life. Likewise, I am thankful to Dr. Meg Moore for all her support during my leadership fellowship journey. Qi Huang also deserves my appreciation for co-creating the Wellness Ambassadors Program for international graduate students as part of our leadership project that has helped me consolidate my intentionality to adopt care, emotions, and advocacy for international students. I am also grateful to my dear friend Caitlin Thompson for creating a beautiful writing space in their house whenever I needed a homely but different space to sit and write. My special thanks also goes to the steering committee of MSU’s Trauma Services and Training Network (TSTN), and the Center for Survivors family for all the support on my journey of healing during my doctoral journey. I am grateful to the Second Language Studies Program, the College of Arts and Letters, and the Graduate School for all the assistantships, fellowships, and grants throughout my doctoral studies. Thank you to all my Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH) and Center for Teaching and Learning Innovation (CTLI) teaching cohort fellows and mentors from whom I have learned diverse aspects of being a holistic educator, teacher, and researcher. x I must extend my profound gratitude to my best friend Laurie Waller and her mom, Cheren Waller, for being my family here in the United States and for all the support, encouragement, and unconditional love they have given me and my children. Thanks to Kuldeep Niraula, Sushma Adhikari, Yeshoda Adhikari, Victor Karthik, Curtis Green-Eneix, Meenakshi Sharma, and Elizabeth Gill for adding value to my life, especially during graduate school. Jacob Waters deserves a special thanks for helping me with the meticulous work related to the formatting of my dissertation. I am also thankful to all my friends and family in Nepal, especially my siblings and their families, for standing by me in all ups and downs of life and for being my solid support system in pursuing my dreams. Last but not the least, I thank the divine feminine energy in me that unconditionally loves and cherishes my evolving self, and constantly guides me to serve the people around me with authenticity, to respect their lived experiences, and to care for, and heal each other from multilingual and multicultural perspectives. Namaste (My soul honors your soul) to everyone who is reading my dissertation! May you honor your emotions, and care and advocate for yourself and others! xi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................................... xiv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1 Overview ....................................................................................................................................1 Motivation for the Present Study ...............................................................................................5 Organization of the Study ..........................................................................................................9 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................................11 Ethic of Care: Different Perspectives ......................................................................................11 Care and Emotions ...................................................................................................................23 Advocacy .................................................................................................................................34 Research Questions ..................................................................................................................42 CHAPTER 3: METHOD ...............................................................................................................45 Context of the Study ................................................................................................................47 Ethical Considerations .............................................................................................................48 An Invitation to Meet My Participants ....................................................................................49 Teachers ...................................................................................................................................50 Students ....................................................................................................................................52 My Positionality .......................................................................................................................54 Data Collection ........................................................................................................................57 Data Analysis ...........................................................................................................................61 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS FROM TEACHERS’ DATA64 Ms. Rosa’s Pedagogy of Care (Biology Teacher) ...................................................................64 Advocacy .................................................................................................................................84 Emotions ..................................................................................................................................90 Summary of Ms. Rosa’s Findings ............................................................................................99 Ms. Eva’s Pedagogy of Care (English Language Arts Teacher) ...........................................102 Advocacy ...............................................................................................................................123 Emotions ................................................................................................................................132 Summary of Ms. Eva’s Findings ...........................................................................................145 Comparison of Ms. Rosa’s and Ms. Eva’s Findings Related to Care, Emotions, and Advocacy ...............................................................................................................................148 CHAPTER 5: FIDINGS FROM STUDENTS’ DATA ...............................................................151 Zaynab’s Perception and Interpretation of Pedagogy of Care ...............................................151 Advocacy ...............................................................................................................................162 Emotions ................................................................................................................................169 Summary of Zaynab’s Findings .............................................................................................178 Spring’s Perception and Interpretation of Pedagogy of Care ................................................180 Emotions ................................................................................................................................182 Advocacy ...............................................................................................................................198 Pedagogy of Care ...................................................................................................................210 xii Summary of Spring’s Findings ..............................................................................................217 Comparison of Zaynab’s and Spring’s Interpretation of Care, Emotions, and Advocacy ....219 CHAPTER 6: FURTHER DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ...............................................222 Discussion of Findings in Relation to Existing Research ......................................................222 Implications for Mainstream Teacher Preparation Programs ................................................240 Implications for School Administrations ...............................................................................242 Limitations and Directions for Further Research...................................................................245 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................249 APPENDIX A: Sample Introductory Interview Questions for the Teachers ..............................262 APPENDIX B: Sample Introductory Interview Questions for the Students ...............................263 APPENDIX C: A Sample of Thematic Coding of Student Data .................................................264 APPENDIX D: A Sample of Thematic Coding of Teacher Data ................................................265 xiii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ESL: English as a second language ESOL: English for Speakers of Other Languages L1: first language L2: second language PhD: Doctor of Philosophy POGIL: Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning SLA: Second Language Acquisition SLS: Second Language Studies TEFL: Teaching English as a Foreign Language TESOL: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages xiv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Overview The United States public school system has witnessed a steady increase in the number of English as a second language (ESL) learners (Cigdem, 2017). Recent data show that ESL students comprise approximately 10% of students in U.S. schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 2021). ESL students, among this fast growing linguistically and culturally diverse student population in the U.S. schools, come with varied levels of linguistic competencies in their first and second languages, and they continue developing their second language skills in their ESL classes and other content classes (García, 2009; Heineke & Vera, 2022; Linquanti & Cook, 2013). However, many of these students are enrolled in mainstream content classes and are thus thrust into a learning environment where English, their non-dominant language, is the primary language of instruction (Wissink & Starks, 2019). While placing ESL students in mainstream classes to receive content area instruction alongside L1 English-speaking students was initially believed to be a solution to immerse ESL students in mainstream classes, ESL students were not found to be flourishing in those classroom settings (Duff, 2001). In addition, many ESL students come with diverse lived experiences in their families and society at large. Some of these experiences might include personal trauma, family history of trauma before, during, and post immigration, and family separation to name a few (Birman & Tran, 2015). Such experiences add layers of diverse emotions in those students which can influence their learning process, especially in mainstream classrooms where they might lack a sense of safety and belonging (Langer‐Osuna & Nasir, 2016). Some ESL students even start rejecting the use of their multicultural and multilingual resources given a need to “acculturate” in the mainstream culture, 1 which in turn can impede their linguistic and cultural development of their home languages (Hite & Evans, 2006). In addition, most of the time, ESL students tend to feel confused and do not understand their own process of learning in a new environment. They find it difficult to understand “the expectations, discourse styles, and modes of school‐based ways of thinking and learning…leaving them feeling confused and alienated” (DeCapua & Marshall, 2015, p. 2). Mainstream content teachers comprise the largest group of educators who are involved in teaching ESL students in the U.S. school system (Krunenaker, Many & Wang, 2008). The increasing ESL student population in mainstream classes brings a lot of challenges and difficulties for teachers (Kolano & King, 2015). Many of these mainstream teachers, who teach content classes such as math, social studies, science, English language arts, etc. through English as a sole medium of instruction, believe that they are not adequately equipped to teach ESL students in their mainstream classes that comprise the majority of English-speaking students (Freeman & Freeman, 2014). Most of the time, mainstream teachers do not even have enough time to receive modified teaching materials from the school administration; and therefore, they need to find ways to provide modified teaching materials and effective instructional practices to meet the needs of their ESL students (Walker, 2021). These teachers also feel overwhelmed by diverse literacy and language development needs of their ESL students (Hickey, 2015). In addition, many schools do not create a favorable environment for content teachers to collaborate with ESL teachers in order to find solutions and best practices to support and empower ESL students in their classes because “collaboration has not become the teaching norm in content classrooms in large partly because of the content teachers’ lack of preparation in working with diverse learners” (Rubinstein-Avila & Lee, 2014, p. 2). Such a lack of collaboration creates a gap between what the ESL students need and what support they are provided with. 2 While some mainstream content teachers have a positive attitude towards having ESL students in their classes and believe that the presence of ESL students could positively influence other students by exposing them to new languages and cultures (Walker, 2021), the majority of mainstream content teachers view ESL students as a challenge and a problematic student population, rather than viewing them from an asset-based perspective (Mitchell, 2013). They hold a “deficit perspective that examines only what the student is ‘lacking’ and or the feeling of being unprepared or under prepared due to lack of support and or resources” (Hickey, 2015, p. 82). In addition, ESL students' multilingual and multicultural identities are linked to negative perceptions around race, culture, ability, etc. (Flores & Rosa, 2015). This problem is exacerbated by the fact that developing racial and cultural understanding is considered to be a very complex process “extremely complex—perhaps more difficult than that of subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge” (Howard & Milner IV, 2014, p. 207). Since mainstream teachers and ESL students from diverse backgrounds do not share the same cultural, ethnic, racial backgrounds, and lived experiences, it might influence their attitude towards their ESL students, and subsequently also impact their pedagogical decisions. Based on their synthesis of 100 years of research, Langer‐Osuna and Nasir (2016) stressed that “learning is linked to identity development and that healthy identity development necessitates caring relationships that foster a sense of safety and positive regard” (p. 736). Keeping in mind the important role that caring practices can play in creating a helpful learning environment for ESL students, I conducted the present study. I attempted to explore the needs and struggles of both mainstream teachers and ESL students from a discursive (i.e., occurring in certain discourses and contexts) perspective, and aimed to conduct this study around emotions, care, and advocacy from teachers’ and students’ perspectives. Although several research studies 3 have shown that mainstream teachers are not adequately prepared to address the ESL students’ needs in their classes, understanding teachers’ perspectives about their intentions, efforts, and struggles provides a complete picture of what is missing. Similarly, understanding the ESL students’ unique experiences in mainstream classes can help teachers serve their ESL students better. I strongly believe that teachers are not the sole group of people who should be responsible for the entire educational change for their ESL students. However, I do believe that they can play a very important role in creating a favorable and caring environment for the ESL students as Hattie (2009) described “teachers as activators, as deliberate change agents, and as directors of learning” (p. 25). In this study, I sought to explore what caring practices are enacted by my two focal mainstream teachers in the selected high school, in what ways they advocated for ESL students, and what emotions they experienced in the enactment of caring and advocacy practices. Similarly, I sought to explore my two focal ESL students’ interpretation of care in their mainstream classrooms, their emotions, and help-seeking behaviors through self-advocacy. In doing so, I adopted a critical and discursive approach to see the emergence and enactment of care, advocacy and emotions as dynamic constructs, rather than as static phenomena and traits of my focal teachers and students. Based on my findings, my implications are that mainstream teachers who teach content classes that include ESL students need to develop their intercultural skills to recognize, acknowledge, accept, respect, and leverage on ESL students’ multilingual and multicultural assets to support their journey of learning and emotional wellbeing. As you will see in the chapters that follow, the two teacher participants in my study enacted and exhibited a lot of 4 caring practices in their mainstream classes, despite their emotional labor associated with caring practices. There is still a lot of work, however, to be done in preparing mainstream teachers as noted by Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) who asserted, ‘Students do very well because they have a series of very good teachers - not by chance, but by design. In other words, you have to transform the entire [teaching] profession” (p. 16). What follows next is my motivation behind this study. Motivation for the Present Study My motivation to study the pedagogy of care, emotions, and advocacy in the second language studies program mainly stems from the following four scenarios and personal values as a teacher and researcher: First, in my own previous study (my first qualifying research paper for my doctoral program, QRP1), I added to the existing body of research on emotions of high school graduates who were unable to enroll in four-year university programs, as they were not sufficiently prepared to enroll in four-year university programs. The reasons were their placement in sheltered courses due to their ESL status, their lack of knowledge in the college application process, lack of preparedness for high stake tests, and their socio-economic statuses among others. The study (Rawal & De Costa, 2019) was published in the International Multilingual Research Journal. In addition, I volunteered to co-facilitate English conversations with a group of refugee youth from different parts of the world through the Lansing refugee development center’s GLOBE program, where I learned about the struggles those youth faced to get access to mainstream education. In both contexts, during the interviews and conversations with the students and their parents (in the qualifying research context), I deeply connected with my participants and cultivated my intentionality to understand the nuances of their struggles of 5 navigating the high school system due to their ESL backgrounds. Second, I brought my two children to the US in the fall of 2015, when I started my PhD program in Second Language Studies program at MSU. In the first semester, there were so many interesting conversations and email exchanges between my children’s teachers and me. Setting aside some very funny and striking conversations with my then elementary school-going son’s teachers for a later time, I would like to focus on my high school going daughter’s initial days at this point. She was a 9th grader when she came to the US and was enrolled in the same grade (as she was in Nepal) in a local high school. In the first two weeks, together we struggled to figure out the school system, which was completely different from the schools back in Nepal from where we came. However, her struggle was related to the logistics of online presence in the classes, ways to communicate with her teachers, counselors, and peers, etc. One fine evening, she was enthusiastically describing to me how she was able to help her peers with mathematics and science content during group work in her mainstream classes. She then realized that all she needed to grasp was the linguistic aspect, which was different from the textbook language that she had been exposed to in the Nepali schools. It was then that we both realized that language and several other factors such as excel hours (i.e., extra hours to receive support), one-on-one parent teacher conferences, and the spatial aspect of classrooms played a vital role in the whole meaning-making process of ESL students. By the spatial aspect, I mean the physical differences between Nepali school system and the U.S. school system. For example, in Nepal, the students of a particular grade/section would study all subjects in the same space, and it was the teachers of different subjects who would move from class to class to teach their students. In contrast, in most U.S. schools, the teachers are assigned their rooms, and it is the groups of students who would move from one teacher’s classroom to another teacher’s classroom. In Nepal, it is the students 6 who have the spatial and emotional agency (e.g., a sense of ownership of the classroom space) to their classroom spaces, whereas in the US schools, it is the teachers who have such emotional agency to their classrooms. Since the students move from one classroom to another, they have to rebuild their emotional connections to their classroom spaces. This led me to (re)think how teachers and ESL students who come from different school cultures created a sense of belonging and emotional bond with each other in mainstream classes. Third, having worked as a school teacher for six years in the beginning of my teaching career in Nepal, and having taught both English language arts and content classes (social studies) through English medium instruction in multilingual classes, I had had some experience teaching language and teaching content through language. However, there were several differences in the school and classroom cultures between the Nepali and the U.S. school systems. After another six years of teaching experience at English language teacher education program at a university in Nepal and training hundreds of teacher candidates through classroom teaching and practicum, I had always had a feeling that if there was an educational setting where I wanted to invest my energy and conscious efforts through my research, it would be the K-12 school setting because that is where most of the key stages of human development can be nurtured, cultivated, and cared for. Although schools are not the sole spaces for such care and nurture, they can play an important role in nurturing values in children, while also teaching contents required at certain levels of K-12 education. In addition, during my dissertation proposal phase, I was working as a teaching assistant as part of my PhD program and was teaching LLT (Language Learning and Teaching) courses to my undergraduate students who were future teachers. Most of them were white female students, who were preparing to teach elementary students in diverse school settings in the States. Some of my students met me during office hours and outside the classroom 7 to ask questions about my experiences as a teacher educator in both Nepal and at MSU, and about my experiences as a parent of two ESL identified children who were at elementary and high school then. Their enthusiasm and willingness to hear narratives about ESL students’ experiences added a zeal to my initial interest in working with mainstream teachers and their ESL students in my selected high school setting. Fourth, and last but not the least, in the second half of the second year in my PhD program, some of my own strong emotions related to my past trauma resurfaced during the infamous Larry Nassar case investigation at MSU. I got completely distracted from my ideal plans to conduct research in a definitive amount of time. It was a very challenging time not only for me but also for my two children. To present a long story short, I am grateful to have been in my graduate program because I was able to access several healing sessions at multiple venues in and outside campus. Simultaneously, the professors for whom I was working in different roles (e.g., editorial assistant with Dr. Susan Gass, teaching assistant with Dr. Patti Spinner, graduate assistant with Dr. Stefanie Baier, and multiple collaborative research projects with my advisor Dr. Peter De Costa) granted me the opportunity, affordances, agency, time, alternative options, and above all, selfless care and support during my navigation of the difficult journey. From my own healing process, I was able to identify signs of distress in my undergraduate students as well, a few of whom I was able to refer to crisis help on campus. This whole experience added to my initial interest of exploring teachers’ and ESL students’ emotions, intentions and interpretations of care, and advocacy for their success and wellbeing. In all of my above- mentioned experiences of interacting with teachers, students, immigrant youth, and service providers, one common struggle I faced was the communication of the nuances of emotions through English as a second language as emotions are discursive in nature. Therefore, through 8 this study, I have attempted to dive deeper into how the pedagogy of care, emotions and advocacy interact with each other in a discursive manner through mainstream teachers’ and students’ prior lived experiences and everyday practices. And these constructs encompass much of my humanizing values and practices that I adopt in my teaching, research, community outreach, and service. Organization of the Study After situating myself through my motivation behind this study and situating the ESL students in mainstream high school settings in this chapter, I present a review of the literature in Chapter 2 where I situate my study in relation to the already existing studies related to teacher and student emotions in second language teaching and learning contexts in and outside the US. I also present literature on the pedagogy of care and culturally responsive caring practices in teaching ESL students. In addition, I present teachers’ and students’ advocacy practices for their wellbeing and academic success. Chapter 3 summarizes the methodology I adopted to conduct my research. It starts with the rationale behind using the case study method and is followed by a description of my researcher positionality, data sources and data analysis. In Chapter 4, I present findings from my two mainstream teacher participants, Ms. Eva and Ms. Rosa, in relation to their intentions and enactment of pedagogy of care, their emotions related to teaching mainstream classes, and their advocacy for the ESL students. I also summarize each teacher’s findings and compare and contrast findings from both teachers. Similarly, in Chapter 5, I present findings from my two ESL student participants, Spring and Zaynab, in relation to how they interpret the pedagogy of care enacted by their teachers, their varied emotions related to being ESL students in mainstream classrooms, and their understanding of advocacy for themselves and their fellow ESL students. I also present a summary of each student participant’s findings and compare and 9 contrast these findings. Chapter 6 includes the discussion of my findings in relation to previous research, implications for mainstream teacher preparation programs and school administration, and concludes with some recommendations for future research. 10 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter, I present a review of literature in four sub-sections. In the first section, I review the construct of ‘care’ from different perspectives: culturally responsive care, sociopolitical aspects of care, care as a contextual enactment, and care as interpreted by ESL students. In the second section, I present the construct of ‘emotions’ of ESL students in mainstream classes, emotions and emotion labor from discursive perspectives and addressing the emotions as an elephant in the room. The third section presents an overview of advocacy from ESL students and teachers’ perspectives, and advocacy standards for teachers of ESL students. In the final section, I present an intersection of these three constructs (i.e., care, emotions, and advocacy) and how they interconnect in the overall teaching and learning of ESL students. Ethic of Care: Different Perspectives Ever since Noddings’ (1984/2003) seminal work identified the “ethic of care” as central to teaching, research on care in classrooms has flourished in several disciplines. There have been relatively fewer studies on care in the field of applied linguistics in comparison to the field of education and other disciplines. In the field of teaching and learning, Nel Noddings’ description of ‘care’ has been labeled in various ways as pedagogy of care, the ethic(s) of care, or the culture of care (Noddings, 1984, 1986, 2012). The basic idea underpinning this notion of caring is the reciprocal relationship between two entities, namely, the “one caring” and the “one cared for” (Noddings, 2003, p. 30). In the context of this dissertation study, the two mainstream content area teachers (Ms. Eva and Ms. Rosa) are considered the “one caring” and the two ESL students (Spring and Zaynab) are the “one cared for”. Nel Noddings (1984) views care from a relational and interpersonal perspective and considers care as a relational response to the needs of others “state of being in relation, 11 characterized by receptivity, relatedness, and engrossment” (p. 11). She describes the relational interaction of ‘carer’ and ‘cared-for’ that centers responsiveness, where the carer’s role is to meet the expressed and inferred needs of the cared-for and to “listen attentively and to respond as positively as possible” (Noddings, 2005, p. xiv). She also characterizes the experience of caring in terms of “engrossment” and “motivational displacement.” Engrossment involves “an open, nonselective receptivity to the cared-for,” a willingness to “really hear, see, or feel what the other tries to convey,” while motivational displacement is “the sense that our motive energy is flowing toward others...I want to respond in a way that furthers the other’s purpose or project” (Noddings, 2005, pp. 15-16). These ideas are mapped onto two key behavioral indicators of good care: receptiveness and responsiveness. Receptiveness signifies that “activating a deep capability of listening is necessary in order to understand the existential needs that the other is trying to communicate (Noddings 1984, p. 24). Responsiveness implies “an active and watchful presence supported by an ethical attitude that consists of the readiness to expend oneself and make oneself available (Noddings 1984, p. 19). Both indicators of good care indicate ‘active’ positioning of the relationship between the carer and the cared-for because a teacher can actively and intentionally respond to her student’s expressed needs, if the former is willing to be in the active listening position. Her receptiveness opens up a space for her students to express their needs. Most of the early discussion of caring was grounded in philosophical ideas of virtue. The discussion of virtuous practices of care is seen to create a sense of guilt (Whelan, 2015) when the carer (e.g., teacher) perceives to have failed short of neoliberal ideals (e.g., high scores in standardized tests). Noddings (1986, 2012) contrasts neoliberal caring with relational caring. To her, neoliberal caring is virtue caring (i.e., caring-about) that focuses on the needs assumed by institutions and schools, whereas relational caring (i.e., caring-for) focuses on the needs of 12 students. According to Noddings, a caring teacher of any subject attends to the learners’ expressed needs over the assumed needs of the institutions. She believes that care requires a level of trust between the carer and cared-for in order to create and sustain relational engagement and meaningful interactions (Noddings, 2012). Noddings (2005) further explains, Both carer and cared-for contribute to this relation. If, for whatever reason, the cared-for denies that she or he is cared for, there is no caring relation. When that happens, it is not necessarily the fault of the carer; it may be that the cared-for is stubborn, insensitive, or just plain difficult...[or]...the situation in which carer and cared-for meet may make it difficult to establish caring relations. (p. xv) In addition to Noddings’ description of care that encompasses relation between a teacher (carer) and students (cared-for), there are several factors such as identities, ideologies, contextual factors that influence the nature of care in teaching, especially teaching that involves ESL students. Nodding’s construction of care does not stand alone, however. To address this, Pereira (2018) argues that care ethics should not be viewed in a vacuum but from the “ideological functions of caring discourses and how the ethic of care may depend on a hegemonic notion of teacher professionalism where emotions are managed, controlled, and performed toward the attainment of state-mandated educational outcomes” (pp. 490-491). In other words, how teachers adopt caring practices has a lot to do with what is expected of them in relation to high-stakes testing. In striving to meet the state-mandated outcomes, they are expected to control their emotions that emerge in critical discourses. Similarly, Gordon, Benner, and Noddings (1996) nuanced an ethic of care as “a set of relational practices that foster mutual recognition and human community, culture, and possibility” (p. xiii). In other words, care does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it is relational 13 because it encompasses the carer’s intentions and deliberate actions for the cared for. Such caring actions create, and cultivate nurturing communities in the societies we live in. Crucially, this school of thought does not regard caring as an innate attribute of a teacher. Rather, caring is considered as a relational practice that cultivates and fosters a positive learning environment. And the enactment of an ethic of care in teaching leads to the creation of environments where “students will feel accepted and will be comfortable taking risks as they learn” (Isenbarger & Zembylas, 2006, p. 121). In a similar vein, and emphasizing the significance of relational practice, Kumaravadivelu (2012) argued for the need for language teachers, particularly teachers of English, to adopt a ‘relational approach to caring’ because “they are dealing with a language of globality and coloniality, [and] face numerous dilemmas and conflicts almost on a regular basis” (p. 67). In other words, much of the discussion on care and its relational practices is situated and constituted in everyday experiences, and the interface of teaching and learning in the current day scenario of globalization. And English, the most widely used lingua franca, plays in an important role in how a pedagogy of care is communicated between teachers and ESL students in mainstream classes. Culturally responsive care. In the context of teaching students of diverse backgrounds, there has been a call to make ‘care’ culturally responsive (Gay, 2018; Love, 2019) in order to be cognizant of students’ cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and racial identities. Gay (2018) put forward the idea of ‘culturally responsive care’ which focuses on caring for instead of caring about the personal wellbeing and academic success of ethnically diverse students” (p. 58, italics in original). She further explains that “while caring about conveys feelings of concern for one’s state of being, caring for is an active engagement in doing something to positively affect it. Thus, it 14 encompasses a combination of concern, compassion, commitment, responsibility, and action” (p. 58, emphasis added). Although Gay’s idea of care is somewhat similar to Noddings’ relational aspect of care between carer and cared-for, the former’s idea of care encompasses taking action to acknowledge and respect the diverse identities of students. Culturally responsive care requires emotional investment and action to cultivate and promote students’ “improved competence, agency, autonomy, efficacy, and empowerment” (Gay, 2018, p. 58). In addition, the caring for stance looks at the caring practices from the perspectives of students’ needs, backgrounds and lived experiences, rather than what a teacher assumes her students need. Gay further explains that by “seeing, respecting, and assisting diverse students from their own vantage points, teachers can better help them grow academically, culturally, and psycho-emotionally” (p. 58, italics in original). In a similar vein, Owen and Ennis (2005) posit that for the ethical care to take place in the classrooms, teachers should see themselves as “responsible for empowering their students” (p. 418), thereby underscoring student agency, as noted by Gay. Several scholars have argued that a lack culturally responsive care and cultural disconnect between teachers and students negatively affects students who belong to minority groups in terms of their language, race, ethnicity, etc. (Gay, 2002, 2018; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). On the other hand, culturally responsive caring relationships such as respecting and acknowledging students’ multicultural assets play a significant role in fostering favorable learning environment and increased academic outcomes for non-dominant students (Curry 2016; Paris & Alim, 2017). To be a culturally responsive caring teacher, one must “see” students’ diversity as Bonilla-Silva (2003) argues, “people cannot like or love people they don’t see'' (p. 141) and this action should be taken from 15 asset-based perspectives rather than a deficit orientation (Gay, 2018). Even though teachers in mainstream classes hold best intentions to care about their ESL students, a lack of cultural relevance can negatively affect students’ academic achievement as many of the students are “progressively vulnerable to academic failure” (Valenzuela, 1999, p. 3). For example, two ESL student participants in Rawal and De Costa’s (2019) study found themselves unprepared for postsecondary education due to perceived lack of support and asset-based pedagogies in their high school. In order to reframe this concept of care in the context of teaching marginalized students, scholars have developed the concept of critical care (Camangian, 2010; Suárez & Domínguez, 2015; Valenzuela, 1999), which implies caring with advocacy. I will elaborate this in the advocacy section of my literature review. In attempting to understand the idea of critical care, we must also reflect on who the majority of mainstream teachers at in public high school settings. Most of the mainstream content teachers in high school setting are White teachers who were “brought up in schools that were racially affirming” and need to engage in “explicit preparation that underscores the importance of honoring children’s culture and critically examining their own positionality” (Zygmunt et al., 2018, p. 129), and interrogate their cultural lenses and positionalities (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2011) in order to enact the culturally responsive care in their teaching. Based on empirical research conducted with teachers of English as a second language learners, MacGillivray and Rueda (2003) presented the following guidelines for teachers to create a caring and culturally sensitive learning environment for second language learners: 1) Be responsible for knowing about your students' lives; 2) Expect the most; avoid deficit models; 16 3) Implement curriculum that is meaningful to the children; 4) Recognizing knowledge of both language and culture; and 5) Beware of default curriculum: content and structure. Although these guidelines were designed for teachers, all of these recommendations may not fall under teachers’ agency and autonomy in the actual enactment of caring practices and creation of a culturally responsive caring environment in classes with students from diverse backgrounds. Some of these guidelines go beyond teachers’ roles and require efforts and decisions at the institutional and policy levels. In addition, although these guidelines suggest that teachers serve as brokers in facilitating learning, the entire responsibility for successful (im)migrant education should not fall completely on the shoulders of classroom teachers. Such a burden tends to lead to teacher burnout and emotion labor, which I discuss later. Care: Sociopolitical dimensions. Studies have found that although the practice of an ethic of care in second language classrooms has shown a lot of positive narratives from the teachers, it also poses several concerns about teachers’ emotion labor and emotion management. On the one hand, practicing an ethic of care is connected to teachers’ deep satisfaction, a sense of fulfillment, positive group dynamics and a low anxiety learning environment for learners (Cowie, 2011; Gkonou & Miller, 2019; Zembylas, 2005). On the other hand, practicing an ethic of care and teacher’s perceived needs for suppressing their own emotions leads to emotion labor and teacher burnout (Benesch, 2012; De Costa, Li & Rawal, 2020). Similarly, the relational aspect of caring can “become a source of emotional strain, anxiety, anger, and disappointment” (Isenbarger & Zembylas, 2006, p. 123). Much research on caring practices (e.g., Noddings, 1992; Vogt, 2002) has been conducted in the elementary schools where a caring teacher has been characterized as someone 17 who is (1) committed to provide a happy and secure environment to students, (2) approachable and interested in the personal situations of each individual child, establishes trust and respect in a caring relationship, and (3) involved in parenting like care and even physical care of young children (Vogt, 2002). Although all of these characteristics of a caring teacher may not apply in high school settings, the cultivation of a trusting and supportive relationship is helpful at any educational level. The study of an ethic of caring has not gained much attention in the field of applied linguistics, however. But it has been examined quite extensively in the field of education (e.g., Rogers, 1991; Rogers & Webb; 1991), where the researchers have looked into the role of ethic of caring in effective teaching and found that caring was the basis for thoughtful educational and moral decision making that required intentional action. I will review some studies on care in the field of applied linguistics and ESL teaching settings next. Pereira (2018) examined the cultural politics of caring as an emotional practice in teaching in Singapore schools. Based on interview data from a larger qualitative research study conducted with 43 secondary school English teachers from different types of schools (government, autonomous, and independent) in Singapore and an analysis of official policy and curriculum discourses, he explored the lived experience of the teachers in the focal area of caring. His findings revealed that (1) teachers’ caring practices and beliefs were interwoven with a neoliberal context of standardized testing and performance-based teacher accountability measures, and (2) the ethic of care “shapes the subjectivities, beliefs, and practices of English teachers, particularly as they circulate through the neoliberal imperatives of educational accountability regimes” (p. 488). Pereira also found that teachers’ care and concern for students conflicted with such neoliberal discourses of care related to standardized testing, which resulted 18 in teachers’ emotion labor. I present the concept of emotion labor and literature in detail under the emotion section later in this chapter. In a study that examined English as a foreign language teachers’ pedagogy of care and emotion labor, Gkonou and Miller (2019), who worked with a group of eight teachers of EFL teachers in a private language school in Greece, explored how their focal teachers positioned themselves as caring and appropriately responsive teachers to their students’ language anxiety. Gkonou and Miller also investigated how those teachers’ caring and responsiveness translated into their emotion labor. Drawing on positioning theory and adopting a qualitative research design and using in-depth, semi-structured interviews with their focal teachers, they found that the teachers sought to enact an ethic of care by seeking to construct positive relationships with their students to mitigate the students’ language anxiety. Their findings also revealed that the teachers constructed themselves as ‘caring’ teachers in order to control and manage their own emotional responses to their students' disruptive and problematic behaviors. by considering those behaviors as signs of language anxiety rather than intentional bad behaviors. Gkonou and Miller reported that their focal teachers also considered an ethic of care as fundamental to their professional identities and classroom practices as they made conscious efforts in attending to their students' language anxiety related behaviors. However, their need to mitigate their students’ language anxiety and caring for students turned into teacher emotion labor as they faced tensions between their efforts to care for their students’ language anxiety related needs and the need for their school’s expected successful language learning outcomes. To sum up, the teachers’ intentions and enactment of care for their students were impacted by the expected focus on outcomes. The above-mentioned studies suggest that caring practices encompass emotion labor in teachers due to a potentially contested space they find themselves in where they struggle to 19 balance between investing in caring practices and fulfilling the expected outcomes set by the schools, ministry, and other external aspects at a macro level. In another qualitative study that applied ethics of care and language ideological orientations to study how middle and high school ESL teachers conceptualized and perceived care in their relationships and work with multilingual, multiracial, and multicultural ESL students with diverse immigration backgrounds, Dávila & Linares (2020) sought to explore ESL teachers’ perceptions of care within broader sociopolitical context beyond the classroom. Their findings revealed that their focal teachers (1) conceptualized care in terms of empathy and trust which were integrally embedded in their ideologies, and (2) sought to demonstrate care in their classrooms through engaging in pedagogical reflexivity. They encouraged and facilitated their students’ native language and literacy development by upholding a translanguaging stance regardless of their own linguistic backgrounds. In other words, the teachers leveraged on students’ multilingual repertoires, irrespective of whether they themselves were monolingual or multilingual. In addition, the teachers’ care “entailed acquiring a deep understanding of students’ backgrounds and experiences in order to advocate for their academic, material and socioemotional needs” (p. 361). All of these studies show that care as enacted and interpreted by teachers of ESL students are impacted by broader sociopolitical contexts and institutions demands that align more with neoliberal ideologies, which tend to dismiss teachers’ efforts to care for their students and their own emotions wellbeing at a micro level in their classroom contexts. Care as a contextual enactment. Much of the traditional discussion on care focused on the rules for ethical guidance, but the practice of ethic of care relies on context because the enactment of caring practices involves the dynamic relation between a teacher and a student. Such a relation is 20 shaped, influenced, and sustained by a myriad of ways and factors such as the linguistic, cultural, racial backgrounds of both carer (e.g., teachers) and cared for (i.e., students). Hence, an exploration of care practices in classrooms depends on the needs of the students in specific situations. This allows teachers and students to understand themselves and to acknowledge their positionality, context, and their own capacities. Noddings (2002) explains, “We need to understand our own capacities and how we are likely to react in various situations. . . . Hence . . . much of [care-based] moral education is devoted to the understanding of self and others” (p. 15). In other words, caring practices in teaching do not occur randomly and in a vacuum. They emerge out of a teacher’s or carer’s awareness and understanding of who they are, who they want to care for, and how the dynamics of caring relations impact their pedagogical decisions and actions. In doing so, the teachers deepen their understanding of their students’ backgrounds and how those might influence the students’ interpretation of the teachers’ caring pedagogies. This adds a layer of complexity for ESL students when they have to comprehend everything in their non-dominant language in mainstream classroom settings. I now turn to ESL students’ interpretation of a pedagogy of care from their teachers. Care as interpreted by ESL students. Different studies have demonstrated that students interpreted and viewed their teachers’ care in myriad ways. For example, in Caldwell’s (1999) study of high school students, teacher care was classified in four different themes by the students: teachers as being student-oriented (e.g., treats all students with respect, believes in students, engages students in thinking), work-oriented teacher (e.g., willing to adjust workload, provides extra time for completion of work, accepts more than one answer to questions, willing to change classroom rules as necessary), engaging teacher (e.g., an expert in the subject he or she teaches, helps students to become independent, provides extra time to complete assignments, 21 and offers extra-credit work), and active teacher (having sense of humor, energetic, telling stories and providing examples, providing engaging assignments and activities). These four themes based on students’ perceptions of caring teachers exhibit that students see multiple aspects of care in their teachers’ pedagogical practices that not only help them learn and grow in a favorable environment but also make them feel valued, respected, and believed. In the context of the U.S. public schools populated by ESL students from diverse backgrounds, ESL teachers and mainstream content teachers who teach classes that include ESL students are often faced with challenges addressing and responding to the needs of students who have diverse lived experiences before their arrival to the USA. Some of these experiences are related to “low-literacy, trauma, abuse, or homelessness” (Dávila & Linares, 2020, p. 355) if those students are from newcomer immigrant and refugee communities. In a year-long ethnographic study in a high school setting, Hos (2016) investigated a teacher’s enactment of care in a newcomer class for students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE). Her research participants were a teacher and 19 students in her class. The teacher, Mrs. Smith, a White, middle-class female in her mid-30s, taught English language arts and social studies, and co-taught science. She worked with 19 students (13 boys and 6 girls) who comprised Burmese/Karenni refugees from Thailand, immigrants from Yemen and Nepal. Hos stated that as many refugee students carry past traumatic experiences with them, the ethics of care entailed providing the students with a welcoming and positive classroom environment to support their adjustment and adaptation to the new life and school system. Hos’ findings revealed that four themes emerged as representative of the ethics of care in Mrs. Smith’s classroom: (a) patience/ flexibility and empathy for students, (b) implementing appropriate ESOL pedagogical practices, (c) building students’ self-confidence, and (d) advocacy for students (p. 488). One of the 22 interesting findings in this study was that Mrs. Smith’s students showed reciprocity and shared a mutual respect and empathy for her by engaging in cooperative group work. They also took on “roles of the one caring and cared for”, by “identifying respectful and disrespectful behaviors”, and “responded to the caring teacher by establishing care and respect for her and their peers” (p. 492). This study, like the previously mentioned studies show us that teachers’ care for their students is multifaceted and can manifest in several different ways. While such practices support students’ learning and wellbeing, teachers tend to find themselves in contexts where a gamut of emotions might arise from engaging in caring practices for their students. In the section that follows, I present literature on how care and emotion are intricately connected and what emotions teachers feel while enacting caring practices for their ESL students in mainstream classrooms. Care and Emotions Much of the discussion on care includes emotions as they are not mutually exclusive. For a care-based classroom to take place, both the carer and cared-for seek to cultivate positive emotional learning experiences. As Furrer and Skinner (2003) explain: Children who felt appreciated by teachers were more likely to report that involvement in academic activities was interesting and . . . they felt happy . . . in the classroom. In contrast, children who felt . . . ignored by teachers reported more boredom, unhappiness, and anger while participating in learning activities” (p. 159). In a similar vein, Noddings (2002) asserts: The result of academic coercion . . . is often frustration and a pervasive feeling of ‘being dumb.’ . . . If a youth’s own legitimate interests and talents are not admired and encouraged, he or she may never really learn what it means to be cared for (p. 31). 23 From these arguments, it would not be an exaggeration to say that in order to successfully enact caring practices and to help students positively interpret and perceive those practices for their empowerment and success, the ethics of care and emotional management should go hand in hand, especially for ESL students as their interpretation of caring practices and emotions can be interpreted in various ways as reviewed above. Notably, even though the caring practices for ESL students can be helpful, the practice of caring teaching is not free from problems and issues. This is because much of the analysis and discussion of caring teaching has focused on preconceived conceptions of what caring is or on the importance of ‘‘a teacher being nurturing, supportive, nice, inclusive, responsive, and kind’’ (Goldstein, 2002, p. 2). However, such an emphasis fails to recognize the emotion labor that results from caring teaching (Isenbarger & Zembylas, 2006). Crucially, emotion labor caused by caring teaching may not always have negative experiences for teachers because it can also yield positive experiences. For example, in Isenbarger and Zembylas’s (2006) action research study, Lynn Isenbarger, the first author, was teaching an inclusive class at an elementary school and actively enacting caring teaching. Her caring teaching resulted in both negative and positive functions of emotion labor. On the one hand, her effort to “suppress feelings of sadness, disappointment and often guilt” (p. 128) that she experienced for failing to help her students was one of the sources of negative emotion labor that led to “emotions of frustration, sadness, and disappointment were also related to Lynn’s dilemmas in balancing caring and classroom management” (p. 129). On the other hand, positive emotion labor that resulted from caring teaching made Lynn ‘‘feel good’ (p. 130), leading her view her work as something that “rewarding and a source of psychological well-being” (p. 131). The study also concluded that there is not one kind of caring that encompasses all types of actions teachers are engaged in to 24 support their students’ overall academic achievement and wellbeing. Rather, a teacher can enact various kinds of caring: “pedagogical caring—caring about children’s academic expectations; moral caring—caring about the values communicated in learning; and cultural caring—caring that communicates the norms of the culture in which the school/classroom is part of (p. 132, italics in original). To summarize caring practices in general and for ESL students in particular, there are myriad ways in which care is communicated to ESL students by their teachers. The construct of care is complex and can be even more complicated if the dimensions of race, culture, class, gender, and other backgrounds of ESL students are not taken into consideration. In addition, the context in which caring practices are enacted by teachers, and how they are interpreted by ESL students can pose unique challenges for teachers due to diverse backgrounds and lived experiences of the students. Having said that, striving for culturally responsive care as much as possible can be helpful for ESL students. In this dissertation, I aimed to see the alignment (and lack thereof) between the enactment of care by two focal mainstream teachers and how care is interpreted by two focal ESL students in a high school setting. Moreover, since care encompasses emotions, I turn to a review of emotions in a second language next. Emotions and emotion labor. According to Pereira (2018), emotions, which are central to caring teaching, are “not merely affective states that are internally produced, but also qualitative experiences that are socially, historically, culturally, and politically constituted” (p. 491). Similarly, the Douglas Fir Group (2016) observed that “[E]motions (...) have recently begun to be the object of study in SLA” (p. 36) and asserted that second language learning is an “emotionally driven process at multiple levels of experience,” and emotions are “enmeshed with identity, agency, and power,” thereby underscoring that emotion and identity are intertwined (p. 25 36). In other words, emotions emerge in contexts and relate to aspects of internal (e.g., identity and perceived power) and external contexts (e.g., social settings). In the present study, I aimed to look at teachers’ and ESL students’ emotions that reportedly arose in their discourses and contexts in and outside their classrooms. Emotions have primarily been studied from cognitive perspectives for a long time. These attempts to study emotions from cognitive approaches tend to divide emotions into positive and negative emotions where positive emotions are seen as desirable in language teaching and learning, and negative emotions are considered to be detrimental to the process of learning. And the study of these positive and negative emotions of teachers and learners of a second language have been studied as individual differences such as learner anxiety (Dewaele, 2017). However, in recent years, the study of affective factors in the field of SLA has been expanded to examine the relational and contextual aspects of affect. Whether it is a formal or informal setting, learning of anything, including second language, is a very dynamic and “complex, multifaceted amalgam of behaviors, cognition, social engagements, beliefs and perspectives, physical and emotional responses, and prior knowledge connections” (Adams & Richie, 2017, p. 77). However, in earlier research on educational practices, especially in formal settings, the focus has been on the cognitive development of students, and most educational and research practices have excluded social and affective aspects of learning. Focusing on the relational and contextual aspects of teaching and learning of a second language, Pavlenko (2013, p. 22) argued that this recent research can be considered as the ‘affective turn’ in SLA. According to her, this turn has “dramatically transformed and expanded the scope of research on the role of affect in SLA” (p. 5) since the focus has also been on an 26 exploration of the socio-political “conditions that produce particular affective regimes and resources of affect” (p. 18). Although the affective turn and the study of emotions from a socio-political lens has been a recent development, the discussion of the complex nature, interconnectedness, and intricacies of emotions with social aspects of life has had a long history. For example, Smagorinsky (2013), drawing on cultural psychology, asserted in his analysis of Lev Vygotsky’s multiple publications that: [f]rom a Vygotskian perspective, emotions are inseparable from thinking. Indeed, Vygostky assumed that all aspects of human life are interrelated, including what goes on within a person, even if it is all connected to what is outside the person and so cannot be so neatly isolated (pp. 194-196, emphasis added). With all the above mentioned literature on emotions and interwoven nature of social and affective factors, we can state that the study of emotions in the field of second language teaching and learning poses myriad of queries about (1) what aspects of emotions to study, and (2) how to explore them, especially in mainstream content classes that include ESL students in high school settings, which is the focus of my dissertation. Emotions of ESL students in mainstream classes. In recent years, there has been a call for teacher preparation programs to address the emotional needs of linguistically and culturally diverse ESL students, and to make learning environments favorable for them (e.g., Heineke & Giatsou, 2020; Solano-Campos et al., 2020). Although schools alone are not solely responsible for the development of students’ socio-emotional needs, they do play an important role in the development of the whole child by addressing students’ socio-emotional needs (Darling- Hammond, 2015). 27 Some research studies have investigated how universities prepare pre-service teachers to teach their ESL students through scaffolded assistance and modified input in order to raise teachers’ awareness of multilingual and multicultural identities (e.g., Lucas et al., 2018; Villegas et al., 2018). In these studies, the focus has been on teaching content, while providing scaffolded help to the ESL students. Only a few studies have investigated ESL students’ emotional experiences (e.g., Fitts & Gross 2012; Heineke & Vera, 2022; Medina et al., 2015). In recent years, schools have adopted socio-emotional learning as one of the key components to facilitate student success (Jones & Kahn, 2017). However, these socio-emotional programs are still believed to lack the efficacy and authority to address the cultural and linguistic diversity of students because of their unique and individual experiences (Cramer & Castro-Olivo, 2016; Graves & Blake, 2016). In addition, many ESL students who are newcomers to a host country often have complex emotional needs as they carry with them their lived experiences and trajectories of trauma histories and separations from their families and communities when they migrate to a different country (Birman & Tran, 2015; Hos, 2020; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2011). Some studies have sought to understand how teachers described their preparation to support ESL students’ social- emotional wellbeing (Heineke & Vera, 2022) and the benefits of teaching socio-emotional learning to students. However, most of those studies have focused on elementary students’ emotion management and academic performance (Niehhaus and Adelson, 2013). These studies have found that teachers generally lack formal preparation to address ESL students’ socio- emotional needs. Such inadequate preparation has forced them to rely upon different sources to such their own previous personal experiences and informal interactions with colleagues (Heineke & Vera, 2022) to understand their ESL students’ needs. Admittedly, many U.S. schools have 28 adopted teaching of socio-emotional learning in K-12 classrooms, but very little attention has been given to tailoring socio-emotional teaching to ESL students in mainstream K-12 classrooms, and how the socio-emotional aspects impact them (Adams & Richie, 2017). Emotions and emotion labor from discursive perspective. Research of emotions in the field of English language teaching has included teachers and students in relation to multiple constructs such as teacher identities, agency, classroom activities (Benesch, 2017; Motha & Lin, 2013; Rawal & De Costa, 2019; Wolff & De Costa, 2017). Some researchers have studied (1) English language teachers’ emotions from a discursive perspective, focusing on teachers’ emotion labor and how it impacts the pedagogical decisions they make (Miller & Gkonow, 2018; Loh & Liew, 2016), and (2) English language teachers’ emotions labor, and how it contributes to their activism (Benesch, 2020). Forty years ago, the term emotion labor was used by a sociologist named Arlie Hochschild (1979, 1983) to refer to conflict or tension between particular feeling rules and employees’ internal feelings. Feeling rules refer to the explicit rules that employees are required to display, and which are rewarded by the employers. When these feeling rules conflict with the internal belief systems and emotions of the employees, it results in emotion labor. Within the field of education, Zembylas (2005) proposed a discursive approach to teachers’ emotions and argued that “power, agency and resistance are at the center of exploring the role of emotion” (p. 936). He also maintained that emotions are more than a teacher’s private reactions to external events. Instead, he considered emotions as “discursive practices” (p. 936) that are shaped by broader socio-political factors and multitude of social and cultural aspects (Li & Rawal, 2018). Similarly, in his study of emotion labor and caring practices of Singapore school teachers, Pereira (2018) adopted a discursive approach to teacher emotions in his study of 29 teacher emotion. He noted that teachers’ care and emotion regulation relied on “a hegemonic notion of teacher professionalism where emotions have to be managed, controlled, and performed” (pp. 490–491). In a similar vein, Benesch (2018) presented emotions as teacher’s agency in decision making in their teaching practices. Adopting a post-structuralist discursive approach, she sought to explore the relationship between institutional regulation of emotions and teachers’ training/preferences. Her broad research questions were: 1) What are the implicit feeling rules of educational policies?; 2) How are the implicit feeling rules of a particular educational policy communicated to those who are tasked with implementing it?; 3) How do teachers react to the implicit feeling rules?; and 4) What conflict might they experience between their training/beliefs and the feeling rules? (pp. 60-61). The data for Benesch’s study were collected from teachers who were teaching at a U.S. university, and the teachers’ reactions to student plagiarism in their classes were elicited through interviews. One key finding related to emotion labor showed that once the teachers discovered and noticed plagiarism in their students’ writing, they found themselves in situations of “emotion labor due to conflict between feeling obliged to do something and uncertainty about what to do”, and “emotion labor due to conflict between professional expertise and empathy”. (pp. 65-66). In other words, the teachers wanted to empathize with their students’ struggles but their expertise and their uncertainty about how to respond to those situations added emotion labor to their empathetic care for their students. 30 In another study, Benesch (2020) theorized emotions and emotion labor from a discursive perspective. She presented findings from a study conducted with English teachers at a U.S. university setting. Her goal was to explore those teachers’ emotion labor in relation to high- stakes reading and writing placement and exit tests. Her findings showed that teachers experienced emotion labor due to “the conflict between their professional training, knowledge, beliefs and the institutional requirement to prepare students for standardized literacy tests. This tension, or emotion labor, played out in the relationship between what I have labeled the discourse of inevitability and the discourse of unfairness as well as in the discourse of injustice” (Benesch, 2020, p. 37). The theme of inevitability had to do with the assumption that the high- stakes tests were inevitable, but theme of unfairness was related to the technicalities of the tests as perceived by the students. Based on the findings, Benesch claimed that the “the clash between inevitability and unfairness is an indication of emotion labor” (p. 37). What we can infer from these studies that a contested space that teachers find themselves in regarding the clash and tension between what caring practices (e.g., compassion, empathy) they want to adopt and what they have to do (e.g., focus on high stake test results) results into teacher emotion labor. Overall, recent interest in language teacher emotions can be attributed to the development of theoretical understandings from critical approaches that included micro-level factors such as teacher’s lived experiences and teaching practices (Li & Rawal, 2018) and macro-level factors such as broader sociopolitical contexts and neoliberal education system (De Costa, Rawal, & Li, 2018; Pereira, 2018). In a similar vein, Benesch and Prior (2023) emphasized that the study of emotion labor should go beyond emotional management and “engage with the historical and sociopolitical forces that permeate our classrooms and educational institutions” (p. 2). In 31 addition, they have suggested ways of restoring the critical roots of emotion labor in applied linguistics. Emotions: The elephant in the room. Although emotions are important in the second language teaching and learning field, they are often ignored; as astutely observed by Swain (2013): “emotions are the elephants in the room - poorly studied, poorly understood, seen as inferior to rational thought” (p. 195). In his position paper on emotion on The Modern Language Journal, Prior (2019) argued that much scholarly engagement and interest in emotions in second language learning and teaching has helped emotion research to be “an exciting, newly emerging area of inquiry” and “the elephant is overlooked no more” (p. 517). He encouraged us to “open up this confined and crowded room and explore other spaces of language and emotional life” (p. 525). In addition, he summarized the diverse body of emotion research from the past and present as bearing the following four characteristics: 1) Emotions are not just intra-psychological or bio-physiological phenomena; 2) Emotions are communicated, displayed, and responded to through a range of multisemiotic resources; 3) Emotions are actively managed and regulated; and 4) Emotions take objects/objects take emotions (p. 524). In addressing Prior’s (2019) position paper, Martha Bigelow recommended that emotion should be recognized “as a critical, embodied, and cognitive part, all of the dimensions that touch on language teaching and learning” (Bigelow, 2019, p. 516) in order to obtain a fuller picture of emotions because it is an interdisciplinary heuristic. Regarding the study of emotions, Kong (2019) suggested that whether it is the study of teachers’ or learners’ emotions, emotion research should be conducted in culturally structured 32 and contextualized ways. Kong further argued that the context of the study of emotions becomes more complex when teachers are required to address topics related to culture as some teachers find themselves in “denial of cultural variations and feel offended when challenged in discussion”, while other teachers “feel incompetent and unconfident when teaching topics related to culture” (p. 540). This complexity is also due to differences in how emotions are perceived by a teacher and her students or a researcher and her participants, as Prior (2019) noted: What may count as an 'emotion' to a researcher may mean something quite different to the person experiencing, communicating, or responding to it. For that matter, thinking or talking about emotions is not the same as having them, and we may also have emotions about emotions (i.e., metaemotions) (p. 519). The aforementioned complexity can be resolved in teaching and researching emotions by “inviting participants to analyze their own emotions” because “having researchers label learners' emotions may run the risk of imposing researchers' personal inclination and cultural values on the subjects” (Kong, 2019, p. 541). In other words, studying emotions from the vantage point of students can shed light on how they view their feelings and emotions and how those interpretations are enmeshed with their diverse backgrounds and lived experiences. This can inform a researcher to look at the nuances of a complex phenomenon like emotions from multiple perspectives. To sum up, emotions in applied linguistics research has recently expanded to study contextual and broader sociopolitical aspects that impact how emotions are felt, articulated, and discussed in teaching and research context. Following what Kong said above, I intend to explore emotions that are experienced by two focal ESL students and their mainstream teachers in and through the enactment of caring practices. I now turn to a review of literature on advocacy from 33 teachers and students’ perspectives because one of the caring practices that emerged in many of the research studies reviewed above included teachers’ advocacy for ESL students. The contested space and emotion labor that many teachers found themselves in also emerged from the tension between their willingness to advocate for their students, their empathy and compassion towards their ESL students, and the expectations of them from institutional levels. In the following section, I will first review advocacy as a caring practice from teachers’ perspectives. Then, I present (self)advocacy from ESL students’ perspectives and explore how advocacy practices are intertwined with caring practices and emotions. Advocacy Advocacy is defined as “noticing ways ELs’ [English learners’] educational success is challenged and then taking action with the goal of improving their educational experiences and outcomes, and life chances” (Linville, 2019, p. 4). Much of the scholarly work in advocacy has focused on social justice work. According to Nieto (2009), social justice is “a philosophy, an approach, and actions that embody treating all people with fairness, respect, dignity, and generosity” (p. 46). It is also a process of creating a just and equitable society through a process that “challenges, confronts, and disrupts misconceptions, untruths, and stereotypes that lead to structural inequality and discrimination based on race, social class, gender, and other social and human differences” (Nieto, 2009, p. 46). Hence, advocacy practices are rooted in creating a just society through intentional practices by critically examining the patterns that create inequity among us in general. In this study, I discuss advocacy in the context of teaching ESL students in mainstream content classrooms. Language plays an important role in how societies maintain their cultural essence and how they operate. In response, a society also plays an important role in language maintenance 34 and change. This relationship between language and society is often dialectical in nature as language “contributes to the transformation of the world. ... [It] is then transformed as human society changes” (Holborow, 1999, p. 18). In a similar vein, Norton and Toohey (2004) conceptualize language as “a practice that constructs, and is constructed by the ways learners understand themselves, their social surroundings, their histories, and their possibilities for the future” (p. 1). Although every language has its own dynamic relationship with its speakers and communities where it is spoken. However, given that English is a global language and a language that wields much power throughout the world, its role in creating social justice is emphasized in various contexts. Studies that explored the teaching of English for social justice and advocacy in ESL settings have focused on ESL students from immigrant and minority communities (e.g., Blackledge, 1999) and mainstream content classes such as English language arts (e.g., Bender-Slack, 2015), among others. Teachers’ advocacy for ESL students. Scholars argue that advocacy for English language learners is an important part of social justice work in school settings (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2011). And teachers often play a key role in advocating for students, in particular, those students who have different needs than regular students in terms of physical, linguistic, socioeconomic needs (Harklau, 1994). In the field of ESL teaching and learning, several scholars have underscored the role of teachers in advocating for their ESL students by taking an informed action approach to create an equitable learning environment. Linville and Whiting (2020), for example, proposed a five-stage recursive, interdependent process to advocate for ESL students that includes: 1) noticing, 2) determined action, 3) building alliances, 4) gathering information, and 5) taking strategic action. The final step, i.e., taking strategic action helps teachers understand the entire process and makes 35 them more aware to notice further issues (step 1). They commented that this 5-step process can help a teacher become a skilled, strategic, and effective advocate for their ESL students. Linville and Whitling also suggest that teachers can be effective advocates for their ESL students by familiarizing themselves with their students’ rights and their cultural and community backgrounds. Similarly, other scholars have argued that teachers play an important role in advocating for their multilingual learners and supporting their access to equitable learning environments through engaging in a critical stance, greater awareness, actions, and self-reflections on how their awareness and beliefs lead them to certain actions (Braden, Lund, & Hatch, 2020). This call is often accompanied by an invitation to all teachers who work with ESL students from multilingual and multicultural backgrounds to engage in advocacy work. Such work seeks to increase the critical consciousness of teachers in order to address inequities, and to understand their own positionality in their actions (Chan & Coney, 2020). There are several studies that emphasize the need for ESL teachers’ advocacy for their ESL students (e.g., Athanases & de Oliveira, 2008; Lucas & Villegas, 2011). Linville (2015, 2019) maintained that ESL teachers need to make advocacy an important part of their professional role. In comparison to the general education mainstream teachers, ESL teachers have been found to take on more advocacy roles for their ESL students (Pawan & Craig, 2011). Most of the time, ESL teachers collaborate with and educate mainstream content area teachers to advocate for their ESL students (Linville, 2019; Teemant & Giraldo, 2000). Scholars have highlighted the importance of collaborative efforts in ESL students’ advocacy. According to Athanases and de Oliveira, (2008), “[the] effective acts of advocacy follow a pathway of skillful assessment of a problem or challenge of equitable access, conviction to act, organizational and 36 political literacy to know how to intercede, and an awareness that this cannot be done alone” (, p. 99). In other words, taking strategic actions to advocate for ESL students begins with a sort of needs assessment that helps teachers and researchers to explore what challenges and struggles ESL students are facing, which helps them make informed decisions from the vantage point of the students rather than imposing advocacy practices from what teachers and researchers think should look like. Heather Linville (2019) conducted a study to examine what skills in-service ESOL teachers used to advocate for their ESLs and how they developed those skills. She conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 in-service ESOL teachers in a school district in a state in the Mid-Atlantic US. Her findings revealed that establishing relationships and maintaining those relations with their general education colleagues were often essential advocacy skills. Interpersonal communication skills, paying attention to context, empathy, emotional maturity, understanding power differentials, and professional expertise were used to maintain those relationships for advocacy. The findings also showed that the teachers learned those advocacy skills through their teacher education programs, professional and personal experiences, and the majority of them did so on their job itself through their efforts and actions. Based on these findings, Linville (2019) suggested that ESL teachers develop their ability to identify and work with their general education teacher colleagues, their ‘co-advocates’ (p. 15). In sum, even though teachers play a very important role in advocating for their ESL students, it is also evident that they have to negotiate myriad dynamics of power, agency, and autonomy that play a role in their intentions and efforts in advocating for their ESL students. However, teachers who are willing to be skilled and effective advocates are often aware of their sphere of influence (Staehr Fenner, 2014), but at the same time they are not circumscribed by it. 37 And more importantly, in addition to striving to advocate for their students, they teach them how to advocate for themselves. Self-advocacy: Student perspectives. The concept of self-advocacy was initially used in relation to the needs of individuals with disabilities (Vash, 1991) where they would “learn how to advocate on their own behalf rather than letting others advocate for them” (Chan, Brophy, & Fisher, 1981, p. 196). Over time, this concept, which has evolved into a broader concept to account for multiple contexts, encompasses the skills people can learn through preparation and practice to advocate for themselves and their needs. There has been much emphasis on teachers’ advocacy for ESL students (Linville & Whiting, 2020). However, only a few studies have looked into social justice and advocacy from ESL students’ perspectives, which warrants scholarly investigation (Martin‐Beltrán, Montoya‐ Ávila, & García, 2020; Linville & Whiting, 2019; Morrell, 2006). Adopting positioning theory and critical perspectives in applied linguistics, Martin‐Beltrán, Montoya‐Ávila, and García (2020) conducted a research study with adolescent students at a newcomer high school in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. They utilized storytelling as a way of student advocacy to explore the culturally and linguistically diverse youths’ voices and their migration stories. The students were engaged in multimodal storytelling and interactive autobiographical narratives. It was a year-long study, and the participants were nine immigrant youth from different countries. They were enrolled in 9th and 10th grades and were receiving ESL support. They participated in writing workshops in the fall semester and after-school club in the spring semester. Martin‐ Beltrán, Montoya‐Ávila and García reported that the students actively took agentive roles and participated in their advocacy for social justice through “(1) sharing stories publicly positioned students as legitimate speakers who are worthy to be heard, (2) connecting stories positioned 38 students as members of a community with collective agency, and (3) applying stories for change positioned students as advocates for social justice” (p. 7). This shows that when given effective advocacy instruction and an agentive role to tell their stories, students could not only advocate for themselves but also cultivate a sense of community belonging and find themselves as agents of social change. Mainstream teachers and their advocacy for ESL students. In a very unique self-study by Johanna Ennser‐Kananen (2020), she examined the classroom discourse at a community college in Finland through a lens of critical Whiteness as she was dissatisfied with her own class due to her students’ disengagement and lack of dialogue. Her students were adult immigrants from different countries, mostly Middle Eastern and African backgrounds, and Ennser‐Kananen was the only White person in the class. The aim of this study was to explore “how discourses of Whiteness work in classrooms, often in unnoticed and normalized ways “(Ennser‐Kananen, 2020, p. 2). The findings showed that her discourses perpetuated white ideologies using discursive moves “that silence students, using the nonnative speaker category without reference to race, and fore fronting my own experiences or knowledge” (p. 6). She also found that her discourses of Whiteness created an learning environment that was not conducive for her learners and was “potentially threatening to their identities” and these findings pointed to “oppressive dynamics being in place in the classroom as well as on a greater societal level” (p. 13). Keeping in mind all these findings from her own classroom discourse analysis, Ennser‐Kananen invited all White teachers to critically examine their own classroom discourses to enact advocacy for larger social change. She also invited teachers to critically examine each other’s classroom discourses and work towards a collective goal of social change. 39 Some of the advocacy and social justice-related pedagogical practices for ESL students have been conducted in high school settings. For example, the field of English language arts classes in high school settings make use of social justice-related texts to help ESL students feel a sense of belonging and to increase reading engagement through emotional connection (Barter‐ Storm & Wik, 2020; Chun, 2009). A case in point is Barter-Strom and Wik (2020), who presented sample unit plans of the graphic novel trilogy ‘March’ by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell, a novel related to the U.S. civil rights movement. They commented that the “accessibility and emotional engagement of graphic novels provide prime opportunities for teachers to address challenging issues related to social justice in a variety of cultural contexts” (p. 5). Some studies show that ESL students are not valued for their linguistic and cultural diversity in the mainstream classes, and they are viewed as a problematic student population (García & Kleifgen, 2010) as they hold deficit views of ESL students (Lucas, Villegas, & Martin, 2015; Rodriguez et al., 2010). Some studies have also shown that many mainstream teachers have negative attitudes towards ESL students in their mainstream classes (Dubetz & Colette, 2020; Villegas, 2018). In addition, many mainstream teachers are less or not prepared to advocate for their ESL students and, therefore, they place the responsibility on their ESL teacher colleagues, who become the sole advocates for those ESL students, in both ESL and mainstream classes (Hutchinson, 2013). The present study seeks to investigate this further through a year- long study with two mainstream teachers in order to find how they viewed their ESL students, and how they advocated for them and helped them learn self-advocacy skills. Advocacy: Standards and expectations. According to the TESOL International Associations’ standards for initial TESOL Pre-K–12 Teacher preparation programs, ESOL teachers are 40 expected to advocate for “ELLs and their families” and also “demonstrate knowledge of effective collaboration strategies in order to plan ways to serve as a resource for ELL instruction, support educators and school staff” (TESOL, 2019, p. 11). Similarly, in 2015, the National Education Association (NEA) published the following five steps to ELL advocacy (EL-centered All in!): 1. Isolate the issues: Begin by clarifying the source of the issue, with the goal of identifying concerns in your immediate environment and gaining insights about broader, external factors (p. 11); 2. Identify your allies: Advocacy occurs at different levels, alongside varied partners. To be effective, you must foster relationships with others, be willing to listen to opposing viewpoints, and use conflict as an impetus for change (p. 12); 3. Be clear on the rights of ELL students: Have a clear understanding of the policies and laws that are in place to protect ELLs and their families. It empowers you to advocate from a position of what is ethically right and legally right (p. 12); 4. Organize and educate others: Create opportunities to share what you are doing with others. Take advantage of community events to discuss the issues impacting ELLs (p. 12). 5. Identify your outlets for change: Consider asking the following questions: What can I do in my classroom? What can I do in my school? What can I do in my district? What can I do in my community? How can I collaborate with other non-school-based communities? (p. 13) The above-mentioned standards from TESOL and NEA can be utilized by any teacher who teaches classes that include ESL students, irrespective of whether they teach ESL classes or 41 mainstream content area classes. In this regard, Linville and Staehr Fenner (2019) emphasized that “EL advocacy includes all teachers knowing the rights and needs of ELs in schools, and having the confidence and knowledge to take action if they see those rights being violated or needs going unmet” (p. 341, original emphasis). In other words, advocacy for ESL students is not a task of a certain group of teachers but all the teachers who work with ESL students in any capacity and roles. As given in the NEA standards, one of the ways to advocate for ESL students is through collaboration and sharing of advocacy practices with other teachers. Research Questions The three major constructs – care, emotions, and advocacy –that are examined in this extended literature review are all interconnected and are highly relevant when investigating the teaching ESL students in high school settings (especially in mainstream classrooms where they are marginalized). Emotions are central to caring practices and caring is a form of advocacy for ESL students, as argued by Pereira (2018) who noted: “Emotions function as powerful ideological vectors — moving from textual discourses to material processes — that influence teachers’ caring motivations” and “that guide teacher agency towards the realization of enhanced productivity” (pp. 501-502). In this dissertation, I seek to address the following research questions from two focal ESL students’ (Spring and Zaynab) and two focal mainstream teachers’ (Ms. Rosa, biology teacher, and Ms. Eva, English language arts teacher) perspectives: 1. Pedagogy of Care i. Teachers: How did two mainstream content area teachers communicate and enact pedagogy of care to their ESL students? ii. Students: How did two ESL students interpret pedagogy of care? 42 2. Advocacy i. Teachers: How did care intersect with advocacy? How did the teachers advocate for their ESL students? ii. Students: How did the ESL students interpret the teachers’ advocacy for them? How did the students advocate for themselves? 3. Emotions i. Teachers: What emotional experiences did the teachers have in enacting the pedagogy of care and advocacy for their ESL students? ii. Students: What emotional experiences did the ESL students have in relation to their ESL identity? To address the above research questions, I adopted the theoretical concept of critical care (Camangian, 2010; Suárez and Domínguez, 2015; Valenzuela, 1999) in connection with mainstream teachers as ‘critical witness’ (Dutro, 2009). Critical witnessing represents a form of caring advocacy (Suárez and Domínguez, 2015, p. 49) because what teachers witness from the lenses of their beliefs, and advocacy for the ESL students manifest in the ways they address the needs of their ESL students in their mainstream content classes. As we saw in the literature above, many mainstream teachers have negative attitudes towards their ESL students and caring practices made the teachers feel that they were not providing rigorous enough content for their ESL students. However, I borrow the idea caring as a form of advocacy (Herrera, 2020; Suarez and Dominguez, 2015) as mentioned by Suarez and Dominguez below: Critical care, exercised as a driving force and form of advocacy and efficacy, is a way past the (false) dilemma of either providing a ‘rigorous’ academic experience, or attending to students' socio-emotional needs… even teachers who may lack rich critical awareness are well versed in the human need to care for youth. With this in mind, 43 critical-care is an essential and important disposition to be actively cultivated in educators, and more richly explored and foregrounded by teacher educators (Suarez and Dominguez, 2015, p. 64, emphasis added) To sum up, a pedagogy of care is enacted and interpreted in diverse ways. It also includes teachers’ advocacy for ESL students. In addition, care encompasses a gamut of emotions that emerge in certain discourses and pedagogical contexts. I intend to explore the intricacies of connectedness among care, emotions, and advocacy in mainstream content classes, focusing on the narratives from the vantage point of my two focal teachers (Ms. Eva and Ms. Rosa) and two focal students (Spring and Zaynab). The next chapter (methodology) includes details about my study context, participants, data collection process and analysis. I also present my researcher positionality in relation to the overall topic of my research and how it impacted my decisions at every step of the research. 44 CHAPTER 3: METHOD As I presented in the preceding chapter, my aim to conduct this study was to explore the mainstream content teachers’ and ESL students’ enactment and interpretation of a pedagogy of care, emotions, and advocacy in a high school science and English language arts classes. To achieve my goal, I adopted a qualitative case study method as it provides us with (1) rich details in studying selected participants and/or sites, and (2) “an understanding of individuals’ experiences, issues, insights, developmental pathways, or performance within a particular linguistic, social, or educational context” (Duff, 2014, p. 233). As discussed in the literature review chapter, many research studies (e.g., list them here) have examined the constructs of care, emotions, and advocacy from second language teachers’ and learners’ perspectives. However, my focus was to zoom in on the ESL students in mainstream content classes that include the majority of English-speaking students, and the goal of teaching is imparting content knowledge, not necessarily to develop language proficiency of ESL students in those classes. Since it was a specific context that was the focus of this study, I chose a case study method to investigate “in-depth portrayal of the chosen phenomena that are situated in particular contexts” (De Costa, Li, & Rawal, 2019, p. 120). The case(s) in a case study can be an individual, a larger unit (e.g., a family, a classroom, a school), or a wider community or phenomenon (e.g., immigration, family language policy, language identity). In this study, there were four focal participants (two teachers and two students) who embodied a myriad of lived experiences and intricacies of teaching and learning dynamics in and outside the classroom. Since the constructs of care, emotions, and advocacy are complex phenomena, this case study required and permitted in-depth examination (Saldana, 2011). 45 As in most qualitative research studies, my study went through some modifications with respect to my initial research questions, in keeping with Creswell’s (2014) observation that a qualitative researcher needs to “expect research questions to evolve and change during the study in a manner consistent with the assumptions of an emerging design” (p. 141). Initially, my research questions were to find out what language practices (e.g., scaffolding, recasts, elaborations) the two mainstream teachers adopted in their linguistically diverse high school science and English language arts classes, and how they interacted with their ESL students around multimodal texts in their classes. Since I had already conducted my initial research study on ESL students’ emotions at high school and other projects on language teachers’ emotions, I had imagined that the participants would express their socio-emotional experiences around the initial topics about navigating multimodal texts. However, after two classroom observations of each teacher and an initial interview with each participant (focal teachers and students), the themes that emerged from the teachers’ and students’ data went beyond language practices. The themes included several examples of emotions (pleasant and unpleasant), caring pedagogy, and advocacy for ESL students in mainstream classroom settings. While I did not completely neglect my initial focus of the language practices, they became only one part of the overall learning and teaching experiences of the focal participants during the whole academic year. The examples of both teachers’ recasts, elaborations, allowing longer wait/processing time etc. fell under their explicitly stated caring practices for their ESL students. In addition, the subsequent class observations, field notes, and most importantly, interviews exhibited a range of enactments of a pedagogy of care for ESL students, as well as the students’ perceptions of care, and lack thereof, in those classes. Therefore, my questions evolved to focus on what pedagogical practices of care the two mainstream teachers enacted in their classes with ESL students, and how those were 46 interpreted by the focal students. Above all, the three notions of care, emotions, and advocacy occurred in overlapping ways in the data from all the focal participants. Context of the Study I collected data from a public high school in the U.S. Midwest during the 2018-2019 academic year. My research participants were two high school teachers teaching mainstream biology and English language arts classes in the high school. Two ESL students, who were enrolled in those two classes (one from the language arts class and one from the biology class), were my focal student participants. The reason for including teacher and student participants was that I intended to examine the constructs of care, emotions and advocacy from both teachers’ and students’ perspectives in order to better understand what motivated the teachers’ intentions and enactment of the pedagogy of care, and how these actions were interpreted by those ESL students. In addition, since the constructs of care, emotions, and advocacy are discursive in nature, collecting data from both teachers and students helped me better understand and validate the data collected. The English language arts class was a class for freshman year students and the science (biology) class was for the juniors at the selected high school. Both courses were year- long courses (as opposed to many semester-long courses), and therefore, they were taught in both the fall and spring semesters of each academic year. Several research studies have been conducted in diverse high school classrooms, which have found the use of translanguaging (de Los Ríos & Seltzer, 2017; García, Johnson & Seltzer, 2017).) as a culturally responsive pedagogy in such classes. However, in the mainstream classes, the majority of teachers are monolingual English speakers, and their classes include only a few ESL students who often do not share their home languages. Also, several research studies have shown that many content area teachers find the presence of ESL students to be disruptive in their 47 mainstream content classes. In contrast to this ideology, during my initial data collection from both focal teachers’ classes, I found that they repeatedly asked their students if their languages and cultures had different ways of expressing some ideas. During the initial interviews with them, the teachers mentioned that although they were monolingual white teachers teaching mainstream classes, they cared about their ESL students and were cognizant of the presence of ESL students in their respective classes, who brought multiple linguistic and cultural perspectives, and lived experiences with them. They were also aware of the fact that while teaching their respective content classes, English as the medium of instruction influenced their students’ learning processes. One of the recurring themes in my conversations with them was that they always wondered how they could better support their ESL students in their content classes. For this reason, the language arts and biology classes became interesting sites for me to investigate the ways in which the teachers enacted their caring pedagogical practices, how they advocated for their students, and what emotions they experienced in the enactment of care and advocacy for their ESL students. Ethical Considerations I met Ms. Eva (all names are pseudonyms), the language arts teacher, and Ms. Rosa, the biology teacher during the parent teacher conferences in the fall and spring semesters of 2017- 2018, when my daughter was enrolled in their classes. Since I was interested in studying the ESL students’ navigation of content classes in a high school setting, I had asked them if they would be willing to participate in my dissertation study. I contacted both of them in the beginning of fall 2018 and they consented to participate in my pilot study. When Michigan State University’s (MSU’s) Institutional Review Board (IRB) application was approved, I contacted the school administration and the district’s Board of Education Policy on Research Projects. I sent my 48 research packet, equivalent to MSU’s IRB, to the director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment of the school district. After receiving the director’s approval, I asked Ms. Eva and Ms. Rosa to give me the demographics of their mainstream classes in terms of the number of ESL students. Then, I recruited my focal ESL students (one from Ms. Eva’s language arts class and one from Ms. Rosa’s biology class) with the consent of the participants themselves and their parents. An Invitation to Meet My Participants In a case study, it is always very important to select cases and/or sites that provide spaces that help us investigate the phenomenon with its particularities in depth and to observe the complex array of possibilities that are involved in the meaning-making processes (Duff, 2014; Saldana, 2011). Initially, I had recruited a total of 10 participants: three mainstream teacher participants (English language arts teacher, biology teacher, and multicultural studies teacher) and six students (two from the English language arts class, three from the biology class, and one from the multicultural studies class). Since the multicultural studies class was only a semester long class, I did not have enough opportunities to observe the classes and conduct in-depth interviews with the teacher and student participants from that class. So, I focused on the participants from the English language arts and biology class as they were year-long classes and provided me with ample opportunities to engage in interviews and several classroom observations on a biweekly basis. The reason to exclude the report of three other students from this dissertation was that due to several logistical constraints, I was able to conduct only 1-2 interviews with each one of them over a semester. As a result, I could not present the trajectory of their experiences over the course of the academic year. I had communicated with all of my participants that apart from the 49 I introduce my four focal participants next. They have been assigned pseudonyms to protect their identities. The teachers asked me to select pseudonyms for them, but the students selected their aliases with me, after some conversations around what those selected names meant to them. Teachers Ms. Eva and Ms. Rosa were the English language arts and biology teachers, respectively. The reason for selecting both teachers for this research study was to investigate how they addressed the needs of their ESL students in their mainstream content area classes because the classes were not especially tailored to ESL students like other ELL classes, which consisted predominantly of ESL students. Both of them were aware of the fact that they taught very diverse classes with multilingual speakers. However, they believed that since they were not teaching specific sheltered or ELL classes, Ms. Eva and Ms. Rosa frequently needed to remind themselves of the presence of ESL students in their classes to better serve them (the details are presented in the findings chapter). Ms. Eva. Ms. Eva was a 30-year-old, female English language arts teacher. She was born and raised in north Michigan. She identified herself as a monolingual white female teacher of language and arts. She received her master’s degree in secondary English education from a public university in Michigan. When she was in high school, she had immense respect for her teachers. They were the people that she looked up to. But it was not until the first semester of her college education was over that she decided to pursue teaching. Initially, she went to school to become a fine art photographer, but she realized that teaching would give her more structure, stability, and inner fulfillment. In addition, teaching would give her the security of a community and a place where she would be able to come every morning and teach her classes that included 50 students from diverse backgrounds. She found out in college that she thrived with a schedule and structure (which we will see in the subsequent sections being applied to her teaching as well). Stability, structure, and a sense of community gave her “… a healthy mental and emotional state” [Interview 1] where she could properly create enjoyable experiences for her students. While she reported to be happy being an English language arts teacher, she was pursuing another master’s degree in visual arts education to widen her understanding and practices of visual arts education; Ms. Eva was eager to rekindle her original dream to be an artist, and to incorporate multiple modalities in her teaching. When the data collection for this study began, she had been teaching English language arts in the high school (my research site) for six years. She had also taught the English language arts classes at middle school simultaneously. She was teaching English language arts to the ninth and tenth graders when this study was being conducted. The data in this study came from Eva’s Freshman English language arts class (9th grade) in the high school. The class consisted of 24 students, with 5 English as a second language speakers. Ms. Eva had been teaching a mainstream class of multilingual learners, mostly white dominant classes with some ESL students in those classes. She was highly interested in understanding how ESL students’ trajectories developed during and after secondary education as she cared for their education not only in her mainstream classes but also beyond high school. She specifically advocated for their mental wellbeing, and therefore, had been serving on the school’s mental health advisory board. Ms. Rosa. Ms. Rosa was a female teacher in her early forties. She was born and raised in Michigan. She also identified herself as a monolingual white female teacher of science education. She had been teaching biology at different levels in the K-12 setting for 18 years when I was collecting data for this study. Initially, she taught in a school in North Michigan for 9 51 years before moving to the present school 9 years ago. Having earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees in science education from a Midwestern university, she taught general biology, human biology, and physical science. She mentioned that her students were human beings first and then high school students. Her class consisted of 26 students with 5 English as a second language speakers. Ms. Rosa believed that a teacher should constantly think of their students’ overall well-being and should be as flexible as possible with her teaching strategies according to the students’ needs and learning pace. Like Ms. Eva, Ms. Rosa was very concerned about her ESL students’ success in high school and post-secondary education and, therefore, strongly advocated for creating a favorable environment for them so that nothing could hinder their academic journey. Although Ms. Rosa loved her teaching profession and found satisfaction and fulfillment in teaching high school students, at times, she would question whether all her emotion labor was worth it. She had weighed the material and monetary benefits between staying in the teaching profession and finding an industry job multiple times. While she was aware that any industry job would have paid her way more than what her teaching job was paying her, she found her love and care for her students more emotionally rewarding than any other material gains. Students Ms. Eva and Ms. Rosa allowed me to explain my research interest to their classes after two class observations in each class. I decided to do so in order to familiarize myself with the classroom space and culture. In addition, I wanted to let the students see me as a non-participant observer in the classes before I introduced my research project to them. Both teachers had introduced me to their respective classes during my very first class observation as they had already notified their classes of my intent and the first day of my arrival in the classroom. After two class visits, I shared with the class about my research in detail. Although almost all ESL 52 students from each class showed interest in participating in the study and signed their consent forms. Sadly, I had to exclude some of them due to their lack of availability for interviews after school as they had to catch the school buses and other logistical barriers. Between the two focal student participants I am introducing now, Zaynab was recruited from Ms. Eva’s English language arts class, and Spring was recruited from Ms. Rosa’s biology class. Zaynab. Zaynab, a fifteen-year-old female student, was born and brought up in Iraq. She was a freshman year student when I was collecting data for this study. She had moved to the US with her parents when she was a 6th grader. Her father was a pharmacist in Iraq. However, when they moved to the US, he worked at a local Mediterranean grocery store for two years. After that, he started working with an owner of a pharmaceutical company, who had immigrated from Pakistan. Her mother was a homemaker. Zaynab had one older sister and two brothers, one younger and one older than her. She spoke Arabic as her first language. However, since her father had spent most of his early life in Iran, he spoke Persian with some of his relatives from Iran. Zaynab understood Persian, too, but spoke occasionally with her father and his relatives who lived in Western Iran. Her family had stayed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for some years before they moved to the US. She had studied English as a subject in her middle school in the UAE. She mentioned that she had known how to write English words and sentences before she moved to the US. However, she had had problems with reading English. She shared that reading English was very challenging for her as she said, “I feel like English words start coming out of the book and start dancing when I read, which makes it hard to understand the content … I get overwhelmed.” She also mentioned that she worked hard but her motivation fluctuated at times. She often met her teachers during excel hours (i.e., extra hours to seek help) to seek their help with content and language. She was enrolled in Ms. Eva’s English language arts class. 53 Spring. Spring, a seventeen-year-old female student, came from Taiwan. She was a 7th grader when her parents moved to Canada in 2015. In 2017, they moved to California. After a year in California, her family moved to Michigan. Her dad was a biologist, and her mom was a homemaker and a community volunteer. She had a younger sister and a younger brother. Her sister was born when they were in Canada. When the data collection began, her brother was two years old and had been born in California. Spring spoke Fuzhou dialect (simplified Chinese) as her first language, Mandarin Chinese as her second language, and English as her third language. She also studied French for two years while she was in Canada. However, she stopped when she moved to the US. She identified herself as “an activist”, who wanted to contribute to the society by advocating for educational equity for women, especially women in the STEM field. Spring mentioned that women were represented as goddesses in her native culture. However, she contended that there had been gender inequality everywhere, especially in STEM education. She aspired to be a role model for many women by excelling in the field of science and technology, irrespective her gender and linguistic backgrounds. She was enrolled in Ms. Rosa’s biology class. My Positionality A researcher’s positionality in a qualitative study can have a multitude of factors that can influence how she approaches the entire research process. As Saldana (2011) stated: Your autobiography and identity - life experiences, knowledge, training, emotions, values, attitudes, beliefs, gender, ethnicity, and so forth - influence and affect how you navigate through the enterprise and approach other important elements, such as the relationship between you and your participants and the analysis of your data. Who you are (or are becoming) determines to a large extent what and how you research. (p. 22) 54 As mentioned in the motivation for the present study in Chapter 1, my prior experience of being a K-10 teacher in Nepal and training pre-service teachers in Nepal and at MSU had given me some entry point to connect to the focal teacher participants. Despite the differences in our teaching experiences and school cultures, our experiences and interest in teaching gave me and my teacher participants some sort of shared experiences and practices. In addition, being a mother of two ESL identified children in K-12 settings in the US kept me in direct and frequent association with the school system here in the US. My identity as a former school teacher and a parent gave me a perceived sense of belonging in recruiting my focal teachers. Likewise, my identity as a mother of two ESL children gave me a perceived sense of connected feelings with my student participants. The challenge mainly lay in my relationship with the student participants in the beginning as they had experienced many graduate students as observers in their classes. However, when they knew that my daughter was one among many ESL students in that same school, it did not take them much to open up and have conversations with me. My two student participants, Zaynab and Spring, would frequently ask me if they could keep in touch with me even after the school year was over because they wanted to seek my guidance in their process going forward to their post-secondary education. Zaynab introduced me to her mother after one of the interviews and would translate what the latter said. She wanted her mother to fulfill her dream to have a college degree by joining a community college (details in the findings chapter). Over time, our deepening connections led me to uncover and interpret the phenomena of care, emotions, and advocacy, from proximity (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). In addition, it helped me examine my focal teachers’ perceptions and instructional practices in relation to their discursively emerging emotions and how they affected their pedagogical decisions. Even if cases are studied in isolation, they are always in “interaction with other humans (including the 55 researcher) and other elements in its social, physical, and ideological ecology, regardless of whether those interactions and influences are acknowledged or studied” (Duff, 2014, p. 236). One of the major ethical concerns about researcher positionality I had during the collection of my data was the potential emergence of stories from my participants about any triggering or traumatic experiences related to their lived experiences as teachers and students. I myself was navigating through some tough times regarding my physical and emotional healing processes. I constantly reminded myself to be mindful of not retraumatizing myself and my participants through and during our discussions. Honestly, I was not as trauma-informed then as I am today. In other words, I was still in the process of becoming a trauma-informed teacher and researcher through my experiences, and some informal training at campus. Going into the study of emotions, I had anticipated that not all narratives would be a mirror of pleasant experiences. During one of the interviews, when Zaynab brought up a story about one of her young female relatives in Iraq, who had been a victim of abuse and domestic violence, I remembered Saldana’s (2011) example where he had shared about a young man he had interviewed, who had had experiences of a drug abuse and an alcoholic father. Saldana stated, “I exercised my best judgment at the moment he disclosed these issues to listen sympathetically, but to not probe any further than we both wished to go” (p. 25). He also recommended that “researchers need heightened attunement during all stages of a study to ensure that no harm and minimal discomfort come to anyone” (p. 25). While I had numerous moments of laughter with all of my participants during our conversations, there were multiple times where I had to draw a boundary, be mindful of not stretching the narratives by further questions. I would use some grounding techniques of breathing or even water/snack breaks with my participants. On some occasions, there would be long silences. In the beginning, we used to feel awkward during the silences. 56 However, over time, we had all discussed and came to an agreement that we would accept the silences in certain contexts and would not rush to fill them in. We all evolved to accept how we were feeling in those particular moments. Then, instead of digging deeper into the unpleasant experiences, we would decide to pivot to other questions with both of our agreement. On every such occasion, I would ask my student participants if they needed any support regarding their feelings because Ms. Eva had told me that she would be willing to help the students if they needed since she was serving on the school’s mental health board. Also, for example, when Spring shared her experiences of her English-speaking white male partner in her collaborative task project blaming her for being slow in completing the task, she shared that she was angry, upset, and hurt (details in the findings chapter). I offered to postpone our scheduled interview after I noticed that she was sad. However, she said that the conversation itself was a processing space for her as she reportedly enjoyed being interviewed as it gave her a “feeling of a student celebrity” [Interview 2]. To sum up, while I strove to be as objective as possible in my entire research process, I cannot claim that my participant selection, data collection, analysis and interpretation were totally detached from my embodied interest to explore emotions, care, and advocacy. I leveraged my identities, lived experiences, training and my evolving self to inform my decisions to shed light on the powerful narratives shared by my participants and to share my findings, but to not assign my biased judgment on them. Data Collection I collected data from my four participants described earlier over the 2018-2019 academic year. I spent September and the beginning of October 2018 identifying my focal participants and collecting basic information about the selected teachers, ESL students, and the two classrooms as 57 a whole. Although interviews were the primary sources of my data, I also observed classes of both teachers to triangulate data, kept field notes, and journals to further inform and guide my interviews. A brief description of each data source is presented below. Semi-structured interviews. I conducted a total of 22 interviews, seven interviews with each participant (except Zaynab with whom I conducted six interviews as we had to cancel one of my scheduled interviews after her Ramadan fasting was over). The monthly interviews started in November 2018 and went on until May 2019. I used a semi-structured interview protocol for the initial interviews. I mostly made use of open-ended questions in my interviews, except situations where I had to use closed-ended questions for confirmation checks to make sure that what I had heard from my participants was correct. However, the remaining subsequent interviews were based on the class observation, field notes, and previous interviews. Following Thompson and Fioramonte (2012), I gave the teachers and students as much leeway as possible to reflect on their teaching and learning processes, and to share their experiences (except in situations where potential triggering moments emerged during the conversations). Each interview was audio- recorded and lasted between 45 and 60 minutes. All the interviews were conducted in English. While I am aware that this could have affected my ESL student participants’ articulation of experiences through English as their second language, I attempted to use questions to elaborate and give them sufficient wait time to respond to my questions. During the interviews, I used a notepad and a pen to jot down key words and phrases used by my participants. I chose not to use my laptop or any other electronic device to make notes during the interviews to remove any typing noise and to keep the space between me and my participants as open as possible (literally and metaphorically). I transcribed all my interviews myself and wrote personal notes and memos to myself during the interview and transcription to guide my subsequent interviews and to help 58 me remember the special emotions and feelings that had emerged during those specific micro- moments. Each interview started with a check-in about how they were doing and feeling at that particular moment and ended with recalling a pleasant experience that they had encountered prior to or during the interview. I paid each teacher and student participant $25 and $20, respectively, for each interview. Although their willingness to participate in my study and their constant enthusiasm to engage in conversations with me was invaluable, this payment was offered to them as a token of appreciation. I received funds from my department to pay my participants, for which I am grateful. In addition, I had communicated with my participants that participating in this study would give them a reflective space about their teaching and learning. (See Appendix A and B for sample interview questions) Classroom observations. I made 16 classroom observations of Ms. Eva’s English language arts class (every other week) and 17 observations of Ms. Rosa’s biology class (every other week). After every two class observations, I conducted an interview with each teacher and student participant. The observations were not video recorded for ethical and logistical purposes. However, I was allowed to audio record the class for my reference to listen to afterwards in case I missed any important field notes during the class observations. It was difficult to clearly capture the interactions between my focal participants and the teacher, as it would be intrusive to place a recorder in front of my student participant all the time. Also, both teachers frequently moved their students for paired-work assignments, care circles, and roundtable discussions. So, the audio recordings mostly captured teacher talks with some student interactions which were complex to transcribe. I did not transcribe all the audio recordings of the class observations. I relied on my field notes where I would jot down major interactional moves between teacher and students, and the teaching practices that the teachers adopted (e.g., trigger warnings before the 59 potential traumatic scene in Romeo and Juliet in the English language arts class, and the science teacher apologizing for forgetting to turn the video captions on during the class). I would go back and listen to the observations audio recordings just to validate the notes I had made during the class were correct, so that I could use them as prompts in my subsequent interviews with my participants. Artifacts. Some of the teaching learning materials and artifacts in both content classes were collected and analyzed to guide the discussions with my participants. For example, Ms. Rosa shared samples of POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) in her biology class, a complete reading packet, for each topic in which she included copies of reading texts from the textbooks, information and links to online resources for the detailed and extra information, test information, and activities to be used in the classroom. Similarly, in Ms. Eva’s English language arts class, one of the reading texts was March, a graphic novel trilogy about the Civil Rights Movement. I also collected some of the students’ assignments and tests that were brought up during the interviews, and how they had been the cause of their varied emotions. Journals. Apart from the above sources, I also kept a journal of my experiences during the data collection process. It mainly consisted of brief descriptions of the moments that stood out to me during the conversations regarding emotions, care, advocacy and how I was navigating all these constructs in my own teaching of undergraduate classes, my healing journey and my emotions related to single parenting during my graduate program. Although my journal entries were not primary sources of data and therefore not included in my dissertation, they gave me a perspective of how I constantly reflected on my process of having conversations with my participants. For example, one day while I was leaving to go to the high school for an interview with Spring, I was almost hit by a car near my campus. Fortunately, I was safe. However, I froze for a while, my 60 legs shook, and I could not move. I did not want to conduct an interview in that state of mind as I knew I would not be mindful during the interview. I texted Spring and requested her to reschedule our interview. My diary entry from that day included intricacies of emotions as a researcher, parent, and a graduate student who was working on some trauma-informed work on campus. While I did not address this in detail during my interviews, it made me more conscious of what potential emotional baggage my participants would bring with them every time I met with them for an interview. My diary entries (more than 200 pages throughout the data collection and analysis process) helped me evolve as a reflective researcher, especially in increasing my awareness of varied emotions that emerged during interviews. Although the analysis of my journal entries is not part of this study, it was an integral part of my research process as I was learning to acknowledge and articulate my own emotions that emerged in different discourses and contexts. Data Analysis Qualitative data analysis begins the moment data collection begins. While I mainly adopted a general inductive approach to analyze my data, in which themes emerged from the data, I had also developed initial codes based on literature and previous studies. So, a mixture of deductive and inductive approaches (Bingham & Witkowsky, 2022; Saldana, 2011) was used for my data analysis. Mainly, to guide my data analysis, I adopted a six-phase thematic analysis framework proposed by Braun and Clark (2006): (1) familiarizing yourself with your data, (2) generating initial codes, (3) searching for themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) defining and naming themes, and (6) producing the report. In addition, I complemented my data analysis process using Corbin and Strauss’ (2014) constant-comparative approach to find patterns and connections among themes, and a within-case and a between-case analysis (Yin, 2014) to 61 compare and contrast between themes from participants to present the similarities and differences between themes in the findings. I coded my data by hand using notes in the margins of interview transcripts, colorful sticky notes, coding themes, and pulling the excerpts in tables. Firstly, each classroom observation or interview was summarized using the key words I used to jot down as field notes. Since there was a gap of at least two weeks between two interviews with the same participant, I transcribed each interview within an average of 2-4 days after the interview was conducted. While familiarizing myself with the data, I read and re-read each interview transcript multiple times and kept making notes of the recurring themes using color coded sticky notes while generating the initial codes for each participant in all three major categories (Pedagogy of Care, Emotions, and Advocacy). Then, I started searching for themes around the three main constructs of my research: pedagogy of care, advocacy, and emotions. Initially, this was done by focusing on each participant data to see a trajectory of their expression and articulation of emotions and lived experiences. Another reason of doing this for individual participant was that from the very beginning I had conceived my dissertation study as a movie that consisted of four main characters (my focal participants) and how their experiences would unfold through interviews, classroom discussions, and subsequent interviews guided by specific moments from those classroom observations and interactions in informal settings. Gradually, the participants’ unique experiences started showing some connections in terms of similarities and differences in their perspectives and articulations of emotions, views about advocacy and what it meant to be caring for and cared for in teaching learning context. After that, I distilled themes and named them, for example, ‘emotion labor’ or ‘emotion reward’ to make them specific yet broad enough to include examples related to them. After cleaning the codes that had less than three excerpts to support them, I kept reviewing only those themes and codes that had a 62 minimum of three excerpts as examples. In choosing the supporting excerpts, I had to make tough decisions to letting go of interesting examples and excerpts since they were not directly related to their experiences as ESL students in mainstream classes or overall school experience although they consisted of the participants’ lived experiences and were part of their holistic selves (e.g., Spring talking about her music and soliciting my experiences when I attended one of her recitals or Zaynab sharing about her desire to create social media accounts and her attempts to convince her parents to let her do so). This process continued throughout the data analysis and drafting of the report phases. Member checks were done to ensure validation of the data (Creswell & Miller, 2000). (See appendix C for a sample thematic coding for student data and appendix D for a sample thematic coding for teacher data). In the next chapter (chapter 4), I present findings from my teacher participants. First, I present findings related to their enactment of caring practices. Then, I present findings related to their advocacy for their ESL students and what emotions they experienced in enacting such practices of care and advocacy. Similarly, in chapter 5, I present findings from my ESL student participants. 63 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS FROM TEACHERS’ DATA In this chapter, I present findings from two mainstream teachers, Ms. Rosa and Ms. Eva. First, I present findings based on their enactment of a pedagogy of care, followed by advocacy, and emotions. In this chapter, ‘care’, ‘pedagogy of care’, ‘caring practices’ are used interchangeably for ease. Ms. Rosa’s Pedagogy of Care (Biology Teacher) Ms. Rosa’s beliefs, enactment, and interpretation of the Pedagogy of Care in her mainstream AP biology class emerged in terms of a variety of themes. Care appeared explicitly and implicitly in her teaching and communication with her students, especially her ESL students and students who seemingly had learning challenges irrespective of their first language backgrounds. Rosa’s pedagogy of care is presented in six main themes: (1) understanding and connecting to ESL students in mainstream biology class, (2) asset-based teaching, (3) student- centered teaching and cultivating collaboration in scientific meaning-making, (4) connecting science to the real world, (5) caring as form of advocacy for ESL students, and (6) communicating and enacting intentional care. Pedagogy of Care: Understanding and connecting to ESL students in mainstream biology class. Ms. Rosa’s views about the presence of ESL students in her mainstream biology class ranged from her awareness of them being at different levels of English proficiency to viewing them as part of the overall biology class, where even the native speakers of English did not form a homogeneous group. She said that not all of her ESL students in her class had the same purpose. She gave an example from her general science classes where some ESL students just enrolled to improve their English as the medium of instruction was English. 64 Excerpt 1: Understanding ESL students’ diverse levels of English proficiency There are kids that are new from their home country because they say like, I just flew to America last week. And their English overall is far more fragmented. And in that case, some of the counselors or their parents will say, we don't expect them to learn biology, we just want them to learn English. So, they don't really come here to learn science. They're here to be in a classroom where English is spoken, and that they're like learning what it's like to work with classmates, who are similar and different from them. And on a rare occasion, for students who are new to the country, are they expected to actually know the science concepts? [Interview 1] The above excerpt was related to the general trend in her science classes where she had to teach such a heterogeneous mainstream science class where even a low number of ESL students who were present in her classes comprised of the following groups: those who did not speak English much and wanted to take her science class to learn and improve their English, and those who already spoke and wrote English and wanted to learn science. This presented her with challenges to provide them the support she wanted. She shared: Excerpt 2: Three kinds of developmental groups I think it's kind of weird that I have like almost three different kind of developmental groups: people who are brand new to the country where they're not expected to learn science, they're just expected to learn English in a science room. There are other students who have been here so long, or maybe not so long with their English skills, and their learning in their interactions with others and their ability to learn science. I don't even know that they've learned English as an additional language. And then there are some students who are kind of in the middle. And those students, it's kind of hard, because it's the group of students who are still relatively new in their learning of the language but don't feel confident in turn in asking questions and don't really have a lot of socialization or comfortable ness with working with the other person. And I don't really know how to support them, but those are the kids that I struggle most with. I have the fewest number of that group of kids. [Interview 1] Even before the interviews for the research began, Ms. Rosa had expressed her concerns about supporting her ESL students in her science classes, especially when the classes consisted of 20- 20% ESL students in the mainstream classes. She believed that all her students had a variety of learning preferences and needs, and therefore, it was a challenge for her to find a ‘one size fits all’ approach of addressing her ESL students in mainstream science classes. When I asked her 65 how she handled the classroom dynamics of the mainstream biology class I was observing and that had seventeen English speaking students and five ESL students. She said that she had to take into consideration not only her ESL students but also the heterogeneity of her English-speaking students who came from different contexts. She also mentioned that she would start having a sense of who her students were and what their personalities were after the first week of the first semester in the school year. Excerpt 3: One size does not fit all in science I think it's difficult because it's almost on a student-by-student basis. I have some students who may be coming from like, they may have just moved here from a different country. I almost think that there's no one way that I would say, okay, this is how I approach all of my English second language learners, or this is how I approach all my international students or my kids who move from different schools or this is their first year from being homeschooled to being in public school. I don't feel like there's one way. I think it's a lot about for the first week of school, we spent a lot of time just talking to other person finding out about them, learning social skills, that when I'm talking to you, I'm going to look at you. When I meet you for the first time, I'm probably going to shake your hand if it's possible. Yeah, there are some cases in which that's not possible. Okay, then we need to respect the differences of our classmates. [Interview 1] The above excerpt shows that Ms. Rosa took time to understand the differences that her students possessed in terms of their multiple identities and what cultures they carried with them. For her, teaching science was not limited to imparting science content but also building a ‘culture of class’ where every student felt valued: “A lot of time, I feel like creating a culture of class is probably my biggest struggle. As more time develops, the culture of the class is more integrated, and we're welcoming and so students will kind of gravitate towards other people to work in groups. I tell them I've tried to integrate you as best I can into class, I will check on you individually.” [Interview 1]. In addition to understanding her ESL students and their linguistic backgrounds, Ms. Rosa believed that communicating with the students’ parents was of great importance for her to create a supportive learning environment. However, she expressed her concern that the communication was lacking, which in turn impeded her attempts to understand 66 her students better; she noted, “Not everybody has, like good communication between home and school, or between the teacher and the parents. What do you do with international students or students who are just having a bad day. Like, there's a lot of things that I don't know how to do” [Interview 2]. Apart from her concerns related to the lack of communication between teachers and ESL students’ families, Ms. Rosa also expressed that as a science teacher, she did not want her ESL students being pulled out of her classes to take the tests, especially because they were enrolled in the mainstream classes, and she perceived them to have adequate English proficiency to learn science. She shared: Excerpt 4: Pulling ESL students out of my classes So, they give a test here, the WIDA test. And so that's I guess required by somebody as they track ELL students as they're here at school. And they give us notes that say this student needs to be excused from your class so they can take this test. There are some kids that I would never have guessed would have had to take that test. Oh, and it is my understanding that it's ELL students who take that test. So, there are kids that are being pulled out of my class. I don't know why you would have any reason to take that test. So, I don't know if that's a good thing, or a bad thing that I don't know that they even would have been considered or labeled an ELL student because I don't know of, or it does not perceive to me that they're still learning English as another language. They are doing good in my biology class. [Interview 2] As seen in the above excerpt, Ms. Rosa thought that if her ESL students were doing well in their content classes, biology in this context, pulling them out of the mainstream classes for ELL support and/or for the ELL related tests was a seemingly doubtful practice. She frequently talked about her position as a science teacher being in a different situation than an English language arts teacher, especially for ESL students. She said: Excerpt 5: Science vs English mainstream classes A lot of things to think about. If I was struggling in an English class, am I struggling with the reading, like reading Shakespeare because it's written in Old English? Am I struggling because it's something that I'm not interested in? Versus like, if I'm studying in science, is it because there's science specific vocabulary? Or is it because I don't like science? You know, there's just so many other kinds of things to think about. And how 67 you approach reading a fiction book is very different than how you read a nonfiction book. And how you read a biochemistry book is going to be very different than how you read a biology book. And so I think about what are all those skills that I don't ever remember being explicitly taught, but somehow I know and I try to teach those during my class. [Interview 3] This excerpt shows that Ms. Rosa believed that content knowledge and understanding were contingent upon (1) what subjects were ESL students enrolled in, and (2) whether their struggles had to do with the language aspect of the course or their lack of interest as a whole. She frequently talked about the development of science literacy being a unique process in itself. Therefore, she believed that science could be hard for even native speakers of English, which will be described in detail in the subsequent section (under ‘connecting science to the real world’ as one of her pedagogies of care). Additionally, Ms. Rosa believed that caring entailed empathizing with her ESL students as they had a lot of work to do as a whole regarding linguistic and cultural adjustments in general and in mainstream content classes in specific. The following narrative exhibits her empathy and sense of appreciation towards her ESL students: Excerpt 6: Putting yourself in your ESL students’ shoes Honestly, sometimes I get nervous talking to second language learners because their voices are very quiet to begin with. And if I ask a question in the big group, they talk really like small voice. It's hard for me to hear. And it's hard for their classmates to hear. So, I'm just uncomfortable. So, I don't generally admit that to other people but I would much rather work in a small group or in a pair, at least until all the students feel more comfortable because I don't want to influence any embarrassment for any of the students, especially if language is not their first or English is not their first language because how would that feel like if I went to a different area where English was not like other people's like first language, and then to have somebody call me out on it? And I don't know what to say, or how to think about it. I feel like that would be scary. And so maybe that's my own thinking influencing my teaching. But if you were to just pick me up and drop me in, wherever, like, I think that that would be very intimidating. [Interview 3] The above excerpt shows Ms. Rosa’s empathetic nature as a teacher, especially towards her ESL students who came from different parts of the world at various stages of their lives. She imagined 68 putting herself into their shoes and mentioned that she would feel ‘intimidated’ if she had to do the same in a different language speaking world. All of the above-mentioned excerpts [Excerpts 1-6 are related to her intentionality and willingness to care for her ESL students through empathy and understanding, where they were at their developmental stages, and who they were. However, her pedagogy of care was not limited to her ESL students only. Instead, it was her overall goal to care for her students and help them learn science because she believed that all her students needed care and empathy. Later in the school year, when I asked her if her teaching would be any different if there were no ESL students in her biology class, she said: Excerpt 7: Caring for learners as a whole I don't think so because even within native English speakers, there's still a range of people and their skills and what they have. We had a professional development where we talked about language acquisition, and it was primarily for English speakers, but it was talking about the importance of having adults read to kids, and how many words that they can learn in a certain like time period in their development, and how even as an adult parent, you should still read to your teenage children. I think about those kids that don't have parents that read to them at all, or they don't have any books at their house. And so there's still a native English speaker, but they don't have the same skills as somebody who may have parents who read to them. And as much as I would like to say that I do things for English language learners, I think I just do it for learners as a whole. [Interview 7] While I did not have opportunities to interview native English speakers from her biology class to find out their interpretation of Ms. Rosa’s pedagogies of care, some narratives from the ESL focal participants from her class will be described in detail in the following students’ chapter to verify the alignment and/or misalignment between teacher’s and students’ interpretations and communication about pedagogy of care in the mainstream biology class. This section showed Ms. Rosa’s interpretation of ‘care’ in terms of her views towards her ESL students and their presence in the mainstream biology class. The sections that follow present her interpretation and enactment of pedagogies of care. 69 Pedagogy of care: Asset-based teaching. Ms. Rosa’s another recurring theme of care was her beliefs and enactments of asset-based teaching in the mainstream classes with a few ESL students who usually would go unnoticed in the process of imparting content knowledge. Regarding the use of asset-based teaching, she shared a trajectory of her own teaching and a shift in her mindset about her role. She recalled that she used to view her role as being the sole provider of knowledge and students were mere recipients of such knowledge. However, during the data collection for this study, she had already been teaching for about two decades and her belief had changed. She believed in leveraging students’ diverse experiences and giving them agency in making sense of the scientific concepts. Hence, her role as a creator of a space where her students, especially her ESL students would socialize with other students through interactions. She recalled: Excerpt 8: Leverage students’ ideas When I was first beginning teaching, I thought it was all about me. And I had the answers, and I needed to deliver the information. But that's not really true. Like, I don't need to tell them things. I mean I need to tell them some things, but not everything. And they have their own ideas. So why not leverage those? And if they can talk to the person next to them. And even if they talk about science for 30 seconds, and they talk about sports, or a dance or their friends, then they're still learning how to communicate. And isn't that part of school too? Like its purpose is that socialization piece. [Interview 2] She reported that she leveraged on her ESL students’ ideas by having them talk to each other in groups and pairs so they could be engaged in scientific sense-making process. The above excerpt also shows that she viewed her role as a facilitator of the learning process. However, she still believed that since complex scientific terms were difficult to comprehend (even for the English- speaking students in her class). Hence, she attempted to simplify the terms for all her students. She recalled her students’ evaluations where some of her students had interpreted her simplifying process as talking down to students. Therefore, she became more aware of how to support her 70 students’ learning process, especially ESL students without making them feel inferior. She shared: Excerpt 9: Simplifying scientific terms without talking down to students I need to make sure they know what those complex concepts are. So, I use normal people words. And not use them to talk down to them. Just to be able to make sure that they understand what those things are. I’ve tried to be very conscious of talking to them about how I process the words and not talking to them as if I’m dumbing it down. I don’t ever feel like I try to make it sound like I’m smart and you are dumb. I think there is a caution where how you teach kids about vocabulary and about reading could be perceived that they don’t know how to do this. You do know how to; you just might need some help. [Interview 3] This excerpt shows that in her attempt to value her ESL students as assets and not deficits, she had to remind herself of not offending them while simplifying the complex scientific terms all the time. As shown in the previous section about understanding her ESL students and their varied developmental levels, Ms. Rosa mentioned that all her ESL students had different learning needs. So, she believed in leveraging their experiences and multilingual repertoires in the scientific meaning making process. When I asked her about what approaches she used in leveraging their multilingual repertoires, she said that she would adopt a translanguaging approach, where her ESL students who shared the same first languages would discuss and make notes using multiple languages and literacy practices at their disposal. Although she had used a translanguaging approach in her other science classes in the past, where there were two or more ESL students from same first language background, she started using the term ‘translanguaging’ after our discussion around this topic. However, since the AP biology class that was part of this research had five ESL students who did not share their first languages and came from different countries, it was difficult for her to adopt a translanguaging approach in grouping them in terms of their first languages. Nevertheless, she would still find ways of incorporating it in ESL students’ 71 individual learning process by allowing and encouraging them to make hybrid notes using their multilingual literacy tools. She said: Excerpt 10: Translanguaging and hybrid note-making I can recall students in my AP bio classes where their textbook is written in English, but then their notes they write in their initial language. They'll go through and do some form of like hybrid notes, where there's some of the science words that are in English, and then the text after the words that they write is in their first language. And it seems like the hardest part is the science vocabulary because it is so particular. And sometimes there isn't an easy translation from one to the next. Sometimes students get nervous about it. Like, is it okay that they write their primary language? It's fine as long as I'm able to read or decipher what that is, for me, like I'm fine with it. By the time that the course ends, it seems like it's more on the focus of conveying it in English, then their notes are in their primary language. [Interview 4] Ms. Rosa used the terms ‘initial language’ and ‘primary language’ interchangeably with the first languages of her ESL students. While she encouraged them to make hybrid notes to facilitate their comprehension and processing of the science related information, she was aware that it would still be difficult for her students due to the lack of equivalent translations between their first languages and their second language, i.e., English. She also emphasized that the end product of such hybrid notes and learning process would still be to enhance the students’ ability to produce their assignments in English as all the tests were in English. In addition to hybrid notes, she also allowed them to use translation devices to ease their learning process. In fact, she reported that she highly encouraged them to do so and told them that there was nothing wrong in using a translator. She consciously reminded her ESL students that science was hard for all irrespective of their first language backgrounds, and therefore, using any tools and strategies to enhance their learning processes would be welcomed in her biology class or even tests, “They can use translators in class? Yes, they can use them on test. I mean, I just feel like it would make sense that if English is not your primary language, and you can do 72 something to help yourself, then you should use it.” [Interview 6]. She elaborated on this as follows: Excerpt 11: Use of Translators in content classes I try to think about it from another point of view. Studying science is really hard just to begin with. And could I imagine studying science, if English was not my primary language? I think that would be exceptionally difficult. So, why not let students use resources that can help them? So, to me, it just makes sense to allow students to use whatever resources they have available. Translator is a tool, it's not the answers. So, if you have to use a translator, to make it more accessible, great! Use one. If you need it said in a different way, great then let's say it in a different way. [Interview 6] This excerpt shows that Ms. Rosa not only allowed her students to use translators in her classes and tests, but also empathized with her ESL students and their struggles to process complex scientific processes in a second language. She believed that using translators and/or simplifying the language for her students was a way of making her teaching approach accessible and equitable for her ESL students. She also shared that not all the mainstream content area teachers would allow translators in classes, especially on tests but she did not agree with their approach, “I just think that's their philosophy that they want the student to know, whatever that is, in English. They just want it that way. I can't change what they think but I don't agree with it”. [Interview 6] To sum up this section, Ms. Rosa not only believed in adopting asset-based and accessible teaching for her ESL students but also for her English-speaking students through simplification and restatement of complex scientific terms. For example, instead of stating “transcription and translation are part of protein synthesis”, she would prefer to say “there are two steps involved in protein making”. However, she restated that she did not believe when people said simplifying complex terms would mean “dumbing things down because that's not the case but make it more accessible because I'd rather know what you know than you being inhibited because of some word that's on a test” [Interview 6]. In addition, she would try to make 73 the process more accessible by simply restating the questions “I'll have kids in all of my classes ask me to restate this question and sometimes I just read the question that's on the paper. But for them, it clears their mind. Other kids, I'll just talk to them and say don't even look at the test. Just look at me. And then I'll restate the question. And then like, oh, okay, and then they go back, and they write it or they bubble it, or they do whatever. So just think sometimes make it accessible to kids.’ [Interview 6]. All of these examples show Ms. Rosa’s interpretation of making scientific content accessible and asset-based to her ESL students. How these approaches are interpreted by her students will be explored in the following chapter. Pedagogy of Care: Student-centered teaching and cultivating collaboration in scientific meaning-making. Another recurring theme in Ms. Rosa’s pedagogy of care in her biology class was her intentional attempts to make her students work in groups of two or three for most of the classroom activities, which she called ‘buddies’. She would put the students with buddies that she wanted them to be with for about two weeks. And then she would want them to switch again so that they could meet other people and could learn to work with people who were different from them or similar to them and find out what it was like to meet new people. She did this because she had found a trend in her students that even after being with the same classmates for the entire semester or academic year, many students would not know each other’s name. Since she wanted them to feel seen and valued among their classmates, she adopted this buddy system. Although she was aware of the benefits of having base groups, the groups that worked with each other for the entire semester or academic year, she believed in switching the buddies every two weeks so they could get opportunities to work with new students who were from different linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds. She said: 74 Excerpt 12: Buddies for cultivating connections For a long time, I didn't really think about it, I just thought, oh, they can sit wherever they want. But I found out a couple of years ago that kids will sit through an entire class, an entire year, and not know their classes’ names. That bothers me and makes me sad. How could you sit in a class for 180 days and not know the people in your class? So that tried to tell me that kids are in isolation that they come and even though I know the names of all the kids in class, they don't? They're compartmentalized and they're just one kid in one class… Even if you know one kid's name in class, then that makes a building of 1200, one person smaller. Hopefully by the end, you'll know everybody in classes' name, then when you see them down the hallway, you'd be like, that's a face I know. That's really important to me now. [Interview 2] This shows Ms. Rosa’s overall purpose of giving a sense of being seen in her mainstream biology class. Another reason she switched buddies after two weeks was that if the students did not like working with their buddies, they did not have to stick to the person they were not comfortable working with. That also gave all her ESL students opportunities to work with other ESL students and native speakers of English to share with and learn from. In some of her science classes, she would also assign students a seat to get what she wanted in terms of their class participation and building relationships among others. However, the same technique in other classes would “completely stifles the conversation” so she intentionally “tried to make the buddies intentional, but for different purposes” [Interview 2]. In order to balance individual student’s learning process and sharing with their buddies, Ms. Rosa adopted a ‘think, pair, and share’ approach. In almost all of my class observations of her, I had observed students working on their own for a few minutes and then they would turn to their buddies to discuss, which would ultimately share their findings to the entire class. Not all buddy pairs participated in the big group sharing every time as she would give all groups a chance to do so. Elaborating on this, she said: Excerpt 13: Think, pair, and share with buddies Some of the stuff that I tried this year is that you do your first draft thinking where you have to do what you think in your notebook without somebody else's influence. So that way, everybody has a chance to write something. And then you can bring it together and 75 share what your ideas are in a group and then even if your group doesn't agree, everybody has something already that they can bring, and then add to the paper or add to the process. I think that helps because initially, I didn't do that because I thought, Okay, well, my classes are pretty active, like they do a lot of talking. But just because they talk a lot doesn't mean they talk about what I want them to talk about or if they even include everybody. Maybe my job is to help facilitate them. [Interview 3] She believed that ‘think, pair, and share’ would give everyone opportunities to share their processes and product of the classroom assignments. In the biweekly rotations, ESL students would be paired with English speaking students at times during the semester. She then moved around and checked in with each buddy pair or truddy (she called three students a truddy) to see if ESL or other students with learning challenges needed extra support. Ms. Rosa noted: “So that holds me accountable for going in and checking in with groups. It also holds the buddy responsible because we can't leave our partners behind. So. if your partner doesn't understand something, either because of language, or physical or mental handicap, or just the fact that they're not paying attention that day, you can't go ahead without your buddy” [Interview 3]. However, I observed a very interesting phenomenon when it came to the ‘share’ part of the ‘think, pair, and share’ technique where the students had to share their responses to the entire class. In one of the classes I had observed between interviews 3 and 4, I noticed that she cut some students off (including the focal student participant in this study) when they were discussing in pairs. When I asked Ms. Rosa about this, she said, “I try to catch them right before the majority of kids have switched on to another topic, which means I am cutting some kids off. And I know that but I make a conscious instructional decision to cut that off, because I'd rather make sure the kids know that they have to talk about science” [Interview 4]. When asked how she managed to address ESL students who may be struggling having conversations with their peers and share to the entire class after the buddy sharing, she said: 76 Excerpt 14: Your buddy can answer for you They have to realize that I'm going to call on somebody. And if I call on you, and English is not your first language, then that's fine. Then your buddy can answer for you if it's too much for you to be able to explain what it is in just overall in English, if that's too much of a struggle for you. I know you've already had a chance to talk with your buddy, I can pick on you because you've had a chance to be able to think about it, you've had a chance to be able to take somebody else's answer. And I'll even tell the kids, if you don't have an answer, steal your buddy's answer because I want to hear you speak in class. And I think the idea of stealing your buddy's answer, like, that's fine, because you helped create that answer. And even if you struggled with creating that answer, you now have to say it. [Interview 4] This seemed contradictory to what she had shared in interview 3 about the buddy groups giving ample opportunity to everyone, including her ESL students, to share their ideas. On the one hand, the ESL students were allowed to make ‘hybrid notes’ and use translators to facilitate their learning and the individual thinking in ‘think, share, and pair’. On the other hand, telling ESL students that their English-speaking buddies could answer for them if they struggled sharing in English seemed to counter this purpose. This was a contested space of learning for ESL in such mainstream higher level biology classes. In addition to creating buddies for students to collaborate on the classroom projects, Mr. Rosa also used process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) to assist her students’ learning. The POGIL in her biology class was an assignment which led the students through a series of pictures or graphs to look at and they had to do the analysis of the material/content and make sense of it. For a lot of her classes, the students worked on the POGIL together with their buddies or sometimes they did them separately at home. If they worked on their own at home, they would then come together with their buddies and compare their answers to the comprehension questions. As we saw in the student’s chapter section, Spring found these POGIL assignments not simplified for ESL students. Ms. Rosa, however, believed that the students would mark the questions that they needed help with. This contradicts Spring’s data in an interesting way 77 because her view was that the ESL students would not have to ask a lot of comprehension questions if the content was already simplified for them, especially in the POGIL assignments. Pedagogy of care: Helping students connect science to the real world, beyond language. Ms. Rosa stated that as a teacher in general and biology teacher in specific, her ulterior motive was to help her students understand the connection between science and its impact on the world around them. She also mentioned that she would often tell her ESL students to think about the impact of science through any semiotic modes. This was when she questioned the importance of science literacy and said that all her students, including her ESL students, would have to learn science as a separate skill to build connections to the outer world. She said: Excerpt 15: What is science literacy? What does science literacy really mean? I mean, when you think about it, is that process? Is that vocabulary? Is that understanding and explaining the main idea of what you're looking for? I think I try to help students, and this is all of my students. And I don't feel like I pay special attention to one group of students more than others. If I can give you tools like prefixes or suffixes or the ability to take long words and break them down into smaller pieces, I think that just helps us overall communicate. And so, I would not have thought of that as a skill to help just English language learners or kids that are struggling. [Interview 2] This shows her belief about science being a unique language in itself, and therefore, could be hard for any student as her previous narratives also showed. Instead of focusing on her ESL students in helping them with English, she believed that giving tools to navigate science would benefit all her students as her major goal was not to improve their English skills but to teach them to think scientifically. Having mentioned her overall concern for all her students, Ms. Rosa added that her ESL students would benefit from her teaching them transferable skills, such as understanding the meaning of vocabulary items through prefixes and suffixes would help them learn other content areas too, “Let's show them that these things are all connected to each other” [Interview 2]. 78 In addition, Ms. Rosa mentioned that her focus was to help her students take scientific inquiry as a transferable skill in their life. Elaborating on this, she said, Excerpt 16: My students are scientists even if they don’t go into science in the future I want to do a good job. I want my kids to like science. I don't know, just generally, I feel like they should be able to know that they are scientists even if they don't go into science in the future. The stuff that we're teaching is important to you. like new research that's being made in science fields right now has an impact on them. If it's not impacting them directly at the age of 15 or 18, it's going to at some point in their life, and I would like it if kids were to be able to be aware of and know that they can question things and find answers. Like, that's what I would see as my general goal for being here. Like, I want to like to come to my job every day. [Interview 3] One way she encouraged her students to keep updated about the impact of science in everyday life was through her sharing a piece of current news about the impact of science on people and the world at the beginning of every class. She believed it to be a science-news based icebreaker for her students. She wanted them to understand that science is not a static body of knowledge but that it’s constantly growing. Ms. Rosa also believed that bringing the news in the form of words and photos made it more accessible for her ESL students and other student who were struggling to read heavy science-based textbooks so that they could connect science to the fact that people were still learning about monkeys, earthquakes, volcanoes, the moon, dinosaurs and so on which some of her students were interested in. In addition, the news did not come from the biology field only but from science in general. She also believed that some of the things her students were learning about and discovering through such news were going to make a difference in what policies they would vote for as they grew up “If we're learning about a new location of oil, and coal, should we drill or should we not? It gives them an opportunity to learn about it, but then also be able to talk about it. And so, I think it's a conscious decision on my part. And I started a couple years ago and my students like it, I like it” [Interview 2]. During class observations, I noticed that students would 79 ask her “Miss Rosa, did anything happen in the world about science yesterday?” if she forgot to share a science fact in the beginning of the class. One of the students who would constantly remind Ms. Rosa about the science fact and also add either a new science fact or add an extra fact was Spring, my focal student participant, whose version of the narratives will be presented in the following chapter. For example, one piece of science news she had brought to the class was about a Chinese scientist who had illegally created the gene-edited twins. Ms. Rosa connected this to the DNA, mutations, and viruses topics being discussed in the class; she also connected it to the ethical considerations of scientific experiments. She believed that with all these techniques, she wanted to plant the seeds of scientific inquiry and ethics in her students as she cared about them and their future. Pedagogy of care: Communicating and enacting intentional care. In one of the classes I had observed between interviews 5 and 6, Ms. Rosa, exhibited the culture of care in her teaching. Her students formed a big circle in front of the class, near Ms. Rosa’s giant desk. She called these circles the care circles. She had intentionally planned a segment of her class to talk about self- care this time. She placed a box with laminated cards of different colors, sizes, and writings on her desk. She asked the students to pick as many cards as they wanted, read them, and think about what they read. The students were allowed to change their cards if they did not want to reflect on them. She told them to pick the cards that spoke to them as they were going to take them home as her gift to remind them that they are cared for, their emotions were valued and acknowledged. When I asked her what the purpose of creating her care circle was, she reflected about the activity as follows: Excerpt 17: Care circles as caring practices in science class I think about what happened yesterday in class where we just talked about life. I'm not sure that kids ever have that conversation with an adult who can guide them. And I'm not a guide in the sense of like what they should be doing. But I can tell them that there's 80 more important things than just doing well in school. I valued my time yesterday with my kids because maybe it got some of them to think. And if it doesn't, to them, it's just another day that they didn't have to do homework [laughs]. So I don't know. A lot of like, thinking and thoughts. Did I do this well? Did I not do this well? Is it gonna make a difference to kids? I don't know but I do care about all of them. [Interview 6] The excerpt above shows that Ms Rosa’s pedagogy of care took the forms of her valuing her students, her time interacting with them about what really matters in life, and her continuous reflection and asking questions if and what went well in her teaching. She mentioned that the activity provided her great joy as her students were excited about it. The students not only picked the cards they liked, but they also shared why they had chosen certain cards over others. Ms. Rosa also believed that any teacher could adopt care if only they added small practices in their teaching irrespective of different content. She mentioned, “You don't have to be evolved or enlightened or transformed, like, you know, these things as adults, don't we?” Crucially, Ms. Rosa had been incorporating these care circles in her teaching over the course of the last ten years, even though the nature of the activities had not always been consistent. How these care circles were viewed by the focal participant from her class will be discussed in the student data chapter (Chapter 5). In addition to frequently creating and cultivating care circles for her students, Ms. Rosa also explained that the circles gave her students, especially her ESL students, an opportunity to process their thoughts and put their feelings into words. She stated that she did not interpret her students’ silence as a lack of knowledge, especially her ESL students. She believed that when her ESL students are silent after being asked a question, it gives them time to process information, make sense of what they were processing, and string the ideas together so that they could articulate their responses in comprehensible ways. When I reminded her of a moment from her 81 class where the students were silent, and she had told them to be comfortable with silence, she shared: Excerpt 18: Caring entails embracing silence for information processing They feel awkward in silence. I do think about that with silence, and I watch other teachers teach. Okay? Does anybody have any questions? Okay, and then they go right away? It's like, did you even really want them to ask any questions? If that's the case, then maybe we do have to be quiet. If it's just having a conversation, if I'm REALLY listening to you, I should have a break afterwards, because I shouldn't already have my thoughts in my head, because then I wasn't listening in the first place. So how does that work? As you're talking, am I really listening to you? Or did I listen to what I needed you to say just so that I can know what my next thought is? And now I'm just waiting for you to take a breath. Like what is it? How does conversation work? If it works where I'm an active listener for the entire thing you say, shouldn't I then have a pause? because I have to think about what you said in a different language. I have to think and formulate my own idea to then be able to answer back to you. So how did we get to the point where we eliminated the break? Because then we're not really listening. [Interview 6] Thus, while Ms. Rosa shared the importance of teaching her ESL students to embrace awkward silences and not to have an urge of filling in those silences, she also believed that she had to model how to do so in her own teaching so her students learn from observing her. However, even though she was willing to actively listen to her ESL students and pay attention to each and every one of them, there were times when Ms. Rosa had to rush in the interest of time. At times, she was in a situation where the bell rang for one of her classes, a student was still trying to ask a question and there were new students coming in for another class. She needed to put handouts on her desk, and say, “Hay, can you walk and talk at the same time because I need to do this? And I want to help you”. She thought that a lack of the continuous exertion of the practice of care results from her having had to do numerous things that needed to get done in a limited time, which in turn hindered her praxis of active listening and embracing silence. She felt upset as this affected her ESL students’ engagement and interaction time with her. This led to her emotion labor as she found herself in situations where she had to strive to 82 balance between caring for her ESL students’ needs and fulfilling her teacher duties for all her classes. Moreover, Ms. Rosa believed that caring for her ESL students’ holistic development also included learning how to translate her intentions and caring practices effectively to them so that they understood where she came from. She recommended that all content area teachers who teach classes that included ESL students be reflective of what they already knew about caring practices. This was necessary to make the students feel welcomed and cared for. When asked how these teachers could translate and communicate those practices to the students for their overall success, beyond subject area knowledge, she shared: Excerpt 19: How do we translate care to our ESL students? They're [teachers] aware of wellbeing and care in their own personal life, but they don't know how to translate it to their ESL students. You know, like, they may not know how to translate that in a classroom … with only two or three ESL students…Are there things that we can do to help those kids? If there are, what can we do about it? Or is it something that we think of it as our own practice, whether or not it's religious or physical or spiritual, that we keep to our own identity, and we don't share it with other people? and our students? [Interview 5] This excerpt shows that Ms. Rosa’s understanding of the enactment and modeling of caring practices in her own and her fellow content area teacher colleagues required ways of making caring practices responsive to the diverse needs of ESL students in such mainstream classes. She further added, “Hopefully they understand that I care about them as human beings, and not just science students and ESL students. That's becoming more and more important to me is that they get the idea that they're more than just a vessel that I fill up with science information” [Interview 2]. 83 Advocacy Ms. Rosa’s advocacy for her ESL students was a form of pedagogy of care. She mainly advocated for students’ mental and emotional wellbeing. In addition, she advocated for making content comprehensible and accessible for her ESL students. Caring as form of advocacy for ESL students’ mental and emotional wellbeing. In almost all classes I observed of Ms. Rosa’s teaching, she would practice one minute of physical stretching or breathing during her class. She would ask her students to stand up from their chairs and stretch. Other times, she would lead them to a deep breathing exercise for a minute. She did that as she believed in calming her students down despite the difficulty of the topic being taught. Also, she believed in the holistic development of her students, beyond imparting subject area knowledge with as many wellbeing practices incorporated in her science class as possible. However, Ms. Rosa asserted that she had not been like that from the beginning of her teaching career. It had only been within the last five years that she had started adopting a pedagogy of care through practicing and promoting self-care in her teaching. She said, “I see kids walking around, being stressed out about things. It's only been within the last couple of years that it begins to make sense to me. If I burn myself out in this job, then who am I good for at all? [Interview 3] In the last five years, care as a student advocacy had been one of the core components in her teaching, sometimes integrated with her conscious decisions, and other times as a result of her practicing self-care. One recurring theme in her narratives was about helping students understand the importance of noticing and acknowledging what they were thinking and feeling about themselves, especially her ESL students’ perceptions of their lack of proficiency in 84 English. She drew from her own experiences of being aware of her thoughts and emotions so she could promote it in her students, as expressed in the following excerpt: Excerpt 20: Turning the conversations around Think about the dialogue that's in your head. Oh, that's stupid. Oh, I shouldn't have done that. Oh, my English is not good enough. Well, what if I turn that conversation around? What if I help kids turn that conversation around? Because we talk in our head faster than we talk out loud? And this dialogue in your head is all the time. So if we're aware that as an adult, I can make that as a difference. Then, why not help kids see that? [Interview 4] In this excerpt, Ms. Rosa described helping her students notice their perceptions about themselves and advocate for their abilities beyond just their perceived lack of English proficiency. Her care in the form of advocacy was not only related to her ESL students but any of her students who experienced anxiety related to test scores and postsecondary education. She strongly believed that teachers played an active role in advocating for their students’ mental health and in communicating with them about it. She mentioned: Excerpt 21: It’s more important than ever to talk about mental health I just feel like there's got to be a time and a place where we start talking to kids about the fact that life is not over if you get a D, if you fail a test, so what? Like you will be fine. you will be fine. And in fact, I should probably even change that you are fine now. I don't know that for some reason, I just feel like it's more and more important than ever to start talking to kids about it. [Interview 5] While strongly emphasizing the importance of having conversations with students around their mental health, Ms. Rosa shared her belief that teaching with care also meant preparing students to advocate for themselves so that they could seek help even after going to college. She frequently told them how a college classroom culture would look like and how the advocacy and help seeking behaviors they were learning would benefit them in their colleges. She expressed her concern about her students as follows: Excerpt 22: Who or what is their support network? They're juniors. They're going to be applying for college next year. They're under this pressure that they feel from the school or from their parents or from the College Board. They're going to go to university, they're going to be by themselves. Who or what is their 85 support network? What are they taking away that they know somebody that cares about them? I don't know why this is so important for me now but for whatever reason it is [Interview 6] Ms. Rosa, who emphasized that part of caring and advocating entailed normalizing conversations about mental health with students, stated: “I don’t know why this is so important for me now but for whatever reason it is.” Over the course of nine months of data collection, I observed Ms. Rosa steadily enact a culture of care in her teaching, reflecting, and sharing her beliefs. She constantly talked about advocating for students by creating a space to talk about students’ mental health in all mainstream classes. Recalling a heartbreaking news about students’ suicidal rate, she shared: Excerpt 23: What’s happening to our kids? In the last 17 months, I want to say somebody told me it was either nine or 11 kids have either overdosed or committed suicide. Mostly former students. In fact, I think they’re all former students. That’s a lot! … So what’s happening that our kids feel like that’s their only solution? [Interview 6] After a long pause, Ms. Rosa said that as a teacher, she believed in building trust with her students so they could advocate for themselves and seek the help they needed before their stress and anxiety took tragic forms and emphasized that such help seeking behaviors could be cultivated in schools or in families. She continued: Excerpt 24: We don’t want to talk about mental health Maybe we don't talk about our mind's health, mental health. We talk about mental illness, but we don't want to talk about mental health. And what's wrong with saying those words? I know like that is completely taboo in many families and cultures. And I'm not saying everybody has to say everything about the therapist or the counselor they see. But if I have to go see somebody so I can figure things out, there's nothing wrong with that. [Interview 6] As seen in the above excerpt, Ms. Rosa’s concern and care for her students included her awareness of how mental health related help-seeking behaviors could be influenced by students’ cultural and familial perceptions towards it. 86 Advocacy to make content accessible to students. In one of my class observations of Ms. Rosa when she teaching about organisms and their structures, she explained how she used ‘beasties tables’ in class. Beasties are cartoon-like creations. When asked her what the purpose behind using the cartoon pictures in her advanced biology class was, she laughed and stated that she intended to make her content as easily accessible as possible to her students: Excerpt 25: Beastie tables for simplification It was pretty cool, because it's cartoon pictures, so it makes it more accessible to all kids. And it teaches the science that they needed to understand, like, the relationships between organisms and their traits. And so if I just gave them a bunch of pictures of like real organisms, sometimes it's too much. And so I can then give them a more simplified diagram of like an actual science one, but in this case, okay, it still teaches the same concept and we don't have to focus on all the minute details of like an actual living population of organisms. [Interview 5] This shows that Ms. Rosa was intentionally invested in making content comprehensible and accessible for her students. When I asked her if she made such decisions consciously, she emphasized how important it is to use multiple modes of input in order to create an equitable space of learning for her students. During the same interview, I had made a list of common strategies she had been using in her teaching, one of which was putting on closed captions on all the videos she showed to her class. There was a day when she started playing the video, she started assembling the handouts that were laying on her table. After about 30-35 seconds, she noticed that the captions were off. She apologized to her students, paused the video, and restarted the video, but this time with the captions on. When I brought it up in our interview, she mentioned that she consciously put on the closed captions to help hearing-impaired students, ESL students and anyone who would benefit from the captions. In this regard, she shared the following interesting narratives of a resonance with herself being benefited from the captions: Excerpt 26: Captions are helpful cues Sometimes I have hearing impaired students. I needed to be able to put the closed captions on there. When I watch a movie, I have to put them on because sometimes I don't 87 hear everything. Or sometimes it helps me focus more on the movie. And if it helps me, then okay, maybe it helps kids. And maybe for some of them, if they're distracted by something, isn't this a cue then where they could still potentially read it? So, I think it's helpful for our hearing impaired students. That's how they're going to get the information. It’s helpful for our ESL kids. But for all the rest of us, like, it doesn't hurt us. I mean, it might take at the bottom of the screen away, but okay, you still get the most of the picture? [Interview 5] Her saying “And if it helps me, then. okay, maybe it helps kids.” shows her enactment of this teaching practice based on her own experiences. In addition, Ms. Rosa believed in elaborating and explaining the scientific concepts in simple language with as little jargon as possible. I asked her what her perceptions were about simplified input. She believed that the major purpose in learning and teaching of science is to understand the concept and process, rather than making her students learn difficult vocabulary by heart. She said: Excerpt 27: There’s a time and a place for vocabulary Not everybody is going to be a scientist. You can go look up complicated words. But if you can explain like what a process is, and be able to explain it to somebody else, you're really teaching that person whatever content that is. So that just confirms that you understand whatever you're talking about. So there's a time and a place for vocabulary. But within the last several years, they talk about helping students understand information, rather than just make it a vocab class. [Interview 5] In delving deeper into this idea of meaning making over word memorization, Ms. Rosa gave a specific example from Biology, a class I had observed, and made a similar connection with other content area classes such as history, and English language arts. She continued: Excerpt 28: Biology can be vocabulary intensive Biology, in particular, can be very vocabulary intensive. A few years ago, we were struggling with a number of failures, number of students who failed in biology. And then, okay, well, why are they failing? Well, if it's just a vocab class, what advantage does that have for them? So I'd rather teach what the concept is. Now there are still my colleagues out who will give a vocab list and they're like, you have to know what these words are. Okay. I mean that's how they teach. And there are some science words like, for example, enzyme. Can't really get around the word enzyme. But if I can explain, like, what's happening, um, I think that that's fine. And I think the same thing would hold true for History or English, anyone, maybe even in English, they need to be able to understand or break down a word with prefixes and suffixes or something. But I'm not always convinced that having a complicated vocabulary where you can take SAT words and 88 dissect them, I'm not really sure that that's. I don't know. I guess it would depend on the situation. [Interview 5] The above excerpt shows that even though Ms. Rosa emphasized helping students understand the concept and the process in science, especially biology, she did not fully disregard the learning and teaching of vocabulary. She was cognizant of the fact that discipline related complicated words needed to be taught and learned in particular contexts rather than in isolation. In addition, Ms. Rosa believed in equipping students with the metalanguage to form words; for example, she introduced the meanings of affixes so that the students could translate the knowledge in understanding more derivative words with the same affixes in biology and also in other classes. Based on a lot of such teaching moments I had observed in her classes, I asked her if that had been a common best practice of teaching derivative words in science, or if it was her preferred way of doing so. In response, she shared the following interesting narrative of what she did and why she did so by including examples and experiences from her teaching of sciences (biology, anatomy, and physiology): Excerpt 29: Scientific terms in layperson language I don't know to what extent it's done in other people's classes. But as a person who teaches anatomy and physiology, you can tell a lot just by breaking down what a word is. If you go to a doctor, and they're talking about an angiogram, you can break that down, right? Angio blood vessels, gram is a recording. So then you don't have to be ignorant or misinformed if you go to a doctor, and they're using their normal science language because sometimes if you go to a specialist, that's just how they talk now they've kind of like removed themselves from the layperson language…And I've had kids come back, and they're like, since you taught me those, like, I can read my own medical report now…They're like, I can watch Grey's Anatomy and I can know what these things are [laughs]. [Interview 5] Sharing these experiences exuberantly, Ms. Rosa, after a pause for a while with constant smile on her face, stated that this entire process had been part of her teaching development, or evolution in her own words. She mentioned that she used to be a teacher who would throw complex science terms with standard definitions, which many of her students, especially her ESL 89 students would find difficult to add more vocabulary in their learning process. Ms. Rosa also shared that as a science teacher, it is the science that she always conceived in her mind first and then found the simplified tools to convey the concept, “I think about it because to me, the science comes first. and then filling in the details comes second, but I think it might be more engaging for kids to do it the other way. But I'm not ready to make that change. It's too much thinking.” [laughs] [Interview 5] To sum up Ms. Rosa’s pedagogy of care, she explicitly communicated to her ESL students that she cared for them. In addition, she enacted her care for them through practices such as connecting science to the real world and simplifying content. In addition, she enacted her care by advocating for their emotional wellbeing. In her enactment of a pedagogy of care, Ms. Rosa experienced a myriad of emotions related to her teaching. In the following section, I present Ms. Rosa’s emotion-related findings. Emotions Ms. Rosa believed that care involves a lot of emotions, which is contextual and discursive most of the time. It is in particular teaching moments and decision making that certain emotions emerged in her teaching role, especially in her enactment of caring practices. However, all emotions are not related to teaching and caring for students. They are part of teachers’ personal and professional lives, and influence how they teach and enact caring practices. In this subsection, I present Ms. Rosa’s emotions in terms of her sharing emotions to her students in an authentic manner. This practice of sharing her emotions was part of caring, but it also resulted in the emergence of emotion labor that arose from a conflict between what she wanted to do and what she had to do. What is equally important to note, however, are the emotion rewards based on her students’ responses to her caring practices. 90 Modeling authenticity in sharing emotions. Modeling authenticity in sharing emotions had been an integral part of Ms. Rosa’s later years of teaching. According to her, including socio- emotional topics and conversations in education was necessary. In a reflective manner, she questioned the missing pieces in the curriculum, “What about that emotional piece? And that social piece? And that I don't know, being a good person?”. She strongly believed that care included the willingness and ability to express emotions in order to build trust and create a safe space for students to acknowledge, accept, and articulate their emotions. She shared: Excerpt 30: Vulnerability gives you freedom I feel like I've done this really good job about being an authentic person and telling kids like my emotions and letting them be okay. And showing kids that it's okay for them to have emotions and feelings. Sometimes I just outright tell my kids, I'm having a bad day. This is what I'm thinking about. This is what I need to be right now. I think there's a fine line with saying to kids, I'm having a bad day. I just need you to understand that I might not be my normal self today. I think that that now gives me some freedom to be able to say things. I think it makes me seem more like a real person that not everything is just great. [Interview 6] She also shared that this practice of sharing her emotions with her students had not been a practice that she adopted from the very beginning of her teaching career. Rather, it came as she started making students’ wellbeing in her science class a priority. She said, “I think for a long time, I used to just keep it on the inside and not say anything. And then there would be kind of like an internal conflict. I’ve really evolved from this person who was highly materialistic to now learning and giving and teaching and emoting.” [Interview 6]. Ms. Rosa also believed that teacher emotion and student emotions are interconnected. She was very articulate about how her emotions and her multiple roles at school and at home at times prompted her more to be a ‘doing’ person rather than ‘being’ and therefore, her actions seemed to gear towards getting things done. It is not only her emotions and busy work that play a 91 role but also her students’ exam related anxiety and stress that she, as a teacher, absorbed. She mentioned: Excerpt 31: My kids [students] are tired or absent or stressed I think we all have things that, as you say, not interfere but interplay with what we do here. I'm in the busiest section of doing and not really being. Because I have lots of different things in my mind. I have some family stuff that's going on. I have a lot of things that I’m thinking about with my family. Then you come to school, and it's AP exam week. And so my kids are tired or absent or stressed. And so you have that energy that goes with it. So there's many areas that are pulling my attention. [Interview 5]. Although Ms. Rosa was aware of her and her students’ emotions affecting each other, she maintained hope and affirmed that such moments of being overwhelmed generally eventually come to an end. She said, “Okay, this is temporary, you can get through this. And then you have your next thing. You can see the light at the end of the tunnel.” [Interview 5]. Noting that sharing her emotions with students was one of her ways of enacting care for them, she elaborated: Excerpt 32: We [teacher and students] influence each other I also know that what I bring to the table, you bring all those other things, you bring your family and your emotions and your list of things to do, like all of those have an impact on you. I want kids to realize that we're all family, like we're all human. And our cultures, and our differences are nice. But in the end, we're all humans and have emotions. I want kids to know, overall, that I care about them, that they're more than just a body who sits in here. And they have an influence on me just as I have an influence on them. I think that we don't necessarily show kids, or tell them or just make sure that they even know that they're valued. [Interview 3] This excerpt reveals Ms. Rosa’s perception that the teacher and student emotions influenced each other, despite the cultural differences between them. Her difficult emotions influenced how she communicated with them, and how her students’ emotions guided her caring practices in her science class. Regarding her ESL students, especially those who used to be quiet in her class, she used to think that they were quiet and shy students, but she learned to check in on them, “Before I'd be like, okay, cool, that kid's quiet. Like I don't have to worry about them today. But now like 92 if your head's down in class, I'm going to come and ask you, are you okay? So, teaching mainstream science is more than just a job for me” [Interview 3]. As seen in the above excerpts and expressions, Ms. Rosa’s conflict of emotions related to the expression of her emotions and enacting caring practices as a science teacher led to emotion labor and burnout at times, which is discussed next. Emotion labor related to preparing students for the test. As seen in the earlier sections, Ms. Rosa strongly advocated for teaching students the process of scientific meaning making rather than preparing them solely for the tests. However, since the test scores of the students also played a great role in their post-secondary education and college enrollment, she experienced emotion labor due to the conflict between teaching content and preparing them for the test. Cognizant of the fact that her students were instrumentally motivated, to do well on the AP tests, she has mixed emotions of being relieved and overwhelmed simultaneously. In an interview just after the AP tests were over, she disclosed: Excerpt 33: I have an overwhelming feeling about my students’ tests Since really the AP test is over, it feels like such a relief in the sense of the test is over. But I also have this overwhelming sense that I did not prepare students well for their test. And of course, then I have a conflict like, okay, is it really all about the test? Is it more about the learning experience? Do they have to do well on the test? Don't they do well on the test regardless of I'm their teacher, because they're that kind of kid? because I know a lot of these kids are great, motivated, and they're test motivated. [Interview 6] As stated, Ms. Rosa had mixed emotions of being relieved and overwhelmed simultaneously. Her sole focus had not been on preparing her students for the tests. This suggests a sense of what she cares about in her teaching. She was also willing to convey a message to her students that those tests were just a means to an end and not an end in themselves. She wanted to help her students to understand the connection between the AP tests and their overall learning. She continued: 93 Excerpt 34: It’s a real struggle It's a very conflicted time for me just because of all of those feelings and what the kids bring in. And then, you know, like I just want them to realize it's just a test. And you will be fine. If you get a five, great. If you get a one, great. Like it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. But their brains aren't wired that way right now. Their brain is wired where I have to get a four, I have to get a five. Because they see it as a means to their end. And I just think, NO, there's so many more important things for you to get to but I WAS them. So I get it. Like, I know that that's what's the most important thing for you right now. So it's a real struggle. [Interview 6] On the one hand, Ms. Rosa felt bad for her students as they are test motivated and might miss the bigger picture of learning. She found the testing time ‘a struggle’ in her teaching, even though she had taught for almost eighteen years at the time of the study. On the other hand, she empathized with her students when she recalled her high school years “I WAS them. So I get it.” Importantly, she continued to convey to her students that tests are just a small piece of a big puzzle, i.e., the environment around us and our roles in it. Emotion labor of being a teacher. Another source of Ms. Rosa’s emotion labor was her perception of the complex nature of the teaching profession itself. She believed that teaching is a difficult profession. As a science teacher teaching a mainstream class that included a few ESL students and students who needed accommodations, the amount of work would pile up in enacting her caring practices. She described being overwhelmed by her work and said, “I would say, if anything, I am overwhelmed. I am very overwhelmed with the amount of stuff I have to do. Like I'm behind in terms of my grading” [Interview 2]. Despite her emotion of being overwhelmed, Ms. Rosa underscored that she loved her job, “But I also realized, I still like my job. Like, I like my kids. Like, generally speaking. I have good kids. And that's good” [Interview 2]. Her overwhelming feelings and emotion labor stemmed from her perceptions about how she was viewed as a teacher by parents and others with respect to the time and efforts she 94 invested in teaching and related time consuming activities (e.g., emails to parents). She shared her frustration related to emotion labor as follows: Excerpt 35: I take my job really seriously And there are times where I go home, and I am frustrated beyond belief. It just seems like there's always more. And I don't know that people know that I take my job really seriously. Like I when I talk to like parents, oh, well, thanks for doing this. Well, you don't understand that. That email that I sent you took me 40 minutes to write. Because I want to come across looking professional. I want to do a good job. I want to help my kids. And that all takes time. [Interview 6] Ms. Rosa’s emotion labor was also related to her struggle in balancing time between caring for her students and teaching and grading. For example, sometimes some of her ESL students would come to her to ask questions and have conversations about their wellbeing and their needs after the classes, which she loved doing with all her students. However, since she only had 7 minutes between two classes, she had to get ready for the next class, too, and she would find herself in a contested mental space. She explained, Excerpt 36: What I would like to do versus what my brain does I feel like this awkwardness where, like, what's the right amount of time? …I would love to talk to you. But I also have to do this. And I see that pile of papers to grade. And it's that mindset of what's most important, yeah, you can have a priority of talking to another human being and learning about them and their needs or you could be thinking I've got to do that, I've got to do this, I've got to get to this appointment. And so I have this pull of what I would like to do versus what my brain still does. So it's good and bad. [Interview 2] Despite all her caring efforts, Ms. Rosa found herself in a conflict between her willingness to help her students and what she had to do. Despite all these contextual instances of emotion labor that she felt and shared, Ms. Rosa restated that she loved her job, even though she found herself questioning why she was at the teaching job at times. She said: Excerpt 37: Difficult task and emotion labor but still love my job I can work all the time. There's always more to do. Yeah, there's always things to change. There's, I mean, this whole notebook is my list of things that I need to do. And you just look at it. And you're like, how do you do all that like all the time, and it's a lot. And so it always just seems like there's more. Your pay doesn't go up. I've taken a pay cut for X 95 number of years. Yeah. My insurance rates go up. So why am I doing this, I have a college degree, where if I did not do this, I could make more money. I could work less and make more money than doing what I'm doing right here. And yet I come to work every day. Like I still like my kids. So I think what's really hard is to realize I should work less and make more and have less people angry at me if I go do a different job. So why am I still here? I don't know why. I mean, I like my job. [Interview 3] The above excerpt is a good example of how her emotion labor was connected to various broader sociopolitical issues related to the teaching profession as a whole and the dilemma she often had regarding her decision to stay in the job after exerting herself to caring practices for her mainstream science classes that included ESL students. In order to regulate her emotions, she would share her feelings and burnout experiences with her school principal and her colleagues who would support her and validate her feelings. She revealed: Excerpt 38: I ask for help I think about my friends like Mrs. Y, like how many times have I come in and just cried at her because I'm so overwhelmed with things. And so to realize that there is a personal aspect to this job, where other people see you as human, was really actually quite pleasant. And to actually a big change for me, is to even say that I need help. And to just have that experience that other people have got your back is so nice one. So I think that's really positive. [Interview 3] Ms. Rosa frequently talked about her advocacy for her ESL students’ help-seeking behaviors. As seen in the above excerpt, she learned to seek help from her colleagues when she was burned out. She also shared her experiences of emotion labor, as she shifted her mindset from seeing help seeking as sign of weakness to viewing a request for help as sign of courageous action: “And it would not be something that I would ever admit before, like, because I would see it as a sign of weakness, that I would need to ask for help” [Interview 3]. Emotion rewards of caring teaching. As we saw above, Ms. Rosa loved her job despite various contextual factors of burnout and emotion labor related to her teaching. She also shared some pleasant experiences of being a caring teacher, and how it impacted her students. One impact her caring teaching had was that her students started to emulate care in reciprocation to her teaching. 96 She said, “I think there are times where kids can read you, and that they have empathy for you. They can see what's going on with you. And they might come and say, “Hey, are you okay?” just like how I can come to them and say, “Is everything all right today?” This warms my heart.” [Interview 3] Another emotion reward she encountered was every time she conducted the care circles for her students, she felt elated when her students reflected on the care circle activity. Excerpt 39: Care circles give me joy The one that I really enjoyed was the one girl who said something about like, all I ever talk about is negative things and I don't ever really think about the positive. I just thought wow! That is so fascinating, so brave to share. I really liked the entire conversation. I would like to do it again. [Interview 6] One of her ESL students shared with her how grateful she was for the care circle discussion in a science class, which Ms. Rosa or the student had never imagined, and it helped the student (Spring, one of the two focal ESL students in this study) get through the test anxiety. We will see this in detail in Chapter 5 when we examine the focal student’s interpretation of caring practices. Emotion rewards of giving and receiving appreciations. Ms. Rosa and I always ended our interviews by sharing any pleasant experiences we had about our teaching and our students. We both shared a similar view that as teachers, we need to practice giving and receiving appreciations to and from our students. Excerpt 40: Emotion reward of receiving appreciations Yesterday, in fact, this is teacher appreciation week or day or whatever. And after my class, I tried to keep my desk relatively clean. And I saw this piece of paper on my desk. And like, where did this come from? And it was a note written by a student about, she didn't know it was Teacher Appreciation Week. And so then just she wrote Just a note about the fact that she wasn't ever really interested in science, but she didn't hate it either. And then I'm weird. But that, like, I always start the day with something like up there [points to the while board] And it just breaks the ice for her. And there are conversations where they're doing first draft thinking, and say, if you're right, good for you, if you're wrong, good for you. Like it still gives me an idea about what you're thinking. And she said, those kinds of things make it more pleasurable for her to come to class. And so it was really nice, because it was an unsolicited note. I haven't talked about 97 Teacher Appreciation. Like there's nothing that I want to say to them, like, I don't want to feel they that has to be forced. But here is something that this student acknowledges, like I have to spend time doing that. I make a point of saying it's okay, if you're right. It's also okay if you're wrong, because this is just the beginning. So I thought that was pretty nice. Yeah, that was a good one. That was a good one. [Interview 5] On another occasion, she showed me a birthday card her student had sent her thanking her for her care and love. She had a giant smile and tears in her eyes when she read the card: Excerpt 41: Determination and love for your kids [students] First, this card is made out of reused paper in order to save trees [with a smiley face]. Ms. Rosa, you are the most dedicated and hardworking teacher I know. It is your determination and love for your kids that makes you my favorite teacher. You put so much into those around you. So I hope this small slice of pie gives you a sense of how much you're appreciated. [Interview 6] In addition to her emotion rewards related to acknowledgement from her students’ parents during parent teacher conferences, Ms. Rosa also frequently shared how her satisfaction and fulfillment were also connected to delayed acknowledgment and validation of her caring teaching from her former students as presented below. Emotion reward when former students come back to express gratitude for the caring teaching. In her multiple interviews, Ms. Rosa mentioned that she had always been a very reflective teacher who kept asking herself how she could teach her students in ways that they felt supported and cared for. In my interviews with her, there were multiple times when she would refer back to her previous interviews and would share her experiences: Excerpt 42: Emotion reward for care But after the last time that I saw you, you had asked a question about like students, and just like the overall like the well-being of students and like getting energy from students. And the same day, that afternoon, I got an email from one of my former students telling me that they appreciated the stuff that I did. I was so excited about it, I was actually going to send you a text and say, I'm going to change my answer. Here's my new answer because it was just like a fitting kind of time, which is like wow! The universe must have known that we were talking about that. And I was struggling to find an answer. And here's the answer. [Interview 5] 98 The above excerpt is just one of several examples where Ms. Rosa shared testimonies of her students who had already gone to college and who acknowledged her pedagogy of care and her advocacy for them. They also often identified that her explicit ways of teaching them to seek help and to acknowledge their emotions had helped them even during their post-secondary education. In recalling her journey as a teacher, Ms. Rosa shared that her goal of adopting a holistic approach to teaching and pedagogy of care stemmed from her constant reflective practice. She also expressed her desire to evolve as a teacher who advocated for her students, especially her ESL students and those who came from less privileged backgrounds. The emotion reward of caring practices not only came from the students and former students but also from their parents: Excerpt 43: Emotion reward in the form of parents’ appreciation for care And then I had parent conferences last couple of weeks. And I had some parents that just came by to say, thank you. That they seem to think that I made a difference for their kid. And that's all they wanted to do is come in and say thank you. They didn't want to talk about grades. They didn't want to like check in on their kid. They really just came in. They said I just want you to know that I appreciate what you do for my kid. Thank you. And and that was it. That was Good. [Interview 4] To sum up, Ms. Rosa’s expressions and experiences of emotions were contextual and therefore, discursive in terms of how those emotions were interpreted as emotion labor or emotion rewards of teaching a mainstream science class with the majority of English-speaking students and a few ESL students. Summary of Ms. Rosa’s Findings Ms. Rosa’s pedagogy of care, her advocacy for her ESL students, and her own emotions in terms of emotion labor and emotion rewards are intricately woven together in her mainstream biology class and her intentions to support her students outside of the classroom. Her pedagogy of care encompassed her efforts in understanding her ESL students’ diverse levels of English 99 proficiency and what developmental groups they belonged to. She was aware of and frequently mentioned her ESL students’ struggles regarding the differences between their language-based content (e.g., English language arts and literature) and STEM based content (e.g., biology, math). She believed that her ways of making science content comprehensible for her ESL students in her mainstream classes not only helped her ESL students but also her non-ESL students as the content in science itself was of a complex nature. Ms. Rosa also believed in simplifying scientific terms in layperson language so that the students would make sense of complex scientific content to connect to the real world around them and be able to explain science to people around them. Having said that, she did not dismiss the importance of teaching scientific vocabulary to her students. However, she attempted to do so by helping her students learn how to separate the root words from the affixes attached to them, and to understand the meaning of those affixes so they could transfer those meanings to multiple words instead of learning them as distinctive words. In addition, her enactment of pedagogy of care included aspects of asset-based teaching where she attempted to leverage on her ESL students’ ideas and perspectives in the scientific meaning making process. Since she only had four to five ESL students in her mainstream science classes, they often came from different countries and linguistic backgrounds which impeded her intentionality in putting them in the same language speaking pairs so they could leverage their shared linguistic repertoire. Despite this fact, she promoted the use of translanguaging and hybrid note-making where her ESL students could mobilize their multiple semiotic resources they had at their disposal. Similarly, one of the major caring practices that Ms. Rosa strongly emphasized in her science class was to cultivate collaborations among students in the scientific meaning making process. She often did so by pairing students into buddies (2 students) or truddies (3 100 students) to navigate the process of a problem. How these practices were interpreted by the students will be discussed in the discussion chapter. Another major caring practice Ms. Rosa adopted was the communication of relevancy of science to the real world. She considered her students “scientists even if they don’t go into science in the future” because she believed that helping her students connect the scientific knowledge to understand the real-world problems was her major goal of being a science teacher. She brought science-related news to her class almost every day so her students could cultivate an awareness and understanding of science in their real lives. In enacting all the above practices of care, she explicitly communicated to her students that she cared for them, while also being concerned about how her intentions of care were interpreted by her ESL students. Part of Ms. Rosa’s caring practices in her mainstream science class was her advocacy for ESL students. She advocated for students’ mental and emotional wellbeing and believed in “turning the conversations around” regarding the cultural stigmatization around mental health. In her practices of care and emotion, she also expressed her emotions that resulted from several resources at personal and professional levels. She expressed a myriad of emotions and nuances of her emotions in terms of emotion labor and emotion rewards related to teaching. Her emotion labor resulted from her concern for her students’ tests and her “overwhelming feelings about her students’ tests” because despite her telling her students about the importance of learning over test scores, she was aware that it was the test scores that would determine their post-secondary journey, which was a “real struggle” for them. Her emotion labor was also enmeshed with how some parents would not understand the efforts behind her caring practices. The conflict between what she wanted to do versus what she had to do contributed to her emotion labor. 101 Despite several contextual factors that resulted into emotion labor, Ms. Rosa found her teaching profession very rewarding and fulfilling as she had made a conscious decision to be a science teacher over going into industry where she would make a lot more money than from her teaching job. Some of the discursive aspects that gave her emotion reward were the care circles she organized in her science class frequently, her determination and love for her students, appreciation she received from her former students, and the emotion reward of care itself. Ms. Eva’s Pedagogy of Care (English Language Arts Teacher) The pedagogy of care emerged in several forms in Eva’s teaching. How they aligned and/or misaligned with the ESL students’ perceptions of being cared for will be discussed in the upcoming chapter. Eva’s pedagogy of care comprised of: (1) connecting with knowing the ESL students, diversifying content for students and making teaching culturally relevant; (2) being trauma informed and communicating about your trauma-informed intentions to your students; (3) giving enrichment opportunities and constructive feedback for growth; (4) building trust, cultivating connections, and communicating about support system; (5) teaching ESL students self-advocacy; (6) intentionally advocating for students’ mental health; and (7) making content comprehensible for your students. Pedagogy of Care: Connecting with and knowing your ESL students. Ms. Eva mentioned that her teaching of the English language arts class began with her making connections with the course in general, getting to know what she was teaching and whom she was going to teach. Recalling the establishment of a caring and emotional bond with the course, she said that the freedom she had in choosing the texts for her students gave her a sense of empowerment. Although Eva was provided with a syllabus that had already been created and was being used by all the teachers in the English department teaching the freshmen English, she was able to tweak it 102 or add in some things that she and her students were “passionate about that still fit into the cannon of literature for the course” [interview 1]. In making connections with the course and thinking about who were in her English language arts class, she was able to reflect on her class demography. She stated: Excerpt 44: Majority of my class is white, but still diverse I would say that the majority of my class is white, mostly native speakers. I do have quite a few students from the Islamic center this year, that did middle school through the Islamic center and are now at this high school. I have a few ESL students. I know one of my students is from Iraq. I have a student from South Africa who speaks Afrikaans too. Many of my students speak Arabic, the ones from the Islamic center. And there are also many from Heaven (pseudonym) Middle School who speak Arabic. I have students who are, you know, African, African American, Iraqi, as I said, some who are mixed who have African American parent, one parent and then a white parent but yes, for the most part, English is the first language mostly white as as as reflected in the whole school demographic, but still very diverse. Oh, I have a student who was in foster care for almost all of her life and she's now with you know adoptive mother and I have a student who identifies as being pansexual and gender fluid. [Interview 1]. Eva’s description of her students in her English classes (two sections) exhibit her awareness of intersectionality of identities (cite source) of her students in terms of their first and second languages, gender, nationality, religious background, and family structure. We will see her articulation of her students’ diverse identities and backgrounds in the subsequent sections, too, where she mentions how her caring nature kept reminding her of who her students were and her perception of their potential emotional baggage. Her caring encompassed all her (ESL and non- ESL) students. However, in terms of data collection, the semi-structured questions I posed helped me elicit her views on her teaching in general and her ESL students in particular. Referring to her ESL students, she mentioned: Excerpt 45: Hard work but no breakdown They like to laugh. Many of them are very shy. And this is, this is self-identified…they're kids. And I constantly go back and forth between what kind of life they should be living right now and how you instill a hard work ethic without overwhelming them to the point of breakdown [interview 1]. 103 Her awareness of her ESL students residing in a host country where they go to a school where English as a second language functions as a medium of instruction made her think of how she wanted them to feel valued and cared for in her classes. Her willingness to instill an ethic of hard work in her students was not limited to her ESL students, however; she expected the same of her non-ESL students as well: Excerpt 46: Ninth grade is another level of kindergarten Even though we're two months into the year, it still feels like we're at the very beginning. Okay, in some ways, because I think that it takes a lot of momentum, especially for beginning ninth grade non honors students to get the wheels rolling because so many of them are simply just failing to turn in work, homework or even classwork that we do together in class. They're failing to turn these things in. So, it almost feels in a way like they're back at another level of kindergarten, where we're training them to be students again, with this sense of responsibility that maybe they didn't have at the middle school. [Interview 1]. On the one hand, Eva was aware of her students’ multiple identities and diverse backgrounds. On the other hand, when asked how often she reminded herself of the presence of her ESL students in her class when she planned and executed her teaching, she took a pause and replied that she did not do so often. However, she also acknowledged that she needed to be more mindful of their presence as that would ultimately make it easier for her to communicate her intentionality of care for them. Excerpt 47: I should think about my ESL students a little bit more Honestly, I do not often think about my ESL students because they I think they perform just as well. So, they're all in the same boat. They're all struggling with language. They're all struggling with it. I have actually [pause], let me actually think about it. I believe I've caught four students cheating on their questions where they just find, or rather their sentences, or they find a sentence online, and they just copied and pasted it into their assignment, but they didn't write it. And two of them were well, actually two of them were ESL students. Yeah, sort of, yeah. And then two of them were not. So, I guess when we think about it from like a percentage standpoint, there have been a higher percentage of ESL students who've been cheating, according to the numbers of ESL students and non-ESL students that I have. So, maybe I should think about that a little bit more [smiles]. [Interview 1] 104 From the very beginning of our meetings and informal conversations, we shared what best practices worked and did not work in our respective teaching scenarios. I was teaching an undergraduate class as part of my Graduate Teaching Assistant then, and we had somehow established a connection where we were honest about what we viewed about our own teachings. In the above excerpt, Eva began with her honest confession that she did not think about the presence of her ESL students quite often because she thought they performed as well as her non- ESL students, and she believed that all of her students were struggling in her English language arts class. Towards the end of the excerpt, Eva stated that she would consider the presence of her ESL students in her teaching because she reflected on the failing rates of her ESL students across all the sections she was teaching. In the subsequent narratives, we will see that her views of her ESL students changed over time, and she became more reflective of her pedagogy of care in her English-speaking dominant mainstream class, which subsequently made her diversify her content for her students. This shift will become more evident in the following section. After about a month following our first interview, when I met with Eva for our second interview, she shared her constant reflection on what her ESL students might think of her teaching, and what their needs might have been. She mentioned that she had noticed that her non-ESL students had been dominating the group dynamics and classroom discussions, noting the following: Excerpt 48: My ESL students might conceal their struggles from me So, English as a second language students in my English class write and speak well but they are still struggling. I feel if they have had any trouble, they have concealed it from me. Perhaps that's something that you could inform me about [based on class observations and student interviews]. I guess I don't think much about what other students could contribute based on their prior experiences. Something I need to work on. [Interview 2]. 105 As described in ‘researcher positionality’ section of the methodology chapter, I was in a state where I wanted to protect the information from my ESL students about their teachers. However, at the same time, Eva solicited my views as a speaker and parent of ESL speaking children myself. On my part, I wanted to inform her about her teaching as honestly and non-judgmentally as possible, too. There were several occasions over the academic year where I would share examples from my own daughter who was a senior year student during my interviews with Eva, and we both had reciprocal exchanges of cultural and linguistic differences. As presented in previous sections, Eva reflected on her intentionality of communicating with her ESL students about her willingness to support them. Apart from the above-mentioned narratives, I frequently noticed Eva’s use of recasts, an implicit way of correcting errors, in her ESL students’ pronunciation of words during the roundtable reading aloud activities. Thus, I asked her the reason behind doing that. She mentioned: Excerpt 49: Recasting ESL students’ errors I guess it just comes naturally. But also, it takes less time. If we're reading, we want to keep the flow going as much as possible. Everyone mispronounces words, even native speakers of English mispronounce words. So, I just assume that it's something that will happen. I also learned by ear. So, it's really helpful for me to hear someone else say it. So, I guess I just assumed that it will be helpful for them [ESL students] too. It's probably mostly the time element though [laughs]. [Interview 3]. When asked about the uptakes [corrections after the recasts] from the students, she said that sometimes they picked up things immediately, but sometimes they did not even notice that they were being corrected. Her major goal was not to embarrass them by explicitly correcting their errors in groups, and she wanted to do this to establish a connection with her ESL students by not embarrassing them. Yet, after about a month when I interviewed Eva after several class observations and student interviews, her view about her ESL students changed. She thought that 106 her ESL students in the mainstream classes were like special education students and there was not enough training for teachers to serve them. She stated: Excerpt 50: ESL students in mainstream classes are like special ed students I don't want this to be confused with umm for anyone to take offense with this analogy, but I think of my ESL learners very similar to my special education students, where our country has decided that special education students have a right to be in the general education classroom. However, I do know as a student of another language myself that I would definitely need some intense schooling on the language up to a certain point before I could get into that, because it's too overwhelming. If you know nothing about the language to be placed in a general education classroom, that is a death sentence for a student. But once they get to a certain point, and they're able to contribute and comprehend most of what's going on, I believe that they should be in the classroom. I do also believe that there's not enough training for teachers. Yeah, this is when it comes to special ed or ESL not enough training for teachers to understand how to best serve those students. So, I do believe that they belong in the classroom, the gen ed classroom, once they've gotten past a certain level of language learning, just like our special education students, but I do feel like I need more education about how to best serve them. [Interview 4] The excerpt shows that there to some extent she held a deficit-based perspective a(cite source) about the ESL students as they were compared to special education students. Although the excerpt shows her belief about her ESL students having reached a certain level of language proficiency to be in the mainstream content classes. In fact, the five ESL students in her English language arts class had passed the test that would qualify them to enroll in the ESL classes and, therefore, they were already eligible to be in the mainstream classes. However, these students would be allowed to seek help of the assigned ESL teacher at the school, if they ever needed any language specific help in comprehending and completing their assignments. But when asked to reflect on the ways to help ESL students in mainstream content classes, her only solution was to have an ESL teacher to help them. She reported: Excerpt 51: Much needed culture of dialogue on how to support ESL students in content classes Since I've been in this school, we haven't had any formal staff meeting or professional development regarding ESL students. However, I am friends with Mr. S, who's the ESL teacher for the district or for the middle school and the high school. First of all, the fact 107 that he serves both schools and all students is awful. We should definitely have one person per building because you spread way too thin, particularly when it comes to WIDA testing time. Oh, my God, it's crazy, so overwhelming for him. But something that he has talked to me about is his desire to do co-taught classes. So, maybe put the majority of ESL students into one general education classroom to be co taught by the English language arts teacher and the ESL teacher. I think that is a fantastic idea. That has not yet come to fruition because we only have one ESL teacher. But that's something that I would appreciate very much. Because then we can combine our expertise together to assist the ESL students [Interview 5] While talking about the co-taught classes, she brought up her earlier comparison from our last interview where she had expressed her view of ESL as special education students who need extra and carefully tailored classes, “It would probably be the same way that we think about paraprofessionals paired with our special education students” [Interview 5]. This conversation about supporting her ESL students continued in the following interview and during our informal discussions as well. Towards the end of the school year, Eva reflected on her overall teaching, especially regarding her ESL students and her other English-speaking students who spoke informal dialects at their homes, as follows: Excerpt 52: Break down instructions into more bite sized pieces My ESL students have showed me that they, at times, are capable of expressing themselves through writing or verbally better than some of my native speakers. I still need to stop and explain the meanings of certain words and phrases, or I think I could do a better job of breaking down my instructions or my templates into more bite sized pieces, but that is across the board…Even my kids speaking English. I have kids that come in with different dialects too who do speak English as a first language. who struggled just as much, mostly with verb tenses. So in that case, we talk about not being an English language learner because they learned English but being a code switcher. Oh, how can you take the dialect and change it into a formal English? because that's what we teach in school. Now, it doesn't mean that as soon as we're just talking normally, and not submitting papers that you can't go back to your dialect, certainly talk the way that you were raised to talk but you need to know that there will probably be certain opportunities afforded to you in specific places, if you learn how to make that code switch. And if you don't do that, in your essays for the SAT, that's going to be a problem. [Interview 7] The above excerpt shows Eva’s views on the formal English as being difficult for not only her ESL students but also the students who spoke English as their first language but used informal 108 dialects. While she allowed her students to use dialects when they talked among themselves, she would remind them of the use of formal English in the high-stake tests that would provide them with affordances for instrumental purposes. She also mentioned that this was a battlefield for her students as the medium of the high-stakes tests may be different from what the students normally use in their day to day lives. Notably, however, there were never any statements from her about leveraging students’ home languages in the teaching learning process. Even though she had received an already existing curriculum and materials, she expressed that she would strive to diversify the content as much as possible for her diverse students in the class, as discussed next. Pedagogy of care: Diversifying content for students and making teaching culturally relevant. Earlier we saw Eva’s awareness of her diverse students. One recurring theme in our conversations was her awareness of and intentionality in diversifying her content to show that she valued and cared for her students and their multiple identities. Although she had been provided with a pre-established syllabus, she shared a narrative where she was able to convince the head of the English department to include a text written by a black female writer in one of the English courses she had taught the year before. She recalled: Excerpt 53: Diversifying our authors … we [her mentor and her] noticed that the syllabus was kind of lacking female writers and especially black female writers. And so I had had an opportunity to read Passing by Nella Larsen in college. And this was an African American woman who was writing during the Harlem Renaissance and writing about race issues. And so I suggested that we bring this novel into the curriculum, and it was a total hit [smiles], which is great. It could have gone the other way. But all that I had to do is say, hey, this fits our need of diversifying our authors. And it's a huge part of American history that we discussed within literature. So, let's do it. And our department head said, “Absolutely.” [Interview 1]. In addition, she was cognizant of a lack of texts written by English as a second language writers in her courses. However, she believed that the texts she used in her teaching could connect to 109 broader geographical and social contexts so that her students could make connections between what they were reading to the outside world. Discussing a book she had used, she mentioned: Excerpt 54: American writers are reacting to broader contexts At the beginning of the year, when we were discussing mass hysteria with The Crucible [ authored by Arthur Miller], and how that relates to McCarthyism and anti-communism, at the same time, there was some mass hysteria about vampires in Malawi. People were being murdered in September or October. Right when we were talking about what mass hysteria can do to communities, it was happening in another part of the world. And it was in current news articles…So, we were able to take The Crucible, which was written in the 1950s. But it's a story about our Puritan ancestors, who accused each other of witchcraft in the 1600s. And how that repeated itself within the McCarthyism. But now how 70 years later, hysteria in general is still sweeping through communities and affecting everyone. Okay, you have the American author who wrote The Crucible, which relates to American history, but we're also trying to reach outside of those texts and say that American literature is not a bubble, or American writers aren't writing in bubbles. They're reacting to broader context. [Interview 1]. Although Eva talked about the connection between the books written by American writers and the global context, she stated that she would be interested in communicating with the teacher who was teaching multicultural literature and would solicit her suggestions on bringing activities and reading texts to which her ESL students would feel more connected to and valued, which was not seen happening during this particular academic year. In addition, Eva believed that sharing multiple stories that connected to broader context made her teaching relevant and important: “…you are given trust as a professional in your field, that what you're going to bring to the classroom is appropriate and relevant and important. And I think that the more we share stories with one another, the more we can learn.” [Interview 1]. How her views about making her teaching culturally relevant were perceived by her ESL students and the alignment and misalignment between their views will be discussed in chapter 5. While Eva believed that she was striving to make her teaching culturally relevant, she also believed that she did not know much about her ESL students’ backgrounds and their linguistic and cultural repertoires. She frequently acknowledged her privilege of being a white English 110 teacher from the US, which she also constantly shared with her students in the classes I observed. In one of the classes I observed, Eva apologized to her ESL students for not paying attention to the sarcastic language she had used in the class before (which she did not exactly remember at the time of the interview). When I asked her what her motive behind her apologizing was, she stated: Excerpt 55: I recognize my privilege and apologize to my students I think I'm still at a phase where I'm apologizing [laughs], and I'll never stop apologizing because I'm sure there will always be days when I say something, or I make a move that wasn't what I should have done as a kind person. I sometimes find myself getting snappy or I’ll become sarcastic. And so far, what my MO [modus operandi] has been is just to go back and say, hey, I'm really sorry that I behaved that way. That wasn't nice of me. I hope you'll forgive me. And usually, it works. But I also recognize my privilege because I have grown up in a stable family without any type of abuse or you know, breakage. [Interview 2]. Eva shared her privilege of coming from a socially, financially, and emotionally stable family and, therefore, she would apologize to her students who might come from challenging backgrounds. In another example that follows, she apologized to her ESL students for her ignorance of their cultural backgrounds. When asked what her motive behind that was, she narrated: Excerpt 56: I apologize for my unintentional biases and cultural ignorance I probably started doing that, honestly, at the very beginning of teaching because in my teacher ed program, our teachers were very careful to let us know that most of the standardized tests in the textbooks and all these things that have been written and distributed in America, have been written in distributed by white conservative males [laughs]. So, a lot of what we have been taught is not the full story. And because of that the way that tests are often written include unintended cultural bias. And so, I was so grateful that they told us about that or just like unintentional bias anywhere. And so I've been trying to be very sensitive about the things that I teach or the prompts that I give, for example, when I was doing my student teaching, one of the prompts was, draw what you had for breakfast. And I realized, oh, shoot, there are some of my kids who didn't have breakfast. How can I change this so that it's not pointing out their poverty? Or perhaps their discomfort with being hungry? And so instead, I wrote, draw your favorite breakfast. [Interview 3]. 111 The above excerpts show that she was not hesitant to apologize when she felt that she was not aware of her students’ backgrounds. She mentioned that she did not want to limit it to her act of apologizing only, but to keep educating herself about the different cultures of her students so she could cultivate ‘deeper connections’ with them and create a ‘sense of value’ in her classes. She constantly acknowledged her cultural ignorance at times, but she also mentioned that she was willing to educate herself and listen to her ESL students’ perspectives: “And there will always be ignorance but when you recognize that you're ignorant about something that you shouldn't be ignorant about, then it's your responsibility to find a way to educate yourself. And when you actively don't, that then becomes stupidity” [Interview 6]. While the above excerpts show that Eva acknowledged her privileges of being an English-speaking white teacher, she was also open to understanding how her non-white and ESL students made sense of the examples in the reading texts in her classes. For example, in one of the class observations, the class watched a portion of the movie “Raisin in the Sun” where one character wanted to maintain their cultural roots, but the other character wanted to assimilate to the community of white people. When I asked her if she had any discussion with her students (especially her ESL and/or non-white students) about it, she mentioned that it was more apparent to her African American students than her ESL students, and she was able to reflect on the things that she had never thought about before. She said: Excerpt 57: Caring is hearing students perspectives and their struggles It didn't seem to be so noticeable for my ESL students. However, it was very compelling for my African American students because they could directly relate to the way that the characters were trying to assimilate. And so we had a very drawn out discussion with my African American ladies about how difficult it is to tame your hair, how difficult it is to straighten it and make it look white or how difficult it is to work with it when they say it's raw or natural or wigs. And so I think that just hearing their perspective, you know, 50-60 years after this play was written and how it's still difficult. But how they still sometimes do it … it could just be because they want to, could be for a certain gain. That is still all relevant but also that we all do it. We all assimilate in different situations. [Interview 3]. 112 Although the above excerpt shows that Eva listened to her African American students about their struggles of assimilation and difficulties they faced, she frequently talked about the pain of losing one’s roots when trying to assimilate in a host and dominant culture and language. She also acknowledged that despite her being from a dominant culture, her gendered identity had put her in situations where she herself had to assimilate for some instrumental purposes. She shared one such incident “I didn't tell them the story, but I probably should have, for example, often, at least when I was younger, when I would go to interviews, I would take my nose ring out because there just used to be a stigma against people with facial piercings that they must be riffraff or bad eggs or something.” [Interview 3]. This shows how she found herself in contested situations at times where she had to balance between acknowledging her privilege while also sharing her own narratives of vulnerability and lived experiences with her students so that she could give them a sense of her understanding of their own contested spaces of learning. Pedagogy of care: Being trauma informed and communicating about your trauma-informed intentions to your students. Eva constantly talked about her awareness of the prevalence of trauma in her students’ lives, in a broader school community and society outside of the school. Her narratives of her emotional regulation around trauma and traumatic incidents will be presented in a later section of this chapter where I discuss emotional regulation. In this section, I present some data from her trauma-informed teaching in general and the socio-cultural aspects of her ESL students, in particular. One of the explicit ways of her trauma-informed teaching was giving trigger warnings to her students, both ESL and non-ESL students. In the following excerpt, she expressed her intentionality of giving trigger warnings to her students in connection with the multicultural aspects of the text being read: 113 Excerpt 58: Trigger warnings for potentially traumatic content We talked about witchcraft in general, which is what The Crucible was all about. People were being accused of making like vexes. And also in Malawi, albinism is thought to be like a magical component. So, albino children, and people are hunted and murdered, or, or they're just mutilated, because their bones contain magical properties. This was taken from a National Geographic article. If I hadn't read it, would I have known about all of these things? I don't know. Each teacher brings their own unique perspective to a class. However, I give them trigger warnings while bringing up potentially traumatic examples from outside the text [Interview 1]. This approach from Eva was highly appreciated by her students, especially by both her ESL students who were two of the student participants in this study (their data are presented in Chapter 5). Another way Eva adopted a trauma-informed approach in teaching her students was by eliciting the stances of hopelessness from her students, especially when they failed to meet the deadlines multiple times in her classes. This was part of their enrichment opportunities where students were asked to identify everything they did in a normal day in their lives, their whole schedules after school. They were then asked to look at their schedules and reflect on the activities that could be replaced with homework time or activities that increased and strengthened their work ethics and stop the activities that “spiral them probably into a depression”. It was during one of such reflective moments that she came to know about one of her students’ traumatic incidents in the family, and thus was able to refer them to school counselors. She recalled: Excerpt 59: Giving students space to share their vulnerability and hopelessness The last question in the enrichment opportunity was “Are you feeling helpless or hopeless?” If so, please tell me and we will get you the support that you need. And I would say, maybe, maybe 25% of the students that came and spoke with me mentioned that they were, and it usually had something to do with a broken family system…They just made a list for me on a piece of paper. And the reason that I had them do that was because I also required them to have a meeting with me to discuss those reflection questions so that we could have some one-on-one time and that was also a good thing. So, sometimes it just helps the relationship to force those one-on-one interactions. It's kind of framed as a consequence, but it turns out being this really beautiful thing. [Interview 3]. 114 As the above excerpt shows, Eva was invested in providing support to her students in trauma- informed ways where she did not explicitly ask them about their familial or out-of-school aspects but elicited them through the enrichment questions so she could get an idea of how to help them beyond classrooms. Another way Eva approached trauma-informed approach in teaching her students was through her advocacy of making conversations around students’ mental health transparent in the school curriculum. During Interview 4 toward the end of the Fall semester in early January, Eva was upset seeing a trend in her students, especially her ESL students, who might have to repeat the course the following year or over the summer because they were failing and not using the supports that they had. Their only other option was to work extra hard for the next grading period and because of the trend she had seen in their progress, she thought it was not going to happen. She stated: Excerpt 60: Transparency in talking about mental health This is really awful. This is uncomfortable. I'm trying every day to do what I can for these kids. They don't want to help themselves. I don't understand why some of these students seem to be, I don't know, self-sabotaging. I don't have the privilege or I don't have the time to know what's exactly going on in their personal lives. And I also don't have the credentials, to be able to, you know, to help them, I can point them in the right direction. If I know that something is happening that's maybe making it difficult for their mental health, which then carries into their schoolwork. I just wish that there was more transparency, or I'm constantly wishing that we were able to invite more curriculum that talks about mental health and talks about resources, because I think that a lot of these kids just have stuff going on that we don't even know about. What do you do? I don't know, super hard. But right now, it looks like they're self-sabotaging. [Interview 4] In this excerpt, Eva used the term self-sabotaging twice and also mentioned her concern and worry about her students not utilizing the support and resources available to them. However, she went beyond looking at their failure to achieve the passing grades as just their lack of seeking help. The trend in her ways of expressing what the students might be going through in their lives outside school shows her viewing them as whole humans who have lives outside schools, which 115 might affect their investment in learning and their overall success. Moreover, her concern was not only for ESL students but also for the students whose learning was potentially affected by their broken homes, split families, and struggles with issues related to their gendered identity and sexual orientation. Apart from Eva’s keen interest in helping her students feel safe in her classes, we had numerous conversations around how our teaching could be made trauma-informed, especially from a cultural perspective. In her practices of adopting a pedagogy of care and being trauma- informed, Eva not only gave her students trigger warnings for potentially traumatic content but also gave them options to opt out of such discussions so they would be retraumatized. She mentioned: Excerpt 61: Intentionality in not retraumatizing students Just yesterday, I had two students who kind of took advantage of this, this open dialogue between teachers and students regarding mental health. We're reading Romeo and Juliet right now, which of course, is a tragic love story that ends in suicide, double suicide. Well, they both commit suicide. And we're also watching the film. So, when we read the text in class, you know, it's hard to like, get into the emotion of the story. But as we watch the movie, it blows everyone away. And the emotions are raw, and people are really feeling it. And I had two students come up to me yesterday and ask if they could please be excused during that part in the film, where they commit suicide, because it would be a triggering experience for them. I know that one of those students, just a few months ago, had a friend commit suicide. And I also know, I don't know why the other student is triggered, but it's not really my place to know. But I'm glad that we're getting to a point as a staff and a community where those conversations can be had, because I had never heard of a student requesting to be you know, excluded from something. [Interview 5] The above excerpt shows Eva’s intentionality in not re-traumatizing her students through the content. She also acknowledged and appreciated that her students were being more comfortable asking to be excused from the potentially triggering scenes for them. However, Eva still believed that she had not been able to communicate this intentionality and message to her ESL students because she still struggled to initiate conversations with them about their triggers and other 116 problems due to their lack of help-seeking behaviors: “I can't help them unless they seek help [Interview 4]”. In addition, Eva’s conscious decisions to give trigger warnings not only came from her intentional investment of serving on the mental health advisory board but also from her learning from the students who had organized a professional development social session for all the teachers at the school. In one of the class observations, while watching some scenes from Romeo and Juliet, she gave a content warning to her students and told them that there would be a little bit of nudity and some triggering scenes because Juliet’s father was abusive and aggressive and about the suicide scenes. Recalling that teaching moment, she said: Excerpt 62: Students’ proactivity in receiving trigger warnings Being with the Mental Health Advisory Board for the past two years has opened my eyes to small changes that I can make like that. However, just a few months ago, the students for gender equality put on a professional development for all of us teachers, and we were rotated between five or six different rooms, and each room had a topic like race, religion, mental health, blah, blah. And the students requested that we give them trigger warnings so that they can make the decision about if whether they're comfortable or not, which was really lovely to hear from them, because it gave us permission, and I actually had some students who requested to be removed from those scenes in the movies at the final scene when they do commit suicide. So, my participation in mental health groups and listening to the students' desires has made me take on that approach. [Interview 6] As always, my follow up question was geared toward the cultural aspects of trauma and potential trigger warnings. We had some conversations around giving trigger warnings to content which may not necessarily be traumatic but culturally inappropriate to some of her ESL students and how and if she considered that. I also shared with her a story from my daughter’s class where her classmate’s parents had not allowed her to take a portion of health classes on sex education due to their religious backgrounds. Eva acknowledged her lack of cultural awareness in several cases, sharing: 117 Excerpt 63: Cultural trigger warnings I certainly accept that I could be very ignorant still about expectations from different cultures, right? However, I believe that our school district is quite a conservative district. It's taken a lot of work from people like Madison [a senior English teacher] to introduce the intercultural dialogue, for example, there are plenty of people who have opted to take their children out of that and who have fought it. So, my belief is these have been school approved readings and videos, and if other teachers have been using them in the school, considering the conservative population that we have, then it's probably okay. And also, I think that my perception of the appropriateness of nudity for example, is slightly changed because I am an art teacher… I'm a little bit more liberally leaning but I think that it's okay. [Interview 6] The above excerpt illustrates that Eva being an arts teacher had different views towards contents like nudity and other cultural aspects, which might need to be communicated to her students to bridge a gap between their perceptions and the communication from her about those socio- cultural constructs. Pedagogy of care: Giving enrichment opportunities and constructive feedback for growth. One of the major themes of pedagogy of care for Eva’s students, especially her ESL students, was her commitment to empower them to grow as good readers and writers of English. However, in the first interview when I asked her about the writing assignments in her class and how often she gave them constructive feedback, she shared that she was not giving them enough opportunities to improve their writing and that she was willing to learn to do so. Excerpt 64: Reflection on changing the feedback giving style for ESL students’ writing Let me think. [pause] What I have learned is that I do not give nearly enough draft opportunities. I do not give enough feedback with an opportunity to revise, and I will be changing that…it's a bummer when you reach the end of a unit and you realize that maybe what you thought they had internalized? They hadn't. And I think in education, because there is an expectation that you go through a certain amount of texts, that there's almost this feeling of I can't go back. But such is life, I mean, we learn new things every year, and they just slowly layer like sleet, rock or something like that. [Interview 2]. Later in the year, when I interviewed Eva, she stressed that she had started giving all her students opportunities to turn in their assignments twice to get it regraded. She also mentioned that she 118 was unsure of how her intentionality and care were being perceived by her students, especially ESL students. Excerpt 65: Care is to remind them of your goal for them to succeed I remind them constantly that it is my major goal to see them succeed. And that they are in charge of their fate. So one system that I have in process in my classroom that exemplifies this is that they are allowed to turn in every assignment twice to get it regraded. What I want them to learn first and foremost, is how to adhere to deadlines. So, what I say to them is on almost every single assignment, you can turn in a partially completed assignment on the day that it's due, and I'll grade it, and maybe I'll only grade it 50% because maybe that's the amount of work that you put in. But then I'll hand that back to you. And you have two weeks of your own time to change it and resubmit it for up to 100%. Every single assignment. [Interview 4]. As shown in the excerpt above, Eva’s gradual change in the way she gave her students constructive feedback was communicated to her students. In addition, she also aimed to cultivate a sense of professionalism in her students, more so in her ESL students, where they would fill out a professionalism rubric and express how they were learning and making progress. She stated: Excerpt 66: Professionalism rubrics and growth Every month, I give them what's called the professionalism rubric. They have to prove to me that they are making progress in the three tenets of English: reading, writing, and speaking for this whole month. I encourage or I demand that they provide me with specific examples of how they've done this. So, for example, 'I read the part of Walter Lee in our class reading of A Raisin in the Sun' instead of ‘I read all the time’. That would be a very specific example that shows me that they're working toward growth and reading. And then I encourage them to also describe how they exhibited room for improvement. How could they improve? And then they have to decide if they've improved from the previous professionalism rubric. If not, why not? And if so, how can we continue to build on that success? So, I tell them, "You are professional students. This is your job. How are you learning? You need to give me evidence."…You need to consider yourself a scientist and give me data that I can point to that says, 'Okay, that's legitimate.' [Interview 3] As shown in the excerpt above, Eva’s requirements of her students filling out the professionalism rubric had a purpose: to make them aware of the metacognitive strategies of their own learning and improvements in their English skills. Although this monthly rubric was completed by all her 119 students, ESL and non-ESL students, she noticed some cultural differences among her students at times in how they scored themselves on the rubrics. Generally, her ESL students tend to give score themselves low and, therefore, she disagreed with them and gave them more points because they were being too hard on themselves. However, she made sure that all her students provided data to prove themselves and their learning. Eva referred to all the above-mentioned opportunities as ‘enrichment opportunities’ where her students, especially ESL students, were provided with opportunities to improve on their work. She afforded them these opportunities so that they could reflect on their learning strategies because “the percentages of incompletion were astounding” to begin with, but these numbers started gradually improving toward the second half of the school year with all these enrichment opportunities. Pedagogy of care: Building trust, cultivating connections, and communicating about support system. Another theme in her teaching with care consisted of her ideas of building and cultivating connections between teacher and students and among students themselves. After one of her class observations where she had conducted a roundtable discussion with her students where all her students formed a semi-circle (which she also called ‘care circles’ at times), I asked her what her purpose was behind such roundtable discussions. She referred back her earlier discussion of her awareness of her students multiple linguistic and cultural identities and personalities and, therefore, she wanted to cultivate a sense of trust and belonging among her ESL and non-ESL students. Excerpt 67: Roundtable discussions to build trust and form supportive bonds Some students including some of my ESL students began the year by telling me that they were book shy, and that they didn't want to have to read out loud because they were shy. Other students won't stop talking. They love to talk. They absolutely love it. So, the roundtables were so important because that is what allowed them to get to know one another and build trust and form bonds. They were also a much smaller class that made a difference. Sometimes it just didn't work quite as well because the same people would talk. And my introverts felt probably secluded. So, that's another thing that I learned, you 120 have to really take a look at who your class is within the first few months to determine what is going to work best for them. But what I found was that most of the time it worked really, really well with small group roundtables, maybe five people instead of the whole class. [Interview 3]. Apart from the purpose of building trust and making students feel included in such roundtable discussions, Eva also had the learning outcome in her mind of making her students a support system for each other, especially making her ESL students comfortable asking questions to her non-ESL peers. Restating the importance of the roundtables and recalling her teaching from the year before, she said: Excerpt 68: Just stop me and ask a question why I brought in more of the round tables this year is because within the round tables, students are allowed to ask questions. But then what I realized is that most of my ESL students don't often want to ask questions out loud. And when students lead discussion, their classmates are more comfortable asking them questions than asking me questions. And another thing that I just assumed would be easier to do, which apparently students hate is, I would read out loud while we were in that circle, and I would say if anything is confusing, just stop, just stop me and ask a question. No one did that ever, ever, the whole year. So, I have to do something different because it's either they're not confident enough to stop a teacher. Or they are just so consumed with trying to figure out what's going on while they're listening. So, that didn't work. [Interview 2]. This was one of the moments where Eva and I talked about the potential reasons behind many ESL students not asking as many questions as their non-ESL peers from an intercultural perspective. I shared with her my own and my children’s experiences from a different cultural background. She appreciated me sharing those experiences and said that she had never thought about it and that she had assumed that her ESL students would naturally stop her when they would not understand something she was teaching. While talking about the support to her ESL students in the mainstream English language arts class, she referred to two main support systems: (1) their family’s involvement, and (2) the ESL teacher at the school. Regarding their families, Eva’s concern was her perceived lack of communication with their parents: “I don't know. What do you do when no one shows up for 121 conferences? What do you do when no one communicates back with you? I don't know” [Interview 4]. However, according to her, this did not apply to all and only ESL students’ parents because she found that some ESL students’ families had been very supportive and pushed the students to learn and make progress. Regarding the ESL teacher’s support at the school, Eva communicated with her ESL students that Mr. Foster (pseudonym), the ESL teacher, was there to help them if they needed some extra support in their work: “I'm friends with Mr. Foster, who's the ESL teacher. I do know that some of my English language learners go to his after-school help that he provides and asked him questions. Yeah, my English language learners are often working very hard.” [Interview 4]. Eva also expressed her wish that her students, especially ESL students, communicated more with her and what support they needed. She said: Excerpt 69: Awful tendency to assume bad things I wish they would just communicate more with me. I think that there are a few students who I've been able to really get through to and break boundaries with because they've been able to be open with me. And it is always helpful for them and for me, because when you just witness behavior, like defiant behavior, or behavior where the student is avoiding, then the human psyche immediately assumes laziness, defiance, when in reality, something else could be happening that is affecting their ability to learn. But when you interact with 120 students per day, it's unfortunately, the first assumption is not something must be going on and I need to help that student because you're making that split decision but ‘They're just being lazy’, which is bad. We have this awful tendency to assume bad things. And it's helped me start to reframe those assumptions. But it's always rewarding for both student and teacher in terms of their grades, and the relationship when they're able to open up about their situations, because then I'm able to develop empathy for them. And I'm able to, you know, give them extra resources or time or whatever [Interview 5]. As mentioned earlier, her concern for her ESL students was tied to her lack of cultural understanding and how her ESL students would perceive her intervening into their personal lives by asking questions that went beyond merely asking about assignments, which has created this contested space for her regarding her investment in serving on the mental health advisory board and lack of inability to convey her intentions to her ESL students and their families. 122 Advocacy Ms. Eva’s advocacy was an integral part of her intentional pedagogy of care practices. She mainly focused on teaching her ESL students self-advocacy, advocating for their mental health and advocating to make content comprehensible for her students. Teaching ESL students self-advocacy. While Eva constantly reminded all her students in general and ESL students in particular about the support she would like to provide them, she also wanted them to learn to advocate for themselves when they needed any type of assistance. Although she was willing to support them herself, she wanted them to solicit each other’s help so that they could leverage their peers’ strengths and wisdom. She stated: Excerpt 70: I want to help them advocate for themselves I truly do believe one of my jobs is to help them become autonomous learners. So, when they don't look at our daily journal of tasks to do, and when they don't ask their classmates for help, and then they come up to me. I tell them go look at that and go ask your classmates. And then they don't do that. And they ask their classmates, Hey, what are we supposed to do with this? And one student next to them goes, I don't know. And then they give up? No, you have to be seekers, you have to seek the answer. We need to be seekers of the information, first among our peers, because chances are the information is already out there. There are very few cases where no one knows. And they don't like that. And it annoys them so much when I say, “Did you look on our common curriculum page yet?” “Have you asked three of your classmates before me? No? Do that.” That must be an all-children thing not just a cultural thing. I say that to even my non-ESL students. And I know that annoys them but I want to help them advocate for themselves. [Interview 2]. I found the above narrative very interesting because although Eva wanted to help with all their questions, she wanted to teach them self-advocacy skills for two purposes: “to give them life lessons” and “to maintain her emotional sanity”. Details of her emotional regulation will be discussed in the next section of this chapter. Eva imparted the above-mentioned self-advocacy skills by modeling the behavior herself. In one of the class observations between Interview 1 and Interview 2, I heard her giving her students an analogy of her own position where she would not directly go to the principal and disrupt his busy day by asking questions. Instead, she would try 123 to find the information from her peers, her colleagues first and if no one knew, then she would go to the secretaries. And only if they did not know, would she go to the principal. This approach recurred in her narratives in the other interviews throughout the year in that she would share with me how emotionally exhausted she would be teaching her students, especially ESL students, these self-advocacy skills. Another way Eva promoted self-advocacy among her students was by setting up several student committees and trying to include at least one ESL student on each committee so they could take initiatives of their help-seeking and self-advocacy behaviors. She disclosed: Excerpt 71: ESL students’ ownership through classroom committees I've started these things called classroom committees. So, what I've realized is that there are some things in the classroom that I just need to delegate to them. And it will give them I think, a sense of ownership of the space and belonging in the room, and it will eliminate tasks that I have to do. So, for example, I have a classroom committee that passes back all of the graded paper. Oh, I'm not doing that anymore [laughs]. I have a committee that makes sure that we have tissues and band aids in the classroom. They haven't done it since the beginning of the year, for the record. I have a committee that celebrates birthdays. I have a committee that makes sure that students who missed a day are caught up. That's another thing that students could do, go to that committee. I want them to take initiative, take ownership in the class so they don't feel like this is a space that they just come to, and things get done to them, but they help contribute to the like, the machinery of the class, they help it keep going. And it takes some things off my back. [Interview 2] As shown in the above excerpt, Eva’s goal of making her ESL students feel valued was to be achieved by giving them opportunities to lead and collaborate on some classroom committees, where they proactively engaged in curricular or even non-curricular activities such as celebrating birthdays. One such activity was also done almost every single day (as expressed in her interviews and observed in classes) by forming a welcome crew in the class that consisted of both ESL and non-ESL students. The welcome crew would be made up of three students who would share the schedules and learning objectives of the respective days with the class in the beginning of each class. Sharing the schedule and learning objectives was mandatory in the class. 124 However, Eva did not choose to do it herself as she thought that since every teacher did that, her students were “desensitized” to the practice of reading the learning objectives on the board. Hence, she decided to assign the task to the welcome crew with the hope that they would have “bigger social responsibility to listen to their peers and there's more success when it's a peer-to- peer situation than a teacher to student” [Interview 3]. Intentionally advocating for students’ mental health. One crucial component of pedagogy of care for Eva was to advocate for her own and her students’ mental health. She chose to serve on the school district’s mental health advisory board as a teacher representative so that she could bring in discussions around the importance of students’ mental health for their overall wellbeing and sustainable success. We can see the trajectory of her narratives in how she viewed herself as a mental health advocate across the interviews over the academic year. To begin with, in our first interview, she mentioned that she chose to be on the mental health advisory board so that she could be a solid rock model for her students. Excerpt 72: I should be a role model I'm on the mental health advisory board here...And I'm not saying that there aren't moments in life where you are allowed to be sad. But many adults are not handling their emotional and mental states in productive ways. They aren’t seeking the help. ... I could never go to school and be the person who's acting crazy. I have to be a role model. I have to be that rock for all of my kids because they are looking up to me to be that because they're the ones that are coming to me with their emotional baggage. So, if I am projecting that I'm a nutcase, okay, that's insensitive but if I'm projecting that I'm not emotionally well, then I won't be able to teach as well. They won't be able to learn as well. And they won't be able to come to me with their issues because they don't respect me as the person that can help them because I'm falling apart. [Interview 1]. This excerpt reveals that Eva’s view that a teacher could be a solid source of support for her students by modelling her own strength and being a “rock” for her students. This view was consistently borne out through my observations of her during the first half of the school year. However, towards the end of the school year, her view had changed from being a rock model to 125 being vulnerable to the students so they could also open up to her, which will be discussed under emotional regulation in the subsequent subchapter. Eva chose to serve on the mental health advisory board because she believed that “In order to make change in the school, we would have to form a student group because most of the change, even if we want to start from an administrative level, it really happens with the students. They are powerful change makers.” [Interview 5]. This was not the first time she had mentioned her conscious decision making to serve on the mental health committee and to advocate for students’ mental health. The group was formed after unfortunate suicide cases in high school that occurred several years before this study took place. The committee was subsequently formed at the school district level to avoid a repeat of this occurrence. Eva narrated: Excerpt 73: Importance of mental health board at the high school The committee as a whole decided that most of our attention needed to be focused on the high school because the elementary schools, they have this thing called Second Step Program, which talks about coping mechanisms and mental health and being kind. And then the middle school is going to extend that second step programming. So, it's like K-8 have this programming, but the high school was lacking anything. And the high school was the reason in the first place why the Mental Health Committee began because of the suicides from the high school students that happened a few years ago. So even though I began as the middle school representative, I kind of morphed into this advisor for high school students because that's where a need was, and it interests me. [Interview 5] The above excerpt is one of the several cases where she mentioned why it was very important to advocate for students’ mental health. Also, she shared multiple times about communicating this message to her ESL students but wondered if she was doing a good job of communicating it in a culturally appropriate and linguistically comprehensible ways. Making content comprehensible for your students. In one of the class observations, Eva made her students watch a short video titled ‘Everything you need to know to read Homer’s Odyssey’. When I asked her what the purpose of showing a video about the reading was, Eva said that she intended to make the content comprehensible to all her students, especially her ESL students and 126 other students who might benefit from visual and multimodal exposure to the content. Although a lot of the curriculum was laid out for her and she was provided with the resources she could use and could fill an entire year with, Eva wanted to capitalize on her experience and expertise to bring multimodal input into her classroom because much of the existing resources did not ‘speak to her as a teacher’. Because Eva liked to teach using stories and concise and visually appealing materials, she decided to leverage on the resources outside of the Dropbox (a cloud storage to share materials and collaborate) she was provided with by the English department. Apart from exercising her agency to use the resources that resonated with her as a teacher, she repeatedly mentioned that Old English, especially Shakespearean English, was not only difficult for her ESL students but also for her non-ESL students. She had incorporated some feedback from her students from previous years who had advised her to mix the reading and video materials, part by part, instead of starting one after finishing another. She recalled: Excerpt 74: A sandwich of visual literacy Some feedback I had received from the students when we read A Raisin in the Sun, which was a play, that they found it so helpful when we would read one scene, and then I would show them the scene, act it out, we'd read the next scene, I'd show it to them. And we did it all the way through the play. Traditionally, in my education, at least, we would have read the entire play, and then at the end, you watch the entire movie, and then maybe you go like, oh, now I get it. But it's too late. So what I'm understanding that I have to do for Shakespeare is first, Shakespeare, as you know, has been around for hundreds of years. And is yes, and his work is so important that there are so many resources available online. And in fact, I found this playlist of videos that gives about a three minutes summary of every single scene. Oh, and it gives some little cartoons and some speech bubbles. Yeah, so what we will do is we'll watch that three minute summary, then we will read that scene. And then we will watch the movie version of it. And then we'll move on to the next one. So we'll have like, a sandwich of visual literacy. This is the first time that I've done it and I'm hoping that will be helpful for the comprehension and understanding of students. [Interview 4] When Eva asked me about my findings or any noticeable things from my observations of her class and from student interviews, I had shared with her that her decisions of choosing 127 multimodal resources for her students’ comprehension was taken positively by her students, at least two focal ESL students in this research. She restated, “We do all of our reading in class together. So, when we're reading aloud in that circle, that is the reason why I am constantly stopping them, to check for comprehension, or to summarize or whatever” [Interview 5]. Apart from using the ‘sandwich of visual literacy’ and constant ‘comprehension checks’, Eva was also aware of her not being able to provide any differentiated instruction for her ESL students. Her main concern, even toward the end of the school year was about whether her ESL students were learning anything, beyond the grades in their assignments. Another example of her striving to make her teaching comprehensible to all her students, especially her ESL students and the students with relatively lower levels of reading, was demonstrated through her choice of the screenplay version of the readings instead of the actual novel. Although Eva thought that some people might argue that the screenplay was not a true representation of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which was authored by Harper Lee, she opted to read the screenplay instead of the novel because a novel would have taken at least three weeks longer than the screenplay. Eva had made her students aware of the reason, i.e., time constraints for choosing the screenplay. In my class observation between Interview 5 and 6, some students had excitedly asked her when and if she was going to show the movie. Eva responded to that instance as follows: Excerpt 75: Perceived assistance in students’ comprehension through screenplays and movies And that all started with A Raisin in the Sun. And that's been, that's actually been an expectation in English classrooms since I was a student. You would most often read the book, and then watch the movie. But when we did Raisin in the Sun, we would break it up by scenes. So, we would read that scene and then watch it, read the next scene and then watch it. And the students told me that that was really helpful for their comprehension, because it allowed them to visualize the characters, which then in the subsequent scenes allowed them to understand the interactions better as they were reading. So, then I did that in the Romeo and Juliet book. However, the difference was that I chose…I'm forgetting the name of the director who did this version of Romeo and Juliet. Essentially, it's an exaggerated modern version of Romeo and Juliet. And it does 128 not follow the play exactly. He [the director] takes creative liberties and that confused them so much, even my non-ESL students. But I thought it's so much more entertaining than the one that was made in the 1980s [Interview 6] Although Eva exercised her teacher agency to choose the movie and screenplay over the novels, she was aware that the screenplays and movies might show some distortion of characters from the actual novel. However, her major aim was to assist her students comprehend the content and take lessons from those readings. She said, “I hope that they're learning from the stories. I know that storytelling is the best way to teach or learn anything. Yeah. And so I hope that the literature is teaching them these lessons from the themes of the books that we hope they take” [Interview 6]. While talking about Eva’s perception of the importance of movies and screenplays over the novels, I had noticed in the beginning of the school year that the subtitles were not activated on the videos. When I asked her what her views about it were, she said, “I think it's a really good idea. I probably forget to do that. No one has ever come to me to ask, but maybe they don't even know how much better it could be. I think that they could be very useful at times” [Interview 3]. Later, in the year, she not only activated subtitles in the videos but also paused and rewound some parts in the videos, such as, some dialogue between Romeo and Juliet. She said, “It was important for the plot, important for them to understand this aspect of the plot but it also just so happened that that was a time when their attention was diverted. So, there were two reasons that I wanted to go back” [Interview 6]. As seen in the previous narratives of her willingness to learn about her students’ cultural differences, Eva was aware of the fact that some of her ESL students preferred to sit at the back of the class in the beginning of the school year as they were shy. However, there had been a gradual change in their tendency to speak up and volunteer in class activities and serving on the 129 class committees. Also, she acknowledged that she had not been able to provide differentiated instruction to her students. She shared: Excerpt 76: No differentiated instruction In English class, I feel like they've been going very well. Although I will admit that the instruction has not been very differentiated. We are spending a lot of our time reading in class. And I really enjoy it because I’m doing everything with them. And it's the ultimate storytelling. And so I find pleasure from it butt I am not at a place where I know how they feel about it. My only indicator for their enjoyment is, I guess, if they're awake [laughs]. Some of them are not awake. But I also understand that some of them are Muslim and experiencing Ramadan right now. So that's very challenging. But what I found is that the students who have difficulty reading are the ones who placed themselves as far back in the corner as possible. And so I'm trying to like, come closer, come here. I'm gonna make you play a small role at least. But additionally, I am having more and more students speak up and request roles or volunteer for roles rather than being picked and there will always be students that I have to pick because they're introverted or they're shy, or maybe it's difficult for them to read. [Interview 6] Eva noticed the connection between students who choose to sit in the back seats of the room and their reading difficulties. To this point [Interview 6], she believed that her ESL students had made some progress in speaking up and volunteering for some roles in the readings of the scenes rather than being picked. Another interesting connection was between her ways of finding out if her students were interested in the content; she did this by checking if they were awake. However, Eva was also aware of the cultural and religious aspects of Muslim students during Ramadan and fasting that might affect their sleep cycle and, therefore, it was hard for her to find out if their lack of attention was due to the nature of the content or the sleep deprivation. Throughout the school year, Eva stressed how important it was for her students to follow the lessons through reading the literature that was set up from the department. However, toward the end of the school year, she reflected on the overall learning of her students, especially her ESL students. In our final interview, when I asked her how the year went for her in general, she mentioned: 130 Excerpt 77: Fine service with literature but disservice with writing I think that I may have spoken about this during our last interview, but I can't help but feel like the ninth grade English curriculum was a giant failure. I think that I did a fine service to our students with the literature. I feel like I'm very invested in the literature, and we take time to dissect it and talk about it. But I feel like I did a disservice to them with their writing, I did not do enough writing instruction. And what I now know is that we need to go back to the basics with grammar and writing because my students even for their final exam were turning in whole paragraphs with not a single piece of punctuation or incredible run on sentences or misspelt words all over the place. That and something that I realized is that I need to take the time at the beginning of the year to talk about how to appropriately communicate with your superior because I was still getting emails from students at the end of the year where the entire email is typed out in the subject line or I'll get an email that's written like a text from a student. I'm doing a disservice to them by not making sure that they are familiar with what is appropriate, writing in different contexts. That will be my main focus for next year. [Interview 7] The above excerpt shows her honest reflection of the distribution of her investment of teaching time among the three main tenets of English course: reading, writing, and speaking. She had also spoken about the connection between these tenets and Common Core State Standards at times. However, she was not used to looking at the standards very often. When asked about how her decisions aligned with the Common Core, English language proficiency standards, etc., Eva noted that she did not explicitly mention the standards in her communication with her students even though she made sure that they understood what learning objectives they were expected to achieve. She said: Excerpt 78: Communicating tenets over standards to students I almost never look at the written standards. And sometimes you do things in class that can be connected to half a dozen standards. We know what we need to do. We have tenets of English, right, we need to talk about speaking, reading, and writing. And I think that part of the reason why I haven't been so adamant about attaching every single standard to every single lesson is because I know that this curriculum has been set up. And it has been tested and worked by the English teachers in this school for years and years and years and years. So, it's trusted. However, if I ever had to turn in a lesson plan, then I would make sure that the standards that I am using are attached. [Interview 4] As seen in the above excerpt, one reason for not explicitly stating Common Core and State Standards to her students was that her English department had already decided which reading 131 texts to teach. And the English language arts courses were ‘literature heavy or literature focus’. So, the discussion was around how long it was going to take the teachers to do one particular reading, for example, A Raisin in the Sun. One month after Interview 4 was conducted, Eva brought up her discussion of standards as she had reflected on our last discussion. Specifically, she explained, “As a department, we have specific readings that we have to do and the common core and state standards are flexible enough that we just slide them in and we try to make sure as best we can, that we hit all the standards, but you're probably not going to for an entire year. It's nearly impossible, but they're quite flexible” [Interview 5]. However, Eva stressed that even if she did not think of standards first and develop the syllabus with the reading texts, she knew the readings that the department had selected included all core aspects of the standards. What was interesting about this part of the discussion was that Eva wanted to add to her narratives from the previous interview about how the content she taught had broader impact on her students through literature that had been set up by her department and was tested over a period of time, long before she started teaching the course. As presented above, Ms. Eva’s pedagogy of care included her intentional enactment of care in multiple ways. In practicing care for her students in general and ESL students in particular, she experienced different emotions which I present in the following section. Emotions In practicing a pedagogy of care in multiple ways as described in the preceding section, Eva shared a lot of emotional experiences related to her teaching profession in general. She also shared experiences of how her students’, in particular her ESL students’, attempts to seek assistance. In the following sections, I present her emotional experiences along with her 132 narratives of emotion regulation/management. One very noticeable thing among all the emotions she shared was that they were mostly contextual and related to certain experiences related to those contexts. Ms. Eva’s emotions that emerged in different discourses and contexts can be broadly categorized into emotion labor (unpleasant emotions emerged due to different types of contested situations) and emotion rewards (fulfillment and satisfaction of teaching students from diverse backgrounds). Emotion labor. The emotional labor Eva shared during our conversations covered a wide range: upset, mad, dismay, annoyance, frustration, disappointment, guilt, and being overwhelmed. Some of these emotions grew out of her direct contact with her ESL students and their families, but some of these emotional experiences emerged out of her narratives related to teaching in general. Since we discussed her intentionality and investment in adopting a pedagogy of care for her students in general and ESL students in particular, these emotions overlap with her pedagogical practices of care because she believed that one facet of pedagogy of care was to be aware of her emotions and manage/regulate them so she would not be swayed by her emotions. Eva shared that in the beginning of the school year, after four years of her teaching, the administration suggested that she split the course with Mr. Thompson (pseudonym) where he would teach half of the course, and Eva would teach another half. According to her, he had no prior training and thus was not equipped to teach the course. She found it discouraging and wrote a six-page document to her administrators explaining why she was the most qualified to teach the class, and why having “two captains on the team, one of whom doesn’t know what’s going on would be a disaster” [Interview 1]. She was upset with the incident and the response she got from the administration. She stated: 133 Excerpt 79: Having an upset teacher is never best for the students This is my passion. It’s discouraging. I treat this as truly my child… When I have the training, I have the experience to be able to really inspire my kids … And when I first found out about this information, I was very upset. And the argument that administrators always use when teachers are upset is we have to do what's best for the students. Well, having an upset teacher is never best for the students…And it has to be a full community emotional and mental health discussion rather than an isolated group. You can't have the administrators happy, the teachers upset and the students happy. It doesn't work like that. It trickles down or through or around whatever. [Interview 1]. This narrative emerged during our conversation around the importance of advocating for mental health for teachers and students. She emphasized the engagement of the whole school community, including administration, to create a healthy school environment where not only students thrived but also teachers felt encouraged and valued. Although this did not have a direct connection with her ESL students in particular, this generic emotional state of a teacher could have potential effects on all the students she taught, adding an extra layer of work to think and plan for her ESL students in her mainstream class. Eva shared multiple instances of her annoyance that resulted from her students’ parents’ lack of understanding and empathy to teachers. When I met her for the second interview, she had had an email from a parent telling her that the latter’s son had said that Eva always gave him short answers, and she was never helpful to him. This was a parent who had ‘gone out of her way to ask her [Eva] to sign her up for a conference but never showed up’. When the student came into class, she had him read his parents’ email and responded to it because the student had not done the work he was supposed to do but had blamed it on Ms. Eva. She recalled: Excerpt 80: Parents’ annoying emails Well, I think the things that give me the most pause or disrupt my day, most effectively, in a negative way, typically, are emails from parents claiming that their children told them one thing, when the reality is another thing…. And then I had to spend about an hour of my time composing an email screenshotting specific evidence to kind of prove my thinking. And I think that I left that day, and I thought, I'm not sure that helped me with this relationship with the student. I don't know if they want to come up and ask me questions more. Now that I asked them to compose an email to their mom, they're 134 probably pretty mad at me. And I recognize that I was pretty mad at them. Very upset and annoyed [smiles]. It's natural human emotion and that is really difficult to control sometimes. I'm constantly working on that. [Interview 2]. The above excerpt exhibits that Eva was cognizant of her emotions that potentially would have undesirable effects on her relationship with the students as she said, “But then, after they left, I started thinking about ways that I could regain that trust” [Interview 2]. The excerpt also shows that she was willing to manage and regulate her unwanted emotions. She mentioned that although this was her fourth year of teaching, this was the first time where she was feeling anxious for her students that many of them might fail and retake their class either in the summer or the following year. She said, Excerpt 81: Appalled by things that have fallen through the cracks This is the first time where I'm starting to feel a little anxious for them. Although I've learned so much about what I need to do to help them along the way, I'm still appalled by how many things have fallen through the cracks And I think that there's this incredible guilt that teachers feel probably undeserving at the end of a school year where you think, did I teach them anything at all, they're gonna leave my classroom being worse off than when they came in? And of course, that's not true. maybe we have too high of expectations that in one year, we're gonna push them to college level writing. And that's probably not the case. [Interview 5] While she expressed her anxiety for her uncertainty about whether they learned anything through her teaching, she also mentioned that she should have lowered her expectations from the very beginning of the class, “So, I think that's what I've learned, lower your expectations about what you think they should be able to do at this point” [Interview 7]. With all the emotions presented above, Eva also expressed her annoyance regarding her students at times. She said that one of the things that annoyed her the most was one of her ESL students not respecting her boundaries. However, she also expressed her awareness that perhaps her student came from a different culture where they did not talk about boundaries. She had reserved several hours of time for her students, many of whom needed to turn things in and 135 revise their assignments. Although she had made this known well ahead of time, not many students took advantage of that opportunity and they tried to reach out to her in the last minute. It annoyed her but she reflected on the student’s efforts. She said: Excerpt 82: Respecting boundaries Well, today I came in with quite a negative outlook. I woke up with a heavy heart and a bit of an annoyance. Because I'm thinking, well shoot, the student just stayed up until almost midnight to get work done. So yes, even though the effort is delayed significantly, they're still putting in effort. But I also said that I had a cut off. So, what do I honor? Do I honor the fact that I said I'm only grading until nine o'clock? or do I honor the fact that the student put effort in afterwards? And now I have to rush my morning because I have to put aside time for the student to grade their work. And they also didn't respond respectfully. He also wrote an email that was like, ‘Hey, can you grade these things?’. I don’t know maybe setting boundaries is a cultural thing? I don’t know. [Interview 4] Although Eva was annoyed with the student not comprehending the communication around setting up boundaries, she graded his assignments out of her compassion and understanding of their efforts. However, she questioned how her communication with her students would be affected by not upholding her boundaries. She also wondered if the problem in setting up boundaries was caused due to cultural differences. Apart from the above-mentioned emotions related to her teaching and students, Eva also shared her frustration with a very subjective teacher evaluation method. The method of teacher evaluation used at the school could not do justice to her gradual growth and trajectory of development as a teacher. Sharing her frustration about this, she mentioned that in her first year of teaching, her evaluator had given her a ‘highly effective’ evaluation, which was encouraging. And the next year, she received another highly effective evaluation which she perceived as her growth as a teacher: Excerpt 83: But I have grown up as a teacher! And suddenly, I went from highly effective to effective, even though I became a better teacher, and took everything that I had learned in the year before. So, there's so much subjectivity involved, which is so frustrating to think that I've only grown, I've only gotten better. And I can show you how that's happened. Yet this evaluative measure is going to 136 [pause] I don't know. And often the concept is, well, not everyone on our staff can be highly effective. Well, why not? Why not? That's like me saying, oh, I can't give everyone A's in here. But what if they earn an A? [Interview 5] This type of evaluation system made her think if she really wanted to stay in the profession in the long run even though she believed she was a very passionate and caring teacher and teaching students from multiple background gave her immense joy and fulfillment. Eva had many students with failing grades in one of her classes, including three ESL students. They had to remediate the following year or over the summer. She felt guilty about that and expressed: Excerpt 84: Feeling guilty for failing students I can't help but feel guilty about that and think that it must be something to do with my teaching. But then at the same time, I see they have not turned in their work, haven’t even come to talk to me, has not come to seek help. And after a certain amount of time you go, okay, when do you when is the appropriate time for young teenagers to start learning to advocate for themselves? I think it's probably starting to be now. But next year, I have to really reconsider how to approach my students who seem to be on a failing track at the beginning. And something that I'm thinking about is requiring excel periods for help but then I also don't want to do that because if they're failing my class, and they're likely failing other classes, too, and then they'll need to go to their excel periods. And I just don't know, I don't know. [Interview 6] Out of the 47 students in two sections of her 9th grade class, 10 students (including 3 ESL students) failed. So, more than 20% of the 9th graders was going to need to retake English, which made her feel guilty that perhaps she could not do as good job as she had expected. Her concern was mainly about her ESL students not coming to her for help as much as she had expected. We can unpack a lot of layers of her emotions from the above excerpt. She was not only feeling guilty for her failing students but also reflecting on what she was going to do the following year to support her students advocate for themselves and seek the help they needed. 137 Despite all the above-mentioned emotion labor that resulted from unpleasant emotions, Ms. Eva also shared a gamut of pleasant emotions related to her teaching profession in general and teaching diverse ESL students in particular as presented below. Emotion reward. Ms. Eva’s emotion reward of teaching ESL students in her mainstream class manifested in her joy, delight, curiosity, and empathy as presented below. Some of Eva’s narratives of emotions were connected to how she viewed herself as a teacher in general and an English teacher teaching multilingual students, in particular. She said that she was grateful for me asking the question as it gave her a reflective moment to think and articulate her feelings about teaching, as she was very passionate about it and put her heart into her work. Regarding her emotions related to her teacher identity, Eva shared: Excerpt 85: Connections with diverse students is the most incredible thing How do I feel about teaching? Well, I feel like it's one of the best jobs in the world because we get to design experiments every single day and see if they work out or not. Yeah, we get to be delighted and surprised. We get to practice our own patience. I feel like teaching has prepared me to face any social situation, or any stressful situation and feel as though it's achievable because there are so many problems that you deal with on a daily basis, or putting out little fires in one minute, you might have to do 10 of them. And so your multitasking abilities also improve. But just the connections that you make with the students from different backgrounds, countries, languages, cultures, social strata…is the most incredible thing. [Interview 2]. Although this conversation took place during our second interview, I witnessed a different spark and zeal in her every time she talked about teaching, and when she described what impact she could have on her students as an English language arts teacher, especially her ESL students who came from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Moreover, Eva’s emotions connected to her English language arts teacher identity; crucially, this identity was also intertwined with other multiple identities that she inhabited, having been trained as an art teacher, an English teacher, and a graphic designer. She found it difficult to pull herself back and forth between these identities at times. However, when I asked 138 her how she leveraged her expertise in multiple disciplines to plan and teach her English language arts class in general and ESL students in particular, Eva mentioned that she had a relatively higher level of perception of some of the teaching materials, especially those with some graphic design in them. The following excerpt comes from a time in the semester when Eva was teaching the book March (by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell), an autobiographical black and white graphic novel about the U.S. civil rights movement. Showing the pages in the book to me, she described: Excerpt 86: Leveraging on multiple expertise This is a graphic novel, which is amazing for an art and English teacher because I get to teach my kids about visual literacy. So we get to discuss how the elements and principles of design contributed to the decisions of this graphic designer, how they wanted to tell the story. [showing page 7] We have a few frames where we have two completely different types of speech bubbles, a bubble here that looks like our average speech bubble, which is very round and smooth. And then we have a speech bubble here that has very jagged edges. So, we get to talk about the differences between these lines and how these lines convey completely different meanings, and how this has kind of an aggressive tone. And we know that especially because it's coming from a bullhorn but it's also coming from police that are yelling at people. It's very effective in showing that difference in speech. [showing another page] We see the silhouette, or the shadow of what we think is a police officer with a baton. Because we see that there's this baton here, and we know he's been dragged, we can make this assumption that this blackness possibly represents his lack of consciousness. So, I love it. This is fantastic for an art and English teacher. [Interview 2]. The above excerpt clearly shows a high level of artistic and designer aptitude in Eva, which she thought was helpful for her to make decisions on selecting videos and other materials for making content comprehensible for her students. She also shared that her explaining this meaning- making process in the graphic novel could potentially benefit her ESL students, who struggled to understand heavy and dense texts with challenging vocabulary: “I think it’s helpful for all, my artistic students, ESL students and the one who raised his hand and responded ‘It’s because we are lazy’ when I asked ‘why did you not complete your homework?’ [laughs]” [Interview 2] 139 In addition, Ms. Eva’s emotion reward was connected to her curiosity. Regarding her ESL students who came from different parts of the world at different ages of their lives, she said that she always had a very high level of curiosity and always wondered what might be going on in their lives. If they migrated to the US with their families, what they might have gone through before migration, during migration, and post migration. Relating it to their classroom behaviors, she said: Excerpt 87: They make me curious They are all very different people. My ESL students have come from everywhere in the world, all continents. They have different personalities. Some of them are very focused and very put together. And their language is I would say, just as strong as my non- English language learners. Some have mistakes all over the place. I have an ESL student who is a flighty person. She's like, all over the place and cannot concentrate. She's like, at all times, she's gonna have more challenges with learning the language because she has more challenges with everything. She's like, bouncing off the wall at all times. On the contrary, some are hyper focused. They are all amazing. They make me curious. I learn so much from their stories. [Interview 4] Her awareness of their struggles made her empathetic in situations where they would have caused some annoyance to her as shown in the following narrative. As expressed in the above excerpt, Eva mentioned several times that she cared for her ESL and other minoritized students. At times there would relatively longer pauses when she talked about the possible struggles they and their families might have been through. She also said that teaching ESL students had made her more empathetic. She said: Excerpt 88: They are just trying to survive What I have to understand and what I'm learning more and more is that my ESL students, for the most part are kind, sweet people that are just trying to get by. But they, like everyone else in life, are trying to survive. [pause]. Yeah, they're just trying to survive. I don't know. [Interview 3]. Although she was empathetic to her ESL and other minoritized students for her perception of their struggles related to traumatic history, linguistic and cultural differences, socio-economic 140 status, familial problems and so on (as discussed in the pedagogy of care section), she expressed her anxiety for those students’ learning and overall success in her classes. We always ended our conversations with some pleasant and/or critical moments she had experienced lately and in response to that question she said that there were instances that gave her happiness about her teaching in general and ESL students in particular. She said that her ESL students’ active participation in classroom discussions and help seeking behaviors made her happy and joyful. The following excerpt is related to an instance when her students watched a scene of “A Raising in the Sun” in their roundtable discussion at the front of the class in a large semi-circle. She shared: Excerpt 89: Their discussions and comprehension make my heart swell I think that all of the discussions that we've been able to have through the course of reading “A Raising in the Sun” have been so empowering. When I've been able to turn off that section of the play that we watched for the day and everyone can just kind of with wide eyes and look around at each other and all of my students, including my ESL students, digested at the same time. And then they stand up and bring their chairs back and they're like, dang, did you see what just happened? can you believe that? can you believe they were thinking that? That's one of those things that makes my heart swell, gives me immense joy [smiles] [Interview 3]. Her feeling of joy about her ESL students’ comprehension of the English text contradicted with her other emotions as described in the proceeding sections. This shows a wide range of her emotional experiences regarding her ESL students in her mainstream English language arts class and their learning and success. Emotion regulation. Ms. Eva’s findings on emotion labor and emotion reward were intertwined with her perceptions with how she regulated her emotions by learning through her emotions and seeking support from her fellow teachers. Eva’s disappointment can be traced back to herself, the administration, parents, and students themselves for not teaching the latter how to self-advocate. Most of the time the 141 students were failing because they were not turning any work in. To resolve this issue, the English department ensured that all the reading was done in the class and no mandatory reading was sent home. There had been very few homework assignments that they needed to take home because they did not finish it all in class or it was a bigger assignment. Many times, the students would just choose not to complete the work even if they were given extended time to submit their work. Excerpt 90: Disappointment but great learning So, something is going on with our kids where they need more help. I feel like next year, now that I have an expectation set for how they behave and now that I know what to expect, I think at the very beginning of the year, maybe the first two months, if I'm seeing signs of someone struggling or someone not getting grades in, I think what I'm going to do is suggest administration that we set up a mandatory meeting with the social worker…I've tried to tell my students who have struggled to come to and they just don't go. So there needs to be some, like, forcing of our students ‘You're going to come here, whether you want to or not, and we're going to get the social worker involved. We're going to get your parents or your guardians involved’. And we're going to do it early because so often, I feel like kids feel like they're digging their own graves, and then they find out too late that they can't dig themselves back out. So, that was a little bit of a disappointing year, but it was still growth opportunity. [Interview 7] The above excerpt shows that Eva seemed to have some clear plans for the following year to involve the students’ parents and social workers when she would notice any lagging in their behaviors and performance. Adding her disappointment about some students’ parents, she said, “I always think that it's amazing how many parents don't come to parent teacher conferences or don't show their faces but then are willing to fight battles with you via email… a thankless job, you know? It’s heartbreaking” [Interview 7]. Therefore, she decided that she was going to set up some expectations for parents as well and would include them on the syllabus when they would sign up at the beginning of the school year. In sum, although we have witnessed how Eva strongly advocated for her students’ help seeking behaviors and strived to teach them to self-advocate, the end of the semester results did 142 not align with her expectations and communication of those helping strategies. How these communications and teachings of self-advocacy were perceived and adopted by her ESL students will be discussed in the following chapter about students. What follows next is how Eva believed she regulated her varied emotions. Ms. Eva and I had several conversations around how we as teachers, at different times of our career, had got affected while providing care and support for our students who had been going through some traumatic events in their lives. She connected our prior conversations with the above incident to express how teacher wellbeing is of paramount importance for students’ success: Excerpt 91: We are expected to know how to deal with emotions I honestly think that it needs to be - maybe this is just a myopic view- but I think it needs to be all about, like, teacher health and wellness so that we are best able to provide the resources for our kids. We all have challenges. Traumatic things happen or happened in all of our lives, but I suppose we're expected to know how to deal with those so that we don't show that to our students” [Interview 1]. Her statement above also overlaps with her earlier idea of being a solid model for her students where she stated that she would not show her vulnerability to her students as she wanted to be a role model for them. However, towards the end of the semester her view of regulating her emotions had changed and she thought that her students had accepted and acknowledged the vulnerable side of her as well, which helped her. She said: Excerpt 92: They give me grace I think I haven't spoken to my kids about this yet. I don't know how they take it. But there have been some days where I have been under the weather for whatever reason. Yeah. And sometimes I just tell them, yeah, that's how I'm feeling. And I think they give me some grace” [Interview 7]. Apart from trajectory of her views towards managing her emotions, she also mentioned multiple times that serving on the mental health advisory board and helping her students, especially minoritized students from ESL and African American households, helped her regulate her 143 emotions throughout the academic year. She called it emotional mentoring to refer to her willingness, investment, and enactment of care and support for them outside the class time. On another occasion, Eva noted that she set aside some extra time for one of her students during her own lunch hour and disclosed, “…that student and her boyfriend made the interesting decision to have three out of their six classes together and now they’re going through turmoil. So, that was just emotional mentoring happening there” [Interview 4]. She repeatedly reported that emotional mentoring kept her sane. In addition, she mentioned that her self-care planning helped her regulate her emotions, adding that she did CrossFit to keep her health and wellbeing checked but also acknowledged her privilege of being able to do so: “I do CrossFit. I work out almost every single day, which is a luxury” [Interview 7] Apart from her intentional investment in self-care, supportive family, and the happiness she received from emotional mentoring of her students, one thing that Eva found helpful was the emotional support from her mentors and the school administration, especially in critical situations such as misunderstandings with students’ parents. She mentioned that when the parents would write frustrating emails to her, the administrators and mentors would listen to her and support her in navigating such situations without judging her. She said: Excerpt 93: Opportunities to lean on people When I felt a little insecure dealing with parents who were mad at me, the administrators made sure to tell me that they had my back. And they were always, whenever there wasn't some type of issue, they would ask me to come down and just tell them about the situation before they passed any judgments. And they're really good about saying that we're on your side. Whenever I have some issue with a parent that could go down the wrong path, they're always on my side. I think that our school does a fantastic job of mentoring their young teachers. I've had an opportunity to go lean on people and I felt very supported within my department. [Interview 1]. This above excerpt shows that she had the academic support she needed. She also mentioned that she would have felt overwhelmed if she had to plan and execute the teaching all by herself. 144 Being in a supportive and collaborative community of English teachers in the department helped her regulate her overwhelming situations during teaching. She said: Excerpt 94: Teaching in a silo I think a lot of teachers think that when you have the support of a peer, you can do anything. Yeah, you can tackle big projects and bring really cool programs to the school whereas it feels so overwhelming when you're doing it yourself. This emotional support and validation is incredible. I really cannot imagine being a teacher in a silo. [Interview 5] All the above excerpts exhibit how Ms. Eva sought emotional support from her peers in navigating through difficult times as she was conscious of the emergence of unpleasant emotions in certain contexts and discourse with students, parents, and school administration. Summary of Ms. Eva’s Findings Ms. Eva expressed and enacted her pedagogy of care intentionally, especially towards her ESL students in the mainstream English language arts classroom. She was aware that the majority of the students in her class were White, and her enactment of a pedagogy of care began with her awareness of the presence of ESL students, who were generally non-White, in the class. She expressed that her ESL students might hide their struggles from her, and therefore, she intended to put effort into knowing who her ESL students were and making connections with them. She asserted that many mainstream teachers needed to be trained on how to address ESL students’ needs in their classrooms. She compared her ESL students with the students with special needs, which made her use recasts very frequently in her class, and also make her content comprehensible by “breaking down instructions into bite sized pieces”. In addition to making connections with her students, Ms. Eva also attempted to diversify her English language arts content, and to make it as culturally relevant as possible, given that the decision to select the course readings was made by the school’s English department. Although she could not include the texts that represented her ESL students, she strove to connect the content to their cultural 145 backgrounds where she saw fit. While acknowledging her privilege of being an English speaking and White teacher, she was aware of her unintentional biases, and frequently apologized to her students for her cultural ignorance. She would not hesitate to tell her students that she was a learner herself. Her pedagogy of care also encompassed her efforts in being a trauma-informed teacher. She enacted her trauma-informed practices in her English language arts class by giving her students trigger warnings for potentially traumatic content. For example, she told her students that while watching the video related to Romeo and Juliet, there would be suicide scenes and some parts of the video would include nudity. Her intentionality behind these teaching practices was not to retraumatize her students, if they had already experienced trauma in their lives. She gave her students an option to opt out of these triggering episodes. Part of Ms. Eva’s pedagogy of care for her ESL students was also advocating for them and for helping them and to empower them to advocate for themselves. One of the ways she did this was by encouraging her ESL students to serve on classroom committees, and to cultivate a sense of ownership of the classroom space through such service and commitment. Another way she advocated for her students (but this was not limited to her ESL students) was through her own commitment to serve on the school’s mental health advisory board in order to learn ways to advocate for her students’ mental and emotional wellbeing. Despite all her commitment, intention, and efforts in enacting care and advocacy for all her students, especially her ESL students, Ms. Eva stressed her need to enact her pedagogy of care from a culturally relevant perspective. Her constant reflections included her willingness to cultivate her own cultural understanding related to her ESL students’ diverse backgrounds, and to make her teaching equitable for them. 146 In all of her efforts in learning and enacting pedagogy of care and advocacy for her ESL students, Ms. Eva experienced emotion labor and emotion rewards from her teaching, both of which were discursive in nature, as they emerged in certain teaching related contexts and through interactions. Her emotion rewards were related to her making connections with her ESL students who represented diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, which in turn helped her expand her own horizon of intercultural understanding. In addition, when her ESL students participated in classroom discussions and comprehended the content, she felt an emotion reward as it “made her heart swell”. On the other hand, a myriad of teaching contexts in and out of the classroom also led her to experience emotion labor. For example, her perceived sense of failed attempts to support her ESL students, and her failing students made her feel guilty; such experiences subsequently drained her emotional energy. In addition, certain parents’ annoying emails that dismissed her efforts in teaching, and her perceptions of her teacher boundary being disrespected gave her disappointment. Her emotion labor also resulted from her slight disconnect with her administration when she struggled to convince them that “an upset teacher is never best for the students”. Despite her emotion labor experiences that stemmed from multiple sources, she strove to regulate her emotion labor through communication with her fellow teachers on whom she could “lean on” when she needed. She also acknowledged that her students were very accommodating of her when they saw her struggle due to emotion labor. In all her efforts to enact the pedagogy of care for her ESL students, Ms. Eva’s intentions of care, advocacy, and emotions were all intricately intertwined as they were discursive in nature and were manifested in certain teachable moments. Her caring teaching practices and advocacy for her ESL students led her into emotion labor-charged situations as she found herself in tense situations and contested spaces that were characterized by her perceived lack of cultural 147 awareness, guilt for failing students, and perceptions of seemingly unsuccessful teaching moments where she felt that the “things had fallen through the cracks”. Comparison of Ms. Rosa’s and Ms. Eva’s Findings Related to Care, Emotions, and Advocacy One of the interesting aspects of Ms. Rosa’s and Ms. Eva’s enactment of caring practices was their very use of the term “kids” they used to refer to their high school students. They shared that they did not have their own children as of the time of the data collection for this study. As presented in Ms. Eva’s data, she mentioned that ninth grade was “another level of kindergarten” at high school as they had to navigate a lot of new classroom systems and get used to the frequent communication about post-secondary education. In this subsection, I present some similarities and differences between Ms. Rosa’s and Ms. Eva’s care, advocacy, and emotions related to teaching mainstream classes that included most non-ESL students with a very few ESL students. Both teachers were deliberate about adopting pedagogy of care for their students and advocating for their ESL students. They believed in treating their students as whole human beings, rather than just some students who are enrolled in their respective classes and whom they met for 50 minutes every day during the weekdays. Both were also concerned about their perceived lack of understanding regarding how their intentions of care would be better translated into ways that their ESL students would make sense of easily. They believed in understanding their ESL students and making connections with them to build trust and create a sense of belonging in spaces with the majority of white students. They organized care circles in their respective classes, even though they were teaching different subjects. Ms. Eva’s purpose in organizing the care circles or roundtable discussions was to help her students, especially her ESL students feel part of a larger class community, and to feel 148 accepted in the overall classroom interaction and dialogues. Ms. Rosa’s care circles were aimed for discussions around emotions related to tests and overall emotional wellbeing. Both of them frequently reflected on their practices to address ESL students’ needs in their classes. Although they believed that they put efforts in creating a welcoming environment for their ESL students, they did not create differentiated instruction for them as they were enrolled in mainstream classes, not in the ESL classes. They advocated for their students' wellbeing. Although they experienced emotion labor from their caring practices that required extra efforts, their perceived emotion rewards of teaching diverse students from around the world gave them a sense of fulfillment from their teaching profession. Evidently, there were also some differences in their caring practices and the intersection of care with their advocacy and emotions because they were teaching different courses, and they had their unique individual teaching selves. Ms. Rosa was an experienced teacher who had taught for almost 18 years, whereas Ms. Eva was newer to the profession and had been teaching for six years. Due to the nature of the content in her English language arts class, Ms. Eva was in a position where she could have conversations with her students about diversity of reading texts and cultural relevance. In contrast, Ms. Rosa was not able to diversify content from a cultural perspective in her science class. However, she attempted to make her content relevant by connecting it to the real world outside the classroom. In addition, while both teachers believed in cultivating deeper connections with their ESL students and in understanding them better, Ms. Eva’s intention was to understand the cultural diversity of her ESL students, and Ms. Rosa’s intention was to understand the diversity of her ESL students in terms of levels of their English proficiency. 149 Moreover, the enactment of care in terms of trauma-informed practices was obvious in Ms. Eva’s teaching as she gave trigger warnings to her students and allowed them to opt out of the discussions. While the situation was different in Ms. Rosa’s science class, she mentioned the aspects of trauma-informed care in terms of how she had to break the news about a suicide incident to her class, and how she herself was emotionally triggered every time she thought about the helplessness the students might have found themselves in before drug overdosing and thinking about committing suicides. Although they were teaching different subjects and content, both Ms. Eva and Ms. Rosa advocated for their students’ mental and emotional wellbeing as part of their caring practices and by serving on the mental health board (Ms. Eva), and by creating care circles in their classes while constantly reminding students of the importance of emotional wellbeing for their overall success. Both teachers also encountered emotion labor due to their overwhelming workload and efforts in creating caring spaces. Although one of the common themes around emotion labor was connected to tests and students’ grades, Ms. Eva’s emotion labor resulted from her perceived unsuccessful teaching associated with her failing students. In contrast, Ms. Rosa’s emotion labor resulted from her contested space where she wanted to teach her students to focus on the process of learning rather than test scores, but the students struggled as they held the importance of grades. This tension had to do with how test scores could impact the students in their post- secondary education and college enrollment process. 150 CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS FROM STUDENTS’ DATA In this chapter, I present findings from my two focal ESL students, Zaynab and Spring. Each participant’s findings are presented in the order of RQs (care, advocacy, and emotions) in the sections below. Zaynab’s Perception and Interpretation of Pedagogy of Care Zaynab is a 15-year-old female student in her freshman year in high school. She was originally from Iraq. Her parents moved to the United Arab Emirates when she was eight years old. Her family stayed in the UAE for about three years before they immigrated to the USA when she was eleven years old. When her family was in the UAE, she thought they were going to stay there for a longer time, if not forever. She was not aware of the fact that her parents had immigrated to the UAE from Iraq due to some geo-political and socio-economic challenges. When they moved to the US from the UAE, she recalled her parents packing things to bring with them and taking care of passports and other related documents. She said, “I don't know what it was. My parents were like before three days, we're going to America and I'm like, what? It was so sudden [Interview 1]”. She was going to a school in the UAE and had started making a few friends when she had to move to the US with her family (i.e., her parents, her older sister and her two younger brothers). It was in the late Spring semester during the school year when they had arrived in the US Her parents decided to send her to a school run by a mosque for a few months before her enrollment for the new school year in the following Fall, when she was enrolled in the 5th grade in a local elementary school. She recalled her ELL teacher who pulled her out of the classes to provide support with her English. Zaynab reported that she had learned some English in her school in the UAE, but since it was a school run by a Mosque, she learned all her subjects in 151 Arabic, except for a class of a very formal and textbook related English. She recalled feeling stranded in a foreign place among people who did not look like her and who did not speak her language. In the following year, Zaynab was enrolled in a middle school, although she felt that she was not ready for the transition to a middle school just after a few months of her arrival. Her older sister was enrolled in grade 8 and her two brothers went to the Islamic school the first year before they were enrolled in grade 1 the following year. Zaynab thought that it was more difficult for her than her older sister to adjust in the school system in the States; she believed that her sister’s English was comparatively better because she was an outgoing person and made a lot of friends quickly with whom she could communicate in English. By contrast, Zaynab thought that she was an introverted and shy person by nature, and would always feel anxious to communicate with new people because she had the fear of being judged for her reportedly low level of English skills and the way she dressed and the fact that she wore a hijab. Zaynab’s older sister was in her junior year in high school, her brothers were third and first graders, respectively. Zaynab spoke three languages. Her first language was Arabic, her second language was Persian, and English was her third language. She acquired Persian from her father who spoke both Arabic and Persian as he had spent his childhood with his Persian-speaking maternal family. During the time of this study, Zaynab’s two younger brothers were fluent in English, and they tended to speak English at home, too, but her parents would encourage to speak only Arabic at home because they believed that the children were going to speak English at school and outside world most of the time. She said, “My parents are like if you know English and Arabic, you are all set [laughs]” [Interview 1]. One of the classes Zaynab was taking during this study was Spanish as a language requirement, but her parents were not happy with that as she was already a multilingual and did not require additional language to fulfil the requirement. Rather, 152 she could have taken any other course that would help her improve her English. However, Zaynab took the Spanish language as she got an opportunity to experience where every student, despite their different first languages, was viewed as equal because they were all studying a new language and struggling together “We were like all the same. Even for the American students, they were studying a new language, all of us were equal in that class. And there are so many people who speak Spanish in this country. I just loved being in the Spanish class. The teacher was awesome too.” [Interview 1]. This shows that Zaynab’s perception of being and feeling inferior to her English-speaking classmates due to her self-perceived lower English proficiency made her feel that learning a new language was a struggle for everyone, and that she felt motivated while learning an additional language in the same class with her English-speaking peers. Zaynab’s dad had some undergraduate level pharmacy degree in her home country. When they moved to the UAE, he worked at a pharmacist and gained more work experience. However, when he moved to the US, the degree from his home country was not recognized and so he could not work as a pharmacist. Therefore, he assisted other Arabic speaking pharmacists near Detroit. Zaynab’s mother was a homemaker and assisted an Arabic teacher in the Islamic center to teach Arabic to younger kids, including her two sons. Zaynab repeatedly shared during the interviews that the women, especially adult women, in her community needed support to advocate for themselves. She thought that even though they have immigrated to a new country with a lot of possibilities and opportunities, many women from her community were still living a life not very different from how they had been living in their home country before they immigrated to the States. Some of them had given up their studies after their marriage, some had professional degrees but never practiced them, and yet some had cultivated new desires to go back to colleges 153 to earn their post-secondary degrees in the States. She said, “I want to be lawyer. I want to help my mom and many women like her to speak up for themselves. They never make decisions themselves. They are like yeah, I am too old now. She is like only 42. She wants to go to a community college next year”. [Interview 2]” Therefore, at of the time of this study, Zaynab wanted to pursue a degree in law in the future to become a lawyer and to advocate for them. However, she was concerned that her shy nature would potentially be a hindrance to pursue her dream, “You have to be very fluent in English… argue with evidence and like all those things. I am very shy and nervous all the time. I don’t know how to do that. I will learn I guess.” [Interview 2]. Zaynab mentioned ‘nervousness’ around her English proficiency in almost all of our conversations, including recorded interviews and other informal chats. This section presents the narratives of how Zaynab perceived and interpreted her teachers’ pedagogy of care, especially her English language arts teacher, who is one of the focal teacher participants in this study. I also present her expressions of her emotions related to being an ESL student in a mainstream English language arts class taught by Ms. Eva. Zaynab’s ideas of being ‘cared for’ and her emotions as described below. While Zaynab was taking English language arts, Algebra, Physical Science, Math, US history, and Spanish in her freshman year during this study, most of her narratives related to the pedagogy of care and her emotions related to her ESL identity come from her interpretation of care in her learning experiences in general, and English language arts, in particular. The pedagogy of care was perceived and interpreted in several forms by the ESL students (Zaynab in this section). She interpreted care in terms of how the teachers communicated and enacted care for their ESL students in the mainstream classes. In this section, I present Zaynab’s narratives of ‘care’ as teacher’s lack of awareness regarding cultural differences in literacy 154 practices, lack of culturally relevant texts, (self)advocacy, tools to seek help, and absence of asset-based teaching environment. Lack of a sense of belonging and being noticed. One of the recurring themes in Zaynab’s data was her self-perceived notion of lack of being cared for in her mainstream content classes. She mentioned that she felt as if no one cared how she felt being an ESL student in mainstream classes. Her general perception was that she was a student who could easily hide herself behind her classmates and would not even be noticed: Excerpt 95: I feel like a grain of sand I feel like a grain of sand under the feet among so many great students. Does anyone care how nervous I feel once I step the school building? I don’t know. Some teachers are like more caring, they are like parents, but some teachers just teach and it is easy to hide behind all the students at the back of the class because they don’t even care where I sit and what I do” [Interview 2]. In this excerpt, Zaynab shared her perception of being cared for in terms of a lack of being noticed in the mainstream classes which consisted of the majority of white, English-speaking students. She equated the lack of notice and care with her self-perceived lack of high English proficiency. Recalling an incident related to her ELL journey in her middle school, she said: Excerpt 96: I felt like an alien I would be pulled out of the normal classes for my ESL courses. The ESL teacher definitely helped me, but I always felt as if I was a disabled person because everybody got to know that I was not a normal student. Once I was walking in the hallway and my ESL teacher was passing by too. A classmate of mine pointed to her and was like, “Zaynab, your teacher is coming”. What did he mean by YOUR teacher? She was there to help all ESL students, not only me. I liked her and the help she provided, but I felt like an alien all the time, somewhere in a very humid desert. I feel the same at high school too. It’s like I will never be a good enough student. I had a feeling that my English was good, but it’s their language, and I will never be good enough for them. Zaynab’s perception of being “not a good enough student” due to the lack of her perceived lower English proficiency shows that she felt humiliated when her English-speaking peers referred her ESL teacher as HER teacher. This made her distinguish between what she considered ‘her 155 language’ and ‘their language’. This othering in terms of the first and second languages of herself and her peers also impeded her participation and self-nomination in several conversational opportunities in and out of the classroom. Fixed mindsets of teachers in some mainstream classes. Zaynab said that her parents wanted all their four children to be highly educated, have post-secondary degrees, and get jobs that supported their financial freedom. Also, she frequently acknowledged how grateful she was to her family to have immigrated to a country that provided them with safety, security, and freedom to pursue their education without any obstacles and that her family had instilled in her the value of hard work. She believed that she was a hardworking student in all her classes. However, she felt that her teachers could not understand a connection between the extra time she needed to comprehend the content in her second language and their perception of her lack of attention in the classes. Recalling such an incident, she said: Excerpt 97: They say I don’t pay attention Look, really work hard like for example I’m really good at math. I'm SO GOOD at math. I don't study it that much and still get good grades. I just pay attention. But like, sometimes I can't pay attention in other classes, for example, my English class and like physical science because English is hard for me. Even if I pay attention, the teachers tell me I don't pay attention. Yeah, because I can't get it. What do I do? [Interview 1] Zaynab expressed her frustration with some teachers who constantly reminded her that her relatively lower scores on the tests were due to her lack of attention in the class. She also indicated that her teachers had a very fixed mindset and perceptions about her which did not change even by the end of the school year. Later in the school year, she mentioned: Excerpt 98: Teachers have fixed perceptions of me. I know I am still struggling with many things like my language, reading pace, timely submission of assignments, but some teachers have a very fixed perception of me. Even though I make progress sometime, they are still wearing the same looking glasses that Zaynab is weak in this, weak in that. I thought my small progresses would be noticed and acknowledged, but it is discouraging sometimes, like for example, my science teacher does not even look at me when I am telling him what I have worked on. Maybe his 156 personality, but he keeps arranging books and cleaning the board or blah blah when I am talking to him. My language arts teacher is different, though. She tells me that she is proud of me. I wish all teachers could change their mindsets of me as I make progress. [Interview 4] This excerpt shows Zaynab’s perception of her mainstream teachers holding on to their mindsets about her being a weak student in their classes. This excerpt, which came from an interview that was conducted at the end of the semester and at a time when she believed that she had made much progress; however, the teachers still had the same mindset about her. She understood this from her perception of her math teacher not addressing her concerns and not having a face-to- face interaction. However, there is some alignment between Zaynab’s perception of being cared for and Ms. Eva’s (her English language arts teacher) constant hard work to adopt and articulate the pedagogy of care in her classes, especially her ESL students. It was Ms. Eva who acknowledged and noticed her gradual progress. Lack of help seeking behaviors. Zaynab acknowledged that her teachers, especially her English language arts teacher [Ms. Eva], frequently reminded students to reach out to her if the students needed any support regarding assignments, comprehending instructions and feedback, and any other resources. However, she expressed that she did not know how to ask her teachers for help without offending them, especially because she perceived herself as someone who needed assistance relatively more than her other ESL peers in her classes. She would rather go to see her older sister and other ESL students during her excel hours (extra hours spread over the week to seek support from teachers) to seek help at times although she thought they would get irritated because they would also be busy navigating through their own struggles. She recalled: Excerpt 99: I don’t know how to ask for help without offending teachers During Excel hours, mostly I go to my sister, because it's so awkward to ask teachers all the time. I don’t know how to ask for help multiple times without offending teachers. In Arabic, I know like hundreds of ways to ask. In English. If we have a project, I go to Ms. Eva sometimes, not always though because she is always helping someone, and she does 157 not even get a break between classes. Sometimes. I'll go to the library, me and Noorie and Andrea [pseudonyms] and like, help each other out. Andrea is from Mexico and Noorie is from Pakistan. They speak in different languages, but their English is better [smiles] [Interview 1]. This excerpt shows that Zaynab perceived to lack the tools and resources to seek help in her second language, i.e., English. Although she utilized her excel hours in reaching out to her English teacher for help at times, she would choose to seek help from her older sister and other ESL students in her class who, according to her, had a higher level of proficiency. However, this lack of help-seeing tools applied to her English class only. Regarding math, she repeatedly mentioned that she would even provide assistance to her English-speaking peers as she did not have to speak much English but help them solve mathematical problems. This was discussed in detail in the previous section in her emotions of being ‘confident’ and ‘excited’ to help her non- ESL peers in her math classes. Zaynab was aware of her lack of help-seeking behaviors and tools as this was not a very common practice in her first language, except asking the family member for help for the daily chores. She said, “I never tell anyone about my struggles. I don't know. I just felt weird to tell them that I don't feel comfortable. And like even if I tell them to share, I feel like they will judge me for not knowing even simple things. And I just like less care.” [Interview 1]. Teacher’s lack of awareness in cultural differences in literacy practices. Zaynab shared that most of her teachers never mentioned that there were differences in literacy practices of different languages. She wondered if they knew, but forgot to acknowledge in the classes, or they did not bother to familiarize themselves with such differences. For example, one of the most difficult tasks for her in writing English was the use of punctuation, especially commas because her first language, Arabic, does not make use of commas in writing. Therefore, she always found her teacher correcting her mistakes in the overuse or underuse of commas in her writing, which made 158 her ‘feel demoralized’ at times and led to ‘avoidance’ in improving her writing in English. She said, “I end up writing long sentences without commas because the way things are written in Arabic is different. So, I write it kind of like Arabic and it blows my mind, but I redo it, and reread it. reread it” [Interview 1]. The other such different literacy practice was the way of reading the texts. She shared: Excerpt 100: Left to right and right to left I do not expect everyone to speak and read Arabic but it’s just you want someone who respects my language and respects me and not like go, go, go like other students who grew up reading and writing in English. I have a lot of American friends like who understand that I speak Arabic. I’ve taught them it’s a different language, different writing and speaking. They were like wow, you read from right to left? Like yeah, my teachers also might know this but they forget that I need extra time to understand the content. I have to remind myself that I am now switching to a different way of reading and writing. It’s extra work for my brain. [Interview 2]. The above excerpt exemplifies multiple aspects of Zaynab’s interpretation of ‘cared for’ in her classes. She acknowledged that she did not expect everyone to understand the differences in reading and writing practices between her first and second languages, but she expected them to value her as a speaker of a different language with very different literacy practices than that of her second language. Also, her interpretation of a lack of being cared for due to the equal amount of time that was given to her to process the information, and make sense of it, shows a lack of equity-based teaching practices for ESL students in mainstream content classes. Readings: Lack of cultural relevancy and relatability. Zaynab thought that she liked all the readings in her English language arts class. Her most favorite one was Romeo and Juliet as she liked reading romantic novels. However, she expressed that she would forget everything after reading all the books including The Odyssey, March, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Raisin in the Sun. This happened due to her lack of interest in books in general because she could not relate to them, and there was nothing she could connect to her cultural background. She stated: 159 Excerpt 101: I cannot relate to the readings I'm not interested in books ever if I can't feel connected to the characters in any way. I liked all the books in my English class but they were all about American culture. And I liked Raisin in the Sun because there are black people in there and they are trying to be like white people. Like everyone wants to be like cool and like that. But like there are no Asian characters, Muslim characters in them. My sister is taking a class where they are reading literature from Middle East like that is so cool but I can take that class only in my junior year. [Interview 3] Zaynab not only felt a lack of connection and relatability to the reading texts in her English class, but also felt that there was no cultural representation of ESL students in those readings. She mentioned ‘Muslim characters’ in particular and ‘Asian characters’ in particular were missing from such readings which would have been culturally relatable and relevant for her. Later, she also mentioned the two names of her classmates who came from Pakistan and China when she referred to the absence of Asian literature in texts. Later in the school year, she also indicated that the teacher would often tell the students to imagine the characters while reading the books, but Zaynab found it difficult to imagine those characters on her mind as she could not cultivate any connection with them “They told us to have this imagination of looking at the characters. I don’t have it. I cannot think about them because I struggle to make friends with them in my imagination. So, I avoid imagination” [Interview 4]. One interesting thing she shared was that she could borrow books with more cultural representation from the library to read for pleasure but as she was already struggling to keep up with her class work and assignments. Therefore, she was looking forward to enrolling in the multicultural literature class which she would be able to take in her junior year in high school. Perceived lack of teachers’ awareness of ESL students’ presence in mainstream classes. As we saw in the preceding discussion, Zaynab found reading and writing in English very difficult due to the differences in the literacy practices between Arabic and English. However, she believed that her speaking was relatively better than other skills in English. She perceived that her 160 mainstream content area teachers tended to forget at times that there were a couple of ESL students in their classes who might still be making sense of the content by juggling through multiple linguistic repertoires they had at their disposal. She said that she thought in Arabic and wrote in English. She frequently shared a metaphor of her English reading as flying and dancing words. She shared: Excerpt 102: Words fly above my head I love reading but I am a slow reader. When I read my books in the mainstream content classes like science, math, I need extra time to make meaning in my head. If I have to complete the tasks within a pressed time, I feel like English words start flying out of the book [gesture of flying with both hands] and start dancing when I read, which makes it hard to understand the content. I get overwhelmed. I wish my teachers were more aware of ESL students’ presence in the classrooms. I thought the teachers remember this when they teach and like plan accordingly, but they keep running like bullet trains. I miss things at times which makes me feel worse about myself. [Interview 2] Although she had learned the English alphabet and some word formation in her school in UAE, Zaynab found it hard to comprehend the content in English even after going through ELL support for a year in her elementary school and three years in middle school in the US. She believed that she had adequate proficiency in English that allowed her to be enrolled in mainstream classes in her freshman year in the high school. However, she was still making progress in keeping up with the ‘bullet train’ speed of her teachers’ content delivery. She even mentioned that whenever she was rushed to finish some tasks in the class, she would say things in Arabic, which nobody understood, and then she would switch to English “When I am in rush, I say things in Arabic in class. they stare at me because they don't know what the words mean [laughs]” [Interview 3]. Having indicated that, Zaynab appreciated reading the graphic novel March in the course which she found easy to read due to relatively less text: “I liked March because it has graphics and words. I understand it easily and have to google and use translator 161 less frequently” [Interview 4]. This shows the potential effects of including multimodal texts and input in the classes for students’ overall success. At the same time, she acknowledged her English teacher’s caring and frequent check in with her about her successes and struggles. She said that Ms. Eva was “always helping her students, especially ESL students but she had a lot of work”. In addition, she wished there were other Arabic speakers in her English class with whom she could work together as it would be easier for her to communicate with them in Arabic: “Like you have to go to a group or work with that person, but I can’t choose my group, and nobody spoke Arabic.” [Interview 3]. Advocacy We have already seen in the description above that Zaynab wanted to become a lawyer to advocate for the women in her Muslim community in her area of residence and the extended area up to Detroit with Arabic speaking community. She said that she wanted to give voice to women, especially adult women in her community, but she was not aware of the word ‘advocate’ for them. She learned it from her English teacher, Ms. Eva “She uses the word ‘advocate’ a lot and tells us how to advocate for self and others” [Interview 3]. She said that she was considering meeting her counselor at school to talk about her courses in the sophomore year so she could feel ‘involved’ in the course selection process herself as she reported that there was a lack of family involvement on her part in such decision-making processes although her parents were her big support. She also said she was learning ways to initiate conversations with her teachers and counselors to self-advocate but still struggled to do so due to her perceived lack of confidence to continue conversations beyond a few exchanges in English, “I don't know. It's my problem. But I want to like, go for it and talk to my counselor to see what courses she will choose for me…what courses I want to choose” [Interview 3]. 162 Zaynab also mentioned that she was conscious of how other people behaved with her after Ms. Eva repeatedly told the class to learn to advocate for themselves and for others. She recalled an incident from her middle school when she was not aware of self-advocacy and how to deal with inappropriate behavior towards her. She recalled, Excerpt 103: Reporting harassment In eighth grade, a guy harassed me. He threw a quarter in my eye, I was hurt. The school counselor called both of us. I told her, he threw that on me. And she was like, okay, we're gonna deal with it and he didn't do anything about it. It's kind of dumb, because one time like, there was a guy who came by me and almost gonna hit me, jumped on me. I wanted to protect myself. He was kind of like, Oh my god, why are you so mean? I was just kidding with you. I'm like, you were not kidding. You came so close. I don't know you that well. [Interview 3] Zaynab believed that the reason the counselor did not take any action on that incident was due to her lack of clear explanation of the incident and how uncomfortable she had felt. She said that she could have described in detail how she felt and would have advocated in a better way if she had been able to speak Arabic or if she had been aware of the idea of self-advocacy. She repeatedly appreciated Ms. Eva’s approach of bringing up self-advocacy in her English classes and appreciated how caring Ms Eva was as a teacher. However, she articulated the limitations of a single teacher to adopt the pedagogy of care in his/her class. First, she mentioned that a teacher can only do so much in a 50-minute-long class regarding caring for every individual. Second, she believed that “Some students kind of like take advantage of the teachers who are kind and caring. So, you need to be a little tough kind of” [Interview 3]. Apart from her willingness to learn self-advocacy skills, Zaynab was gradually becoming aware of the distress and anxiety related to her English tests, and how such anxiety would affect her mental health. Since Ms. Eva was serving on the Mental Health Advisory Board of the school district, she repeatedly told her students to speak to her if they ever felt low or had self- harming symptoms so that she could refer them to the school social worker. However, Zaynab 163 thought that since talking about mental health in her family and community was not usual and would be considered a stigma, she struggled to express her feelings to the related people in the school. Excerpt 104: Tools to express mental health related issues In the bathrooms, there are so many posters about taking care of yourself, you know, some people are undergoing depression. If you have some physical pain, you can see it but if you have anxiety and tension, you cannot see that right? So, you need to get help. There are helpline numbers too. But the problem is not everyone is doing that. There is a lot of people who don't feel comfortable in speaking in English. I think I’m gonna look stupid or because people laugh at me if I like say these things like anxiety, stress. [Interview 3] While Zaynab appreciated the pedagogy of care that included constant reminders from the teacher about self-advocacy, she perceived that there was a lack of initiatives and tools to help ESL students in how to advocate for themselves and their mental health. Traumatic and cultural trigger warnings. Zaynab recalled some moments from the class where the content had potential trauma triggers and that her teacher gave trigger warnings. In addition, she also gave them option to opt out of the triggering videos. While Zaynab appreciated that approach of care from the teacher, she wondered what alternative options could have been provided so she would not miss watching the content of the video. Remembering one of such incidents, she said that because the teacher had warned that there would be some nude scenes while watching Romeo and Juliet in the class, Zaynab chose to opt out of the class because of her religious beliefs and family values: “I loved Romeo and Juliet, but I couldn't watch the whole movie. There were some nude scenes, and I couldn’t watch it. I wish I there was another version with like no nude scenes” [Interview 3]. On another occasion, the teacher gave a trigger warning that there would be a potentially disturbing scene as Juliet’s father was abusing her. However, Zaynab did not leave the class because she had already missed some parts while opting out of 164 nude scenes. Little did she know that the abusive scene would trigger a traumatic incident of a domestic violence case that had occurred with a distant cousin of hers in Iraq. Zaynab and I had several such incidents where both of our triggering moments would creep in. Since I was not as trauma informed as I am today, I had less resources at my disposal. I was able to use some grounding techniques in such moments to stop going into the details of the incidents. I would rather ask her how that made her feel and she mentioned that she “did not know how to talk about that to her teacher” [Interview 3] because she did not have vocabulary in English to describe how she felt after watching that particular section of the movie. In addition, she mentioned that the lack of subtitles in the videos impeded her comprehension of the content, especially she believed that she would pick up some words to express why some scenes were triggering for her. While she interpreted her teacher’s pedagogy of care in a positive way due to the frequent trigger warnings given to the students, Zaynab still struggled to approach the teacher to talk about her own triggering moments in the videos and readings. For example, she shared that even seemingly romantic scenes would have nuances of trauma triggers for some students. On a funny note, she said that translations of such moments and emotions would turn to be hilarious at times instead of carrying the original meaning. She mentioned a scene from an Arabic TV show where the girl had committed a suicide due to her affair with a boy from a different religion, but she recalled that the song about her death was translated in English in a different way. She would watch Arabic TV shows with subtitles translated in English to see how the English speaking people would grasp the meaning of the Arabic expressions and she found it hilarious as the cultural meaning got lost in such translations, “You should watch English dubbed or English subtitled TV shows from Arabic and you die laughing as they also translate songs which are like you are like a bird flying in the sky and you fall on my feet. The mix of pain and 165 romance in that song got lost. Emotion and feeling are hard to translate. Emotion is like destroyed in such translations.” [laughs] [Interview 3]. As the previous chapter showed, Ms. Eva considered activating subtitles during the second half of the school year, which both focal student participants from the English language arts class reported to be helpful in making sense of the content being shown in the videos. Perceived absence of an asset-based pedagogical environment. Although Ms. Eva and Zaynab’s narrations of ‘caring for’ and ‘being cared for’ have an interesting dynamic of alignment and misalignment, which will be discussed in the following chapter about how the focal teachers’ and students’ interpretations of care and emotions intersect with each other. Regarding being ‘cared for’ as an ESL student in mainstream classes, Zaynab thought that most of the teaching practices adopted by her teachers were deficit-based instead of asset-based. She believed that she had multiple talents that were never leveraged by her teachers for her overall success and learning. She shared: Excerpt 105: My talents are invisible. I think I have some great talents at least my family and some friends tell me [smiles]. I can do very difficult math problems quickly, but I do them in Arabic in my mind and notebook. I can find a solution in seconds or just a minute but describing the process in English takes forever. I can also create attractive websites. I have done that for my sister’s friends who sell beauty products and jewelry online. Sometimes they even pay me [smile]. I can also edit videos. I learned it from YouTube. I feel so accomplished when I do these things. I am in Ms. Cheren’s photography class, and I love it because I do not have to explain the process in English and can just show her my best final product. I wish my talents were recognized in my content classes in some way. [Interview 4] When asked if she ever let her teacher know about her multimodal talents, she said that she hesitated to initiate conversations about her talents herself unless the teachers asked her. She reported that it had to do with her religious and cultural backgrounds where proactively glorifying one’s assets and talents would be considered inappropriate. The fourth and the final interview went on for about an hour and a half long as we both were waiting for her mom to pick 166 her up from the school. She wished she could have done things differently in her freshman year to earn better grades and to change her teachers’ perceptions towards her. Regarding how she viewed by the end of the school year, she shared: Excerpt 106: I am more than a girl who fumbles. I hesitated to participate in a lot of activities at high school because of my religious and cultural beliefs. I enjoyed seeing my friends participating in different sports activities. I spent extra hours in my studies so that I could ace in all subjects even though some teachers’ and classmates’ perceptions of me will never change. What surprises me the most is that so many good qualities that we (ESL speakers) bring to the school go unnoticed. I am so much more than how they view me. I am more than a girl who fumbles … who speaks another language and is from another country. I wish we had a subject where ESL students teach and share about so many different cultural and geographical things with English speaking students…where I feel more confident and empowered, but it seems like we will always feel we lack something that is impossible to complete. [Interview 4] In comparison to the earlier excerpts from her first interview, the above excerpt shows Zaynab’s relatively more stable and confident statement where she was more accepting of her multilingual and multicultural identities and was more aware of the multilingual and multicultural assets she had at her disposal. She wished she had opportunities where she and other ESL students would be put in teaching learning situations where they would share their knowledge, and expertise from diverse backgrounds. Her shift from “I am a grain of sand under the feet” [Interview 1] to “I am more than a girl who fumbles” [Interview 4] exhibits the trajectory of her self-valuation of her intersectional identities. Racism and being spotlighted. During the third interview, Zaynab spent about more than 5 minutes talking about how she had felt reading To Kill a Mockingbird in her English class. She was hurt by the tragic verdict of an innocent African American character in the book. She said that it was “so unfortunate” and she was disturbed by “the racism and discrimination” against black people in the USA. She said, “I learned that not everyone that you see quiet and introvert are like bad people because you don't know how people look like and what they are inside? And 167 if you see someone that has more privileges it doesn't mean he's always right” [Interview 3]. Although she had frequently mentioned that many of the readings in the English class were not relatable and culturally relevant to her, she indicated that the discrimination and racist behavior was somehow relatable to her from the experiences of herself in different occasions and the experiences of her family members at times. Excerpt 107: Racism and discrimination are everywhere Even if I'm in Iraq, I would see racist people. Even some people in my religion are racist. Everyone, like there's a lot of people that are racist. It's not just that American thing, because many Americans are really nice. And they accept more people like my family and community. I have some relatives in who live in Saudi Arabia, and they are like very judgmental and like talk bad things about other country’s people. So, racism and discrimination are everywhere. [Interview 4] Zaynab’s above excerpt shows her maturity and awareness of the prevalence of racism and race- based discrimination rather than thinking it as a one-sided phenomenon. However, she recalled some incidents in her classes where the teachers and her classmates would constantly put her in uncomfortable situations by asking her questions about her religion and culture as if it was her “job to educate them all the time” [Interview 4]. During the second half of the Spring semester, Zaynab was fasting for a whole month of Ramadan. She felt spotlighted all the time and her sharing about her religion and fasting. She said, “I am tired of repeating the same presentation style talk and I thought I was going to die because it was so hard for me to describe to so many people. I was hungry and angry. And they were like keep eating in front of me while listening to me explain” [Interview 4]. Regarding her feelings about why people would not care to educate themselves after they heard the basic things about Ramadan from her, she said that she found herself in a very strange position where she found herself ‘spotlighted’ but like a ‘torchlight’. She shared her mixed emotions related to being spotlighted in the following excerpt: 168 Excerpt 108: Between being spotlighted and feeling like a torchlight I have joined multicultural students’ group, and we showcased our cultures at a program in the Fall. Everybody appreciated it. However, it was only during the program. I thought they really mean it when they say that multiple cultures matter to them, but it seemed like we are here only to be spotlighted every time a teacher or student had any question about other countries in the class. They think an outsider knows everything about outside the USA. NO. I mean I am from Iraq. How would I know everything about all other Middle Eastern countries? My classmates go like “You don’t even know about your own place?” Come on stop making assumptions and educate yourself [laughs]. Other times, I feel that I am like a torchlight in an already too bright space, and I am not of any value [Interview 4]. The above excerpt shows a very contested space where Zaynab found herself between spotlighted when the teacher and students needed her to explain any cultural representations of her home country. At times, she found it a great opportunity to showcase her cultural values and interact with other people. At other times, she would feel unnoticed and redundant like a torchlight in a bright space as she said in previous narrations “a sand of grain under the feet”. Some other narratives of Zaynab’s feelings and articulations of a diverse range of emotions related to being an ESL in mainstream classes are presented in the following subsection. Emotions Zaynab shared a wide range of emotions related to different situations, some of which were perceived as being beneficial to her success and confidence while others were perceived as being debilitating. Some of the recurring emotions Zaynab articulated related to her intersectionality of identities of an ESL student and a Muslim girl were a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant emotions. Her pleasant emotions were pride, coolness, curiosity, confidence, and power related to her multilingual identity. Her unpleasant emotions were her feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, nervousness, anxiety, embarrassment, and hurt. All these emotions were discursive in nature as she expressed them to be relational and situationally constructed. What 169 follows next is Zaynab’s pleasant and unpleasant emotions that emerged in certain contexts in and outside classes. Pleasant emotions related to being an ESL student in mainstream classes. Zaynab, in our first conversation, started talking about her multilingual identity as a ‘cool feature’ to have in the present global world. She also thought that she was very proud of herself and her siblings to be growing as multilinguals. She spoke Arabic, English, Farsi and was studying Spanish as a language requirement course in her freshman year. She also equated her languages with a sense of ‘power’ as she thought two of the languages she spoke, English and Arabic, would give her multiple affordances in the days to come: Excerpt 109: Being multilingual is cool and powerful Isn’t knowing multiple languages like so cool? I mean Arabic and English are not just two plain languages, they are two big languages that people speak, you know? They are powerful language. I think English and Arabic are the most languages you should know. Because everyone knows us in the world. I feel powerful [Interview 1]. She expressed her awareness of the importance of being a multilingual by recalling a situation where she was able to communicate with a speaker of German using English in her sixth grade. She said that she was fascinated by being able to communicate with the speaker of a language she did not know. This awareness of her about English being a lingua franca, a language of communication among the speakers of different languages, gave her a sense of power and ‘curiosity’. She also said that it made her curious about what she would have done if she and the German student did not speak English, even if she considered her English at the 6th grade as the ‘beginner’s English’. She shared: Excerpt 110: A second language makes you curious She came to me and started talking in English. I said look I don’t speak good language. She was also like I don’t speak good English. We both laughed. We became good friends in the 6th grade and then she went back to Germany I don’t know why. Our English was the beginner’s English, but we talked to each other. I keep thinking what if both spoke our first languages only and not study English? We would never be able to communicate 170 with each other. Speaking English makes me curious about how speakers of other languages would feel, think, joke and laugh, curse [laughs]” [Interview 2]. Zaynab’s above excerpt shows her curiosity about how speakers of different languages ‘feel’, ‘think’ and make sense of things around them. Both excerpts above show that she valued her multilingual identity, especially ESL identity that made her feel the speaker of two of the widely spoken languages in the world. In addition, English gave her an added layer of enthusiasm and curiosity to think about how speakers of other languages think. However, she believed that she had a long way to go regarding improving her English skills so she could pursue her dream to be a lawyer. It seemed as if she was instrumentally motivated to study and elevate her proficiency in English. She said, “If I'm gonna stay in America, I have to be a better English speaker and writer. If I want to be a lawyer, I have to know English because you know like lawyers have to be good in speaking and in the writing. They have a lot of English writing I heard.” [Interview 2]. Zaynab’s dream, as discussed in the previous section, was to be a lawyer and she wanted to advocate for women in the Muslim community. So, she associated with skills to advocacy and allyship with the speaking and writing skills in English. Another set of positive emotions Zaynab shared were the emotions related to feeling confident while being of help to her classmates, especially in her math class. She shared: Excerpt 111: Helping others in mainstream classes gives me confidence I'm good at math. I remember I helped a lot of students, even during the excel hours when they had come to see the math teacher before my math class began. I would be like this is how you do it and solve the problems in their notebook. I did not speak much because like a few words were enough to show them the process like first this, and then this, formula, and like numbers. I would calculate in Arabic in my mind. They are like you are super smart and I am like yeah because it is less words [laughs]. [Interview 3] She also mentioned that she would just speak in Arabic while solving math problems with Arabic-speaking students from other classes. It was only with her English-speaking peers when she used less words to describe the process and show them the procedure of solving those math 171 problems. After the end of the school year, Zaynab shared that she felt inspired to do better in the sophomore year (10th grade) as she passed all her classes in the 9th grade despite the challenges and high anxiety around her English test. Unpleasant emotions related to being an ESL student in mainstream classes. Despite her keen interest, curiosity, feeling of power and confidence, and happiness of passing her mainstream classes as discussed above, Zaynab constantly shared her emotions and feelings of test anxiety, and inferiority and inadequacy regarding her English skills. Regarding test anxiety, she said that although she was allowed to use a google translator to find meanings of difficult words, she found it extremely difficult because she would have to spend a lot of time Googling the word meanings in the test questions. Excerpt 112: English test scares me like anything Googling takes a lot of time and makes me super anxious that I would never finish my test. Like, guess what? Yesterday I stayed six hours studying for English test. And today I stayed the whole morning thinking about the upcoming English test because it is the hardest and my brain cannot remember anything. English test scares me like anything. Ms. Eva and some other teachers are caring but I don’t know. Do they really care how I feel when I make a lot of mistakes on my tests? It is hell for me. [Interview 4] This excerpt shows her intense emotions related to the English test, one of the reasons being the use of google translator to comprehend meanings of difficult words to make sense of the reading texts for the comprehension questions. However, Zaynab mentioned that when the teacher gave the students a mock test with similar format where Zaynab was happy and satisfied with her performance on the mock test because she knew that it would not determine whether she would pass or fail the class. The next time, when we had our conversation, it was after her tests. She had passed her English class, but she still had very strong emotions related to how she had felt during the test: “I don't like tests because it's freaking hard. I hate the finals. I like the projects. Test gives me panic and anxiety. I am like drinking water and running to the toilet all the time. I 172 forget things. It’s really hard because my brain is like boom [hand gesture of a blast]. It gives me panic… Anyway, I’ve passed all my classes” [Interview 4]. Similar to her experiences and emotions of anxiety related to the tests, especially English test, she recalled incidents where she had felt embarrassed and lost during conversations with other students and teacher, especially her English-speaking peers. She recalled: Excerpt 113: Nervousness leads to blabbering and embarrassment When I talk to American friends, I feel nervous. I am now getting a little better but still when I talk to them, I feel really weird because everyone is talking to me and I am staring at them like dumb. I don’t get something, and I feel lost. I was just looking at the teacher, everyone talking to me and I'm embarrassed and then when I speak, I just blabber like crazy and don’t know what I am saying. [Interview 3] The reason for nervousness, according to Zaynab, was her embarrassment related to perceived judgment by her English-speaking peers. She believed that even during group work and discussions in her English class, she believed that everyone knew what to do, except her. Only when the teacher would come and sit by her side and ask questions, she would give brief answers. Her feeling of embarrassment made her perceive herself to be inferior and inadequate in such conversations and, therefore, she withdrew herself from participating in a lot of out of class activities, which would have helped her build and cultivate connections and opportunities of interactions and collaborations with other students. Zaynab perceived the above-mentioned strong emotions of anxiety, nervousness, and inadequacy to inhibit her engagement and participation in in-class and out-of-class activities that kept her in a vicious cycle of embarrassment and withdrawal. Emotions related to intersectionality of religious, cultural, and gender identities. Zaynab shared that she came from a very religious Muslim family where every adult in the family prayed five times a day every day. She would offer all five prayers at the right times on the days when there was no school. However, on the school days, she would pray in the mornings and after she 173 came back from school in the afternoon. Her parents constantly told her and her siblings to keep religion and faith at the center of their existence. She said that her emotions related to her religion were very deeply rooted in her heart because she “felt good, loving and protected when she prayed [Interview 2]”. She enthusiastically shared with me the meanings of the prayers and the different ways and physical postures related to those prayers. While she expressed how she felt protected holding onto her faith, she also shared that at times, being a Muslim girl would not allow her to do things that she wanted. One such example was that she wanted to participate in running on school tracks after school, which she was happy doing. One of her parents would come to pick her up from the school after her exercise was over. She found running in a hijab very difficult as it would be too humid in the afternoon sometimes and, therefore, she said she was envious of boys as they did not have any such struggles. Another example was that she felt frustrated because she was not allowed to participate in swimming classes, “I like swimming but like, I'm Muslim, so I can't get it with guys. It’s frustrating and I feel bad. Me and some other Muslim girls want to like find a place for girls only [laughs] because of the gender issue or the religion issue or both. [Interview 2]. The above examples of frustration, according to her, were nothing in comparison to some traumatic incidents from her middle school that were related to her religious and cultural identity. Two such examples are presented here as she repeatedly talked about these incidents. First, she recalled one incident from 6th grade where she felt hurt and devastated. She was sharing with her classmates about where she was from, what language she spoke, and what religion she belonged to. She thought that religion was a big part of her identity and, therefore, she wanted to share it with her classmates. This conversation took place immediately after the 174 recess time was over and when the students started getting back to the classroom but the teacher had not entered the class yet. She recalled: Excerpt 114: Devastated when somebody called me a terrorist One time they called me and my family terrorists in sixth grade. I did not speak much English then. I didn't even know what terrorist meant. I asked my other Arabic speaking friend who grew up here the meaning of terrorist. She described to me in Arabic. I started crying. I was so hurt [pauses and wipes tears in the eyes]. Then, I don’t know what the teacher told them. They apologized to me. I was like get away from me, no, I tell them I am not terrorist people. And the other guy was saying, oh, yeah, she's not you're just getting her wrong, whatever. I can’t forget that day. It still gives me chills. [Interview 3] This was one of the moments where I wished I were more trauma informed when I was collecting my data. Although I had been working on some trauma work, I was not as competent and confident as I am today in articulating it, especially in English as my second language. We both took long pauses. I reiterated that she did not have to share the narratives that would make her uncomfortable. However, she insisted that she wanted to share because she had not been able to share that with anyone, except a couple of her friends. She had not shared it with her family because she did not want them to go through the same hurt that she had felt. In the above excerpt, she used the term ‘terrorist people’ and she emphasized later that she clearly remembered using the term because she was already familiar with the word ‘people’ before the incident and when her friend described to her the meaning of ‘terrorist’, she combined both words ‘terrorist people’ to defend herself and to say that she and her family were not terrorists. She also said that she felt disrespected, which prompted her to withdraw from participation in groups in her middle school. This had influenced her decisions to engage in group participation even at high school, “I always, like, get away from gatherings and never put myself in such spot to get like discriminated” [Interview 3]. On another occasion at her high school, during her first fall semester, she participated in a multicultural activity in her Spanish class where students brought food that represented their 175 family or community culture and tradition. She had brought dolma, a stuffed grape leave dish, which was one of the common dishes her family would make for such occasions. Some students had brought dishes made up of meat. Zaynab was able to select only a few items from all the dishes as she could not eat anything that had meat because she did not want to ask everyone if the meat they had used was halal or not. [I will use asterisks or footnotes for these culture specific words]. She shared: Excerpt 115: I was not rude I made dolma. They loved it and were enjoying. I explained what was inside my dolma. Everybody had card with the name of the dish and ingredients in front of their dishes. Some students brought meat. I couldn’t eat it and it was not halal meat. They thought I was rude. They were like ‘meat is meat’. I was like ‘I don’t eat any meat, I eat halal’. It’s a religious thing, my culture. I am tired of saying this to you like ten times in the same class. It is awful. [Interview 3] Both excerpts above [excerpts 114 and 115] show that Zaynab’s emotions and feelings of hurt, disrespect, and cultural ignorance related to her culture, gender, and religious backgrounds were contextually constructed where some unpleasant incidents triggered the lived experiences of her as an immigrant youth in a host country. She also reported that she excluded herself from participating in several occasions so she could avoid potential hurtful and humiliating situations. Nor did she share these incidents with her parents and sister. One of the frequent pieces of information during our conversations was that she felt that the high school did very little or nothing to bridge the gap between the school and immigrant youth’s family as many parents avoided coming to schools, even during the parent teacher conferences, as they did not speak English. She said, “I don’t come to the parent teacher conferences with my parents because it is so awkward listening to the teacher say things about you to your parents. It is even more awkward translating things for them about yourself. My parents support me so much, but they don’t come to these meetings. They don’t feel comfortable” [Interview 4]. 176 Mixed emotions and emotion regulation. Zaynab expressed her mixed emotions of happiness and regret related to her final grades. She was happy that she passed her tests but she regretted that she did not seek help to reduce test anxiety so she could have performed better. She said, Excerpt 116: Mixture of happiness and regret I am super happy and inspired. I passed all my classes but will work harder to get better grades in class 10 at the finals. I got like all Bs except in math which is A. I should have asked my teacher, or I don’t know whoever about my test anxiety. So, yeah, I am happy but could have done better. [Interview 4] All the above excerpts show Zaynab’s array of emotional experiences. When asked what she did to regulate her emotions, especially her unpleasant emotions, she said that she would write those feelings in Arabic. Excerpt 117: Emotional regulation in my first language If I felt sad or something, I write it all in Arabic like I throw the anger and hurt in paper. And send it to my cousin in Iraq and she understands how I am feeling. Or, after writing stories in Arabic, I throw them in trash because I don’t want my family to know about it. I don't like to show them my hurt. yeah, like only my fun stuff. I am learning how to share my feelings with my family, like our English teacher is like ‘guys I am sad today or happy today’ like that is cool. [Interview 3] Zaynab said that she knew about this strategy of regulating unpleasant emotions from her English teacher, Ms. Eva, who served on the school’s mental health advisory board. Ms. Eva would time and again tell her students how important it was for them to express their feelings in speaking, writing, or other art forms. Zaynab chose to write in Arabic because she could express the nuances of her emotions in her first language. In addition, she acknowledged her English teacher sharing her vulnerability at times in the class and, therefore, Zaynab wanted to learn how to share about her emotions with her family and friends. She also connected her awareness of emotion regulation with her dream of becoming a lawyer in the future as she believed that she would need to learn how to do so. 177 Summary of Zaynab’s Findings Zaynab’s interpretations of pedagogy of care, advocacy, and emotions were discursive in nature as they emerged in certain spaces, interactions, and learning contexts. She expressed her perceptions of care, advocacy, and her emotions in general (as experienced in her overall school experience as an ESL student) and in relation to Ms. Eva’s teaching (her English language arts teacher). Her experiences of emotion and (lack of) care in general emerged when she recalled her experiences at her middle school and as a freshman in her high school. From the very beginning, she felt a lack of sense of belonging where she felt unnoticed like “a grain of sand” and “like an alien” due to her linguistic and cultural backgrounds. She was aware of her struggles, especially in her communication with teachers and other students through her second language, that is, English. She perceived that some of her teachers blamed her for not paying attention in the class, and that they had “fixed perceptions” of her, even though she was working hard and was improving her interaction skills gradually. Zaynab also believed that many of her teachers in her earlier years of schooling in the US lacked an awareness of the differences in literacy practices between her first language (Arabic) and her second language (English). In addition, she struggled with seeking help as she did not know how to ask for help “without offending teachers”. Zaynab had a multitude of experience regarding her interpretations of care in relations to Ms. Eva’s teaching in her English language arts class. As seen in the previous chapter, even though Ms. Eva believed that the reading texts in her class were diversified, Zaynab felt that she could not relate to the readings because of the lack of authors from outside the English-speaking countries. 178 While Zaynab acknowledged and appreciated Ms. Eva’s constant advocacy for students’ mental wellbeing, and she explicitly told them to advocate for their wellbeing, Zaynab expressed that she lacked the tools to initiate conversations around mental health. She also expressed her feelings of stress, especially around her English tests, as she disclosed: “English test scares me like anything”. In her class, she also felt that “words flew above her head” as the whole teaching learning process felt like a “bullet train” for her as she would need extra time to process her thoughts and produce the output in oral and written forms in English. Zaynab also acknowledged that her multilingual and multicultural assets were not leveraged to foster her learning process as she could not find a space where her perceived talents were maximized or elicited. Her recurring statements that she was more than a “girl who fumbles” made her doubt her capability to enhance her learning as an ESL student. While she appreciated her teachers turning to her to ask certain cultural questions related to her home country, religion, and culture at times, she felt that being ‘spotlighted’ stirred her distress, as she struggled to put her thoughts into words when she was asked questions abruptly in the middle of the discussions. Regarding her emotions of being an ESL in her school, Zaynab expressed that she experiences pleasant feelings and emotions of joy and empowerment due to her multilingual identity and her ability to help her non-ESL classmates in some content area classes (e.g., math), even though she herself struggled with English. Her struggle to process her thoughts between her multiple languages posited triggered nervousness in many situations, which resulted in blabbering and embarrassment among her peers. Zaynab also frequently mentioned that she regulated and processed her unpleasant emotions through her first language as she perceived to have a lack tools in her second language. As I presented the findings in the previous section, she 179 noted how devastated she had felt when she was asked if she was a terrorist due to her religious background. Admittedly, I was not as trauma-informed then as I am today. Therefore, we had to pause, breathe, and close several conversations not to retraumatize her by asking details about the events. Spring’s Perception and Interpretation of Pedagogy of Care Spring is a sixteen-year-old female student, originally from Taiwan. During the collection of this data, she was a junior at high school. She had come to the school two months before the school year began in September 2018. The last place she had lived in was San Diego, CA for about two and a half years, and before that she had spent two years in Montreal, Canada with her family. She was 11 years old when her family had moved from Taiwan. Spring said that it was in Canada where her journey of becoming a ‘real English learner’ began. She mentioned that she hated English at first because she had had an English teacher in her home country who was all about grammar. And she had thought that she would never be able to “talk and do grammar at the same time in my brain” [Interview 1]. So, she wasn't interested in learning English until she went to Canada as she was “kind of forced to learn English” because she had to talk to people and she learned English by communicating to people as much as she could. [Interview 1] Spring’s father was a biologist who had worked in different parts of the world, but she was not sure of exactly where he had worked. Her mom was a homemaker. She had a sister who was seven years old and who went to an elementary school. She also had a brother who was four months old. Spring preferred to call herself multilingual as she learned several languages to different degrees. She spoke Taiwanese as her first language. She affirmed that Taiwanese was the original Chinese and was not simplified version. She also spoke Fuzhou, a language which was different than the normal Chinese or Taiwanese. 180 Spring’s mother spoke Taiwanese and Japanese fluently, as well as some basic, functional English. Her maternal grandfather, had grown up in Japan, spoke Japanese and had studied at Tokyo University. Her mother had majored in Japanese. Spring’s father spoke Taiwanese, English, and Fuzhou. Although he did not speak Japanese, he liked to watch Japanese anime with his wife as Spring noted, “He’s like a biologist who watches Japanese anime (laughs)” [Interview 1]. In Canada, Spring also studied French as it was mandatory for her to learn French. She had started understanding French and picked up some expressions of daily communication, but her family moved to California as her father got a job there. So, altogether, she spoke four languages: Taiwanese, Mandarin, English and French. In her high school years, Spring was also learning Spanish, which she started in her freshman year as an additional language. During the time of data collection, she was in pre-AP Spanish class. Spring’s approach to learning languages is interesting. She compares learning every language with a baby speaking their first language where they do not begin with grammar but just talk. So her approach to learning a language was by talking all the time. She wanted to learn new languages not to be able to explain the grammar rules but to communicate and translate freely from one language to another. She thought this ability would give her affordances to opportunities in the world around her, or as she put it, “That's kind of why I learned from language and the whole culture experience. So, I gotta stay open. That's when opportunities come, and you just got to go and grab them.” [Interview 1]. Notably, Spring identified herself as a hard-working student, disclosing, “I always force myself to work hard. It’s like an inner voice inside of me like you got to do this, to try to do as best as you can, you know? But sometimes, laziness gets to me which is both a good thing and bad thing for me because it makes me lazy but 181 at the same time allows me to relax and not try so hard. Sometimes I appreciate laziness” [Interview 1]. In addition, Spring frequently said that she was “on the path of discovering what she wanted to pursue after high school”. She wanted to pursue her career in the medical field, but she was also interested in English literature. During the time of data collection, in her junior year, Spring was taking pre-AP algebra, pre-AP Spanish four, American government, Orchestra, AP Bio, and pre-AP American literature. She mentioned that she did not enjoy the American Government class much, but she was happy that she had gotten a good grade in it. Orchestra was something that allowed her to relax on one thing at a time, and it taught her to appreciate the importance of the present moment as it would make her focused. It was like a break in between difficult classes for her. The class from which I collected data for Spring was AP Biology class. She took that course because she had heard that if she took that course in high school, she would not have to take that in university. It would help her in her pre-med classes at the university, if she went on to pursue medical sciences. Although it was a relatively difficult class for her, and even though she was not going to understand and remember everything for her class in college, she believed that it would help her recall what she would already have learned in high school. Emotions Over the course of entire academic year, Spring repeatedly said that she had started being aware of her emotions as it helped her recognize pleasant and unpleasant feelings that emerged out of those emotions and the situations or people that prompted those feelings. She also mentioned that being aware of her emotions helped her seek help, when needed. She said: 182 Excerpt 118: I like to show a lot of emotions I know when I am bored in my classes. I like to show a lot of emotions like I was just not exactly happy when I didn’t do well on my math assignment. Or, I know when I have worries from like my SAT. Sometimes I go completely stressful, and I feel like it's too much for my brain. At times, a part of my brain is like what's going on? So I am learning to find a balance. That's why music inspires me to think calmly while doing critically in science and when I have to think sciency or I have to think math. It's like, my mind is telling me okay, I'm fine. I'm calm. And that's the part coming from music. So it's like working both. So it's like, my brain is working, my heart is working. But I need to know that my brain and heart need to work together to balance my emotions because I realized like to me emotions matter. They can really impact us and help us identify how we function. [Interview 2] Spring also noted that she was learning to notice how her emotions would manifest in different contexts, emphasizing “I think I'm trying to figure out a way to not only take care of my schoolwork, but take care of my body, my brain and my mental health, how I feel about things and my interest.” [Interview 2]. When Spring mentioned that she liked to express her emotions, she described how she would feel after her performance on tests or how music would help her calm down. Although she said that she was aware of her emotions, she mentioned that articulating her emotions was difficult for her, “It's really hard to express my emotions in words but I can give you so many examples when I was like super happy or super angry like with my teachers and like my class buddies [laughter] [Interview 2]. Over time, Spring shared several examples and experiences of her emotions related to her perceived sense of belonging (and lack thereof) related to her intersectionality of identities (linguistic, cultural, racial, and gender). The following sections present her emotions that are broadly divided into pleasant and unpleasant emotions. Pleasant emotions. Spring’s pleasant emotions were mainly centered around her feeling of joy that emerged from (1) her identity of being a multilingual speaker and her uniqueness amid the diverse student population at her respective school, and (2) her value and respect for other students, domestic and international, that afforded her different perspectives to learn new things 183 and gave her encouragement to domestic students to cultivate diverse lenses. She believed that that being a multilingual speaker enabled her to look at things from different perspectives, and this in turn gave her agency to choose from her multiple linguistic repertoires. Joy of being multilingual. One of her perceived senses of agency and confidence came from her multilingual identity. Spring thought that being a multilingual speaker gave her multiple affordances to look at things from different perspectives. On the one hand, she thought that it gave her some agency to choose from her wide linguistic repertoire, even though she felt that it was a challenging task to understand and juggle her multiple language identities to navigate the process of how she viewed the world around her, her school system, and herself. She said: Excerpt 119: It’s wonderful to be a multilingual I think it’s a wonderful thing being bilingual or multilingual because you're allowed to think from different perspectives, that helps you to understand more although it can be hard because you have to digest all the stuff in different languages that you can understand. But that’s the joy of like understanding so many perspective and I love challenging myself. Let's say if I don't know a word, like, this morning, I discover the word destigmatize. Yeah. And I was like, so what does that mean? And I have to go look it up. And then I have to think in my language, but also think in English and then connect them together. The whole day I was like drawing the word in my mind in all the languages I know, it is so cool. [Interview 1] Regarding her multilingual identity, Spring also mentioned her joy of being a global citizen of the world. She valued the benefits of that came with the globalization of the world and people learning and respecting one another’s languages, cultures, religions, and other identities. In addition, she believed that what kept everyone unique was their unique identities among the diversity of humanity in general and student population at her school. She shared an interesting analogy of feeling like an amoeba due to her multiple identities, “I am like an amoeba because I keep changing my ideas about myself [smiles]…I want to mix with my English-speaking friends 184 but also keep tying my feet to my roots, my culture, my food, my language but I love my unique identity” [Interview 1]. She elaborated: Excerpt 120: I am proud of my unique identity I constantly think what defines me and things like that. Two years ago, I was thinking, oh, I'm Taiwanese, but as I am progressing and learning languages, I think of myself as I am still Taiwanese inside, but I think of a person who is more acceptable to different communities, opportunities, and things like that. Learning a different language and being a global citizen is cool. I think, if everyone was like that, it's good that everyone can learn a second language and it is fascinating to understand the speakers of another language. But if everyone identifies himself with no religion or no specific language and culture, then there's no uniqueness to each person. Because even though I'm multilingual, there's still some parts of me that represents that previous first language that I have and where I come from. There's no way you can take that away from me. That's who I am, a unique person among a thousand plus students in this school and I am proud of my unique identity. [Interview 1] Thus, Spring’s ‘fascination’ towards being a global citizen, being able to ‘understand the speakers of another language’, and her pride of having a unique identity of being a Taiwanese in her school’s diverse student population demonstrated her joyful and positive emotion related to her multilingual identity. Joy of navigating difficulty. Spring mentioned that although she struggled with English in all her content are classes, she found joy in making small strides navigating difficulty, whether it was recognizing the differences in writing styles for different subject or receiving constructive feedback from her content area teachers that would make her a constant thinker. She shared that she had laughed a lot when she realized that “the use of English in the English language arts classes is different from the science and math classes. I thought English would solve all the problems but it’s so different English like polls apart” [Interview 2]. She also mentioned that her struggle with the decisions to be made in terms of the types of sentences and facts that needed to be included in her writing of the English and Science classes not only challenged her to work 185 hard, but also gave her incremental confidence in being able to understand the differences. She recalled: Excerpt 121: Two English speakers talking in my brain is so much fun I like to simplify my writing and explain things in detail. When I tried to do that, my science teacher was like you have to be to the point and be scientific and I just go to be direct. And I love coming up with like facts or statistics, because that, to me is very interesting. But my English teacher was like you have to elaborate and be more like human and like, what is this, you know? I struggle with English is just like, the topic sentence. It's got to be attention grabber, right? And I think fact is attention grabber. It’s hard but like I said I love challenges. I take one idea and think how to say this in English and how to say this in science class, even on my walk back home after school. It’s like two English speakers are talking in my brain. It’s so much fun [laughter]. [Interview 4] Spring exhibited fascination and joy every time she talked about how she navigated difficult situations. Her exciting stories would always begin with “I have a cool story to tell you”, when she wanted to share her experiences about handling her emotions and how she would advocate for herself. Some of the stories would come from the time between two interviews or from her experiences at her previous schools in Canada and California, where she had to struggle a lot in learning English. Joy of making connections and sharing multicultural perspectives. Another big chunk of narratives related to Spring’s pleasant emotion of joy and happiness also stemmed from her making connections and building friendships with her fellow students, both domestic and international students. She mentioned that one of her emotional supports was her connection with a few of her fellow international students in Michigan she was making, and she had made while she was in Canada and California earlier. Stating that she felt a strong sense of bond with other ESL students and immigrant students as their shared struggles and compassion towards each other, she shared: Excerpt 122: We both struggled as international students I often to my best friend in Canada and that makes me super happy. She's like, one of the few persons that I like, seriously, trust whatever I say. And she trusts me too. She is from 186 Turkey. I met her when I was in Canada. We both struggled as international students like language, food, culture stuff. And we basically spent every single day afternoon in the library studying together and it was nice. And, um, I don't know if this has happened to you, but when you connect with somebody with the same challenges, and then they're like your best friend. Like, they think similarly to you. So sometimes you don't even need to speak they know what you're saying. I don't know if it's like twin telepathic or something but it’s a blessing. [Interview 5] Spring’s happiness in making connections came not only from building friendships with fellow international students, but also from cultivating connections with domestic students who spoke English as their first language. Spring also said that she had two main purposes in making friends with her English-speaking classmates: to practice her English with them, and to share with them the benefits of multicultural understanding. In other words, she made friends with them in a very tactical way so she could practice her English with them. She did not consider them ‘information machines’, rather, she saw them as friends to learn from and share her knowledge with. She would not hesitate to explicitly solicit their feedback on her use of English, especially with respect to pragmatics. She said: Excerpt 123: I am happy when they correct my English Like I told you I want to practice my English. I get to practice it with them every day. They keep me intact of things I don't know about their culture or something on the internet that every student knows about because I don't use social media as much. So they just keep me updated. I subconsciously know that I'm practicing English. So I'll like listen to the way they speak some words. And, like, in the beginning, when I first meet them, I told them if I say something, some words in a wrong way, correct me. Look, I’d rather be corrected by my friends than one day like 20 People telling me I said something wrong or inappropriate in a presentation, right? So, they're, like, I am happy when they correct me if I say anything wrong. [Interview 5] Although Spring made friends with her English-speaking classmates to practice her English and to receive explicit feedback on her use of English, she emphasized that she did not consider them as her ‘information machines’ from whom she sought help with her English. She said, “Whenever I speak to them, they're not just information machines for me to get information and help because they're human too. So, I try to give them back something interesting or something 187 like we have connection so to make it feel like conversation, so they feel like we're friends not just like one way traffic” [Interview 5]. She elaborated that her joy came from her reciprocating her help to her English-speaking friends in explaining science and math problems and bringing different perspectives in conversations and assignments that they would not have thought about. She continued, “But In science and math, there are times when they might ask me, hey, do you know what this is? And I'll be like, yeah, of course, I can explain to you and things like that. The focus then is not on English but on the concept. I feel like so confident and valued” [Interview 5]. In addition, she found her joy and value in sharing her perspectives in group discussions: Excerpt 124: I feel proud and successful bringing my different cultural perspective Especially in English, we have to read books written by mostly American people, and usually the context is very hard for us to understand but because I learned so many different languages, I can kind of think and guess from different perspectives what they're trying to say after I looked up the definitions and translations of the difficult words. So then I can share my perspective of what I think from my own cultural backgrounds and after I shared, my friends will be like, yeah, that’s interesting and makes so much sense about what the author is trying to say. And then we like, double confirm with the teacher and teachers are like, very good perspective kind of like new perspective. And my friends are like, I wish I knew this too bla bla. I feel proud and successful. That sort of thing is always my favorite part of group discussions with my American classmates. [Interview 5] Spring mentioned that every time she shared a different perspective to the content being discussed in her English classes, her friends were impressed and wanted to know more about the benefits of learning multiple languages and cultures. She enthusiastically narrated her joy in communicating the benefits of being a multicultural student as follows: Excerpt 125: Encouraging people to travel abroad makes me happy They learned that like speaking different languages is very awesome. So, they want to learn languages, too. That's one thing I've been noticing. I ask American students to go abroad. And for me, one thing that makes me happy is I want to encourage them to go to different countries not just stay in America. They will say like, I want to go to different countries or study and I'm like yeah save your money and do it whenever you can because it's good to go to different countries to see different people and different cultures. It's like, at first, it's like looking at a picture. But then when you're actually there, it's like you're part of the painting. So, my friends like me because I bring a lot of stuff that they don't know yet. [Interview 5] 188 Spring’s analogy of ‘looking at a painting’ and being ‘part of the painting’ reflect her experiences of moving to different places from her home country, Taiwan, that instilled in her the joy and happiness in widening her horizon of understanding the world from multiple perspectives and her intention in being a respectful citizen of the global world, while still maintaining her unique identity. She elaborated on her happiness and joy regarding her helping her friends ‘see outside the box’ as she mentioned in the following excerpt: Excerpt 126: Helping people see outside the box makes me feel awesome It makes me feel awesome. It makes me feel good on the inside and super happy. I guess some of them get annoyed with me at first because they're not ready to take that and they might think I'm annoying them like trying to be superior to them. But after some meetings, they realize as they go on, see other subjects and people are actually talking about things from multiple perspectives and world views. And they'll be like, oh, Spring, I'm sorry. I said to you this last time or whatever, trying to make up to me. And I'm still happy to help them but just that step of making them realize that there is world out there and they need to make themselves ready to hear different perspectives. So, I feel good about doing these things and I do like helping people see outside the box. [Interview 5] The above excerpts clearly illustrate that Spring’s joy was connected to her American friends who were helping her practice her English. In reciprocation, she was helping them see outside the box and build their awareness of the value of learning multiple languages, travelling, meeting people and widening their horizon of an understanding of the world. Spring would enthusiastically share that it made her beyond happy every time she was able to return help in the forms of solving content area problem, sharing different cultural perspectives, and helping them cultivate an awareness of multicultural diversity. Unpleasant Emotions. Spring’s unpleasant emotions have common themes of sadness, frustration and annoyance related to her perceived unworthiness, anger towards people who did not respect her hard work but jumped to conclusions at times and judged her. Her unpleasant emotions are unpacked in this section. 189 Spring said that she was grateful and happy to be in the US with her parents and siblings. However, she missed her grandparents and her community in her home country (Taiwan) with whom she had very limited interactions due to (1) the time difference between the two countries, and (2) the gap between her and her grandparents that was widening due to the gradually decrease in communication between both parties. She said that she felt ‘sad in the heart’ every time she thought about them, “They're so far away. I want to talk to them, but I can't talk to them frequently because I'm busy with school and homework. And time difference plays a role. That makes me super sad in the heart” [Interview 1]. She recalled a time when she accidentally called her grandmother at noon (EST) which was midnight in Taiwan. Her grandmother still woke up and wanted to talk to her family as the call gave her grandmother immense happiness, and make her wide awake at midnight. However, she felt bad afterwards for waking her grandmother late at night. Spring mentioned that she used her first language as much as she could to talk to her grandparents that helped her strengthen her linguistic identity and nationality, stating “I just try to use my first language as much as I can to express myself to my grandmother. And it's something that is very useful because I could help my grandparents understand things and different perspectives that they might not know. But at the same time, that can help me to understand more about my own nationality and who I am” [Interview 1]. Perceived unworthiness. Spring considered herself a hardworking and risk-taking student. She mentioned that as an ESL student, she always had to put in extra effort to be seen and heard, “I would call myself a risk-taker. It's hard when you are in a different country, and you have to work extra hard to prove you can do it. I felt like the worst day ever when I didn't know how to answer the questions in English. I felt worthless, and it was the worst feeling in the whole world.” [Interview 2]. Spring further mentioned that she loved pushing her limits by challenging 190 herself to learn difficult things, but she constantly found herself in situations where she would struggle to convey what she wanted in English: Excerpt 127: Feeling powerless kills my motivation One thing I noticed that whenever I'm trying to write like an essay, I always write from what I think, what I feel and construct around it in my first language in my brain. I do like kind of argument for the essay. But recently, one thing I've found about myself is like I was hesitant to write what I think, oh, yeah, cuz I didn't know how to put it into words, or I just feel like it's too hard to explain, especially in English. So, I end up going back and forth between my sentences in mind and paper and change my whole essay sometimes and it takes me a lot longer time than expected. I feel so powerless and this feeling kills my motivation. [Interview 4] Apart from her perceived unworthiness due to her inability to express her thoughts in English in a timely manner, Spring also expressed her emotion of feeling worthless when she felt judged for her accent and/or for being an ESL student. She said: Excerpt 128: They hear my accent My accent, they can hear the first thing when I open my mouth to speak. They will think, oh, I can't speak English as well. And so they will automatically eliminate me from this job or things like that. It's really weird. I can’t stand it when people judge others for their accent. And that's one thing that annoys me a lot because I am still learning English. I am not done yet. I kind of sound like my friends when I hang out with them for long time. That’s like not as difficult as forming ideas and translating in your brain. [Interview 5] Spring disclosed that although she would feel unworthy from being judged for her accent and for her perceived sense of lack of fluency in English, she shared multiple stories of people and situations that made her feel unworthy, which would frustrate her. Some of the narratives are presented below. Frustration and annoyance. Spring recalled an incident when she had to take a science test with her buddy who was a male American student. It was her first test being in a pair, and she was not used to taking a text with a partner. They were supposed to discuss and solve the test questions together. However, he completed the test quickly and asked her to do the same. When she was 191 halfway through her questions, he told her that he was mad because he had to submit the test late because of her. Excerpt 129: I was still processing the instructions That guy like during the test, he kept on like, okay, we got to speed up. He would not even give me time to think and respond. I told him that I was still processing the instructions. I just want to make sure I get the right answer. He felt annoyed because he is that type that takes a test very fast. It's his first language and the accuracy rate is pretty good for him. But he doesn't understand that his strategy doesn't work for everybody. And plus, I'm learning science in a second language and he's not. But it was just so frustrating. Like when he kept on saying speed up, it just made me slow down more cuz I was nervous. Oh my God stop talking and then I need to focus. So, it just takes me more energy and biology is hard. Like I gotta think of all this, I can't just speed up. I am usually calm in taking my tests, but this type of situation makes me super anxious about the tests. [Interview 2] As the above excerpt shows, Spring was still processing the instructions and information based on some of the complex words she had yet to learn, “And on top of that, some of the words that's being used in that test is mostly the words that will be used on AP exam. Yeah. And new words. I haven't learned yet” [Interview 2]. She mentioned that her pair got 100/100 on that test, but she felt “embarrassed and did not like the experience as it felt very rushed, frustrating, and stressful”. She went on to say that she would feel anxious when put in such situations, even though she considered herself a calm person during tests. How Spring advocated for herself to change her test buddy is discussed in the self-advocacy section in a later section of this chapter. Another story of Spring’s frustration and annoyance resulted from a ‘rude teacher’ who told her to settle for less than what Spring wanted during the school election for the president position in class council for 2020. She did not win the election because she believed that the students voted for another candidate because of the latter’s popularity instead of what she could do for the students. Because Spring had moved to her high school just a year before the election, she had not been able to make as many connections within her new school community. She got waitlisted for another program, but she was proud of herself for running for the position with and 192 for trying her best to convey her message to the students. Although the entire election process gave her some learning opportunities which she was happy about, she had some unpleasant experiences that annoyed her to the core. There were mainly two frustrating experiences for her. One incident was related to one of her teachers telling her to run for lower positions: Excerpt 130: I ran for the president position of the student council I told her I wanted to run for the president position [for the class council]. When I went to her, she said, um, you know, after the election, you can just tell me and maybe I'll just put you in some like, less important positions. Why? I go and I look at her straight into the eyes and I was like, I will run for the President. And then she laughed. Like that really pissed me off. Oh my God. I didn't get elected but at least I tried my hardest. Could she do that to an American student? After the election, she saw me and she was like, “Do you want me to put you in other positions?” And I tell her right away, “No, it's okay, thank you.” Instead, I chose to serve on the mental health committee, and I know my importance and where I can really advocate for student mental health. [Interview 5] As the above excerpt shows, Spring’s frustration emerged from the teacher underestimating her for the president position which Spring perceived and believed to be due to her non-English and non-American background. In the final sentence in the excerpt, Spring mentioned that she chose to serve on the mental health committee for students which will be discussed in detail in the advocacy section in detail. According to her, despite her frustration with how the teacher made her feel, Spring was happy for the girl who won the election, “I am happy for her, she's a nice girl. She's also very popular. I've never seen her doing any significant work yet but I hope she will take some good action. We'll see” [Interview 5]. The second frustrating incident was also related to the same teacher who was also in charge of the election campaign. She got annoyed when Spring approached her multiple times with a lot of questions related to the election. She recalled: Excerpt 131: I got to see different sides of people She was very rude. I was new to this whole thing. So, I needed to ask her questions. And there's no way I can think of all the questions in one day and then ask her, so I had to separate it into like, three days. Ask her in the morning because that was the only time she's there. And on the third day, she told me like, you're asking a lot of awful questions 193 getting annoying. Oh my God! And I looked at her and I was like, I'm a student and I need to ask you questions. I am glad I campaigned because I got to see the different sides of people that I didn't see before. Yeah, so that was interesting. I mean it's not like I'm holding a grudge, but I'll forever have that image in my head. [Interview 5] The above excerpts [excerpts 130 and 131] demonstrate that even though Spring exerted herself by gathering courage in running for the presidency and gained some learning experiences, she encountered some negative experiences, and she said, “It impacted me, I am human. I was deeply hurt” [Interview 5]. All of her unpleasant experiences presented above prompted her to advocate for herself and for other ESL students like her to speak up for themselves and to be seen and heard. The section that follows presents her findings related to her advocacy for self and others. In a similar vein, in her math class in the previous year, her math teacher was talking very fast and, therefore, she found it very hard to understand him. She mentioned that her impression of the teacher and his indifference of ESL students in the mainstream math class made her dislike the math subject. For several days, she would put up her math homework because she would have anxiety in revising the content covered in the class. One day, she decided to meet with her teacher and express her concern about her comprehension, learning, and grades on the math test. She shared that the experience was very unpleasant, since the teacher was unwilling to help her. Instead, she made her feel like the problem lay with her because she was an ESL student. Excerpt 132: It’s like the stages of emotion I went to talk to him for help. But he told me, that's just an English problem, not a math problem. And that's where I felt sad for a few days. I was like, what the heck is wrong with him? It was like the stages of emotion. Sadness, and then anger. And then it turns to no, I'm gonna show him I can do this stuff. I'm not gonna take all those stuffs anymore. So, I started learning math and worked really hard. And I liked it very much. It's logical. It's beautiful. You can connect concepts together to make like words. I kind of wish I could go back and see him, but I probably don't wanna see him. It's kind of weird because that teacher is an Asian American. So, when he said that to me, I was very shocked. It was almost as someone stabbed you on the back and say, even though you’ve been through the same experience, you are like you should figure that on your own? It was horrible. [Interview 6] 194 This excerpt shows Spring’s awareness of layers of negative experience resulting from the experience. Her description of the stages of negative feelings from sadness to anger to resentment that prompted her to exclaim, “I’m gonna show him I can do this stuff” grew out of her perception of being humiliated by her teacher by his remark ‘that’s an English problem, not a math problem’. She not only felt humiliated but also felt betrayed (“stabbed you on the back”) because her expectation was that the teacher, who was himself an Asian American, would acknowledge that his speed of content delivery was very fast for ESL students, would empathize with her predicament and provide support. Despite all her unpleasant emotions, Spring channeled her feelings into working hard and cultivating a positive relation with her process of learning math itself “I liked it very much, It’s logical. It’s beautiful.” Adding to that, Spring shared how one her English-speaking classmates had rolled her eyes when Spring did not understand the concept she was explaining. But when she met Spring on a different occasion about a year later, the former and acknowledged how Spring had improved her English. Spring replied to her, “Thank you for your help last year. And maybe next time when you're trying to help a person who's learning English. Not only helping them understand the term is important, but also consider their feelings and how you explain it to them because it's not easy” [Interview 3]. Mixed emotions: Being spotlighted. Spring considered herself an ambassador of international cultural exchange. She mentioned that the international students who come to the States possess lived experiences of cultures and languages of their home countries. So, she believed that leveraging on their lived experiences and asking them to share about their culture was a great opportunity for her to showcase her multilingual and multicultural repertoires. When the teachers in the content classes spotlighted her to provide some information about her country and culture 195 at times, Spring had mixed emotions. On the one hand, she felt respected and valued to be spotlighted because she would be able to share the richness of her home culture with her fellow students and teachers in the class. She said, Excerpt 133: I feel like the star of the show If I come from a different country, I have definitely more cultural knowledge in my body and mind that people who are googling about my country. And so for students to come up and share to the classroom about their country, it is nice feeling. When I am told to share about my country, I feel like the star of the show. I feel valued and like people are curious to know about me. Plus, it is the moment to show people what your country is like and what we eat, and like what we do stuff like that. People should never think it's only one way that they come here, and learn about the United States. It's a two-way kind of thing, sharing about my country at the same time receiving or learning about your country. And like they get to see the world is interconnected in some ways. That's why you have international students. That's why the United States decided to let international students come in. And I am like an ambassador. [Interview 2] This excerpt shows that Spring felt ‘valued’ when being spotlighted in the class to share about her country and culture. She also mentioned she was ‘like an ambassador’ for her country; therefore, she reciprocated by providing information which her teachers and classmates would otherwise not find out about just by ‘googling’ about her country. She acknowledged her embodied identity by stating that she felt the emotion of being an international student “in my body and mind”. Although she mentioned that she felt ‘like the start of the show’ while being asked to share about her culture, she also shared that it would be tiring and stressful at times, especially when she would be called abruptly in the class. She shared: Excerpt 134: It’s tiring to be spotlighted sometimes Sometimes, teachers treat bilingual or multilingual students as very interesting. They would say like, this is very cool. This is a new culture I haven't learned yet. And can you tell me more about this or that? That kind of stuff. I'm happy to tell them more but like I am not always prepared to share in detail. Like give me some time to confirm with my parents about some cultural things. It gives me anxiety, like many people don’t know about the history of Taiwan and China and Japan like that. I told you about the conflict between China and Taiwan, right? That’s a very difficult topic and you can’t just ask me like tell me about your relationship with China, right? It’s tiring to be spotlighted sometimes. [Interview 5] 196 As Spring mentioned in the above excerpt, she felt anxious when asked to share about things related to her country impromptu, especially the contentious topics, such as the relationship between China and Taiwan. As she mentioned in the previous excerpt, she appreciated her teachers and classmates asking her to share about her country and culture. However, being asked to do so constantly and impromptu was exhausting for her. Emphasizing the balance between her both types of emotions mentioned above, Spring noted that content teachers teaching in mainstream classes might think that by spotlighting students and asking them to share about their country, they were respecting the students and their culture. But this was not always perceived by the student in the same way. Spring mentioned that it is not only the responsibility of the student to educate the class about their country, but also that of the teacher to educate themselves about their students’ backgrounds. In addition, she said that instead of randomly putting an international student in the hot seat, they could find out how ready the student was to share in terms of their linguistic proficiency and comfort, as narrated in the following excerpt: Excerpt 135: It takes time to be able to share about your culture When you first arrive at a new environment, there's no way you can just adjust there and then speak a new language and then talk to the class about your culture. It takes time for you to get familiar with the environment, the people and everything and like to be able to share about your culture. Maybe after like, a month or two months, the teacher can ask you about your culture. And I'll share it with the class because by then, you know everybody in your class. And that just makes you feel more comfortable to share your own culture and things even if you don’t know much English. [Interview 5] To sum up, Spring felt mixed emotions related to being asked to share about her country and culture. Her comfort in doing so depended on her sense of comfort among her peers, her linguistic ability, and the time she would be given to prepare and process the information before sharing it to the whole class. 197 Advocacy Spring believed that ESL students in mainstream content classes needed to learn how to advocate for themselves. She also asserted that teachers should teach students advocacy skills to equip them to advocate for themselves and others. Spring was very explicit about her intentions in learning how to speak up for herself, how to seek help, and become an ally or advocate for her fellow ESL students in need. Her intentions also prompted her to serve on the school’s mental health board as a student representative. This section presents findings about Spring’s self- advocacy, advocacy for others, and how she communicated with teachers, fellow students, and even school counselors about her needs and experiences in mainstream content classes. Self-advocacy by constantly reminding teachers of your presence. Spring believed that in the mainstream content classes, teachers had to be reminded time and again of the ESL students’ presence. Since the mainstream content classes consisted of mostly domestic students with only a few ESL students, it would be easy for the teacher to focus on delivering the content. Spring said that teachers were very helpful, but they would forget at times that there were ESL students who might be still processing the information being taught. She would thus explicitly tell her content teachers in the beginning of the semester survey that she was an international student and a speaker of English as her third language, and that she would ask them questions frequently about the subject matter. Excerpt 136: I will ask you a lot of questions It's the mainstream class, and plus you're still trying to learn English. So the best way to get it is even if you don't understand what they're saying, is to listen to them and then think about what they're saying. Sometimes they don't realize there's an ESL student but I always make sure they do. Like in the beginning of the year, when they give us like a survey, what do you want me to know about you and things like that? I'll always put that English is my third language. And so you will definitely see me asking you a lot of questions. Don't panic, please. Probably I need to ask something that I didn’t understand, I need to know. So, I always make sure that they know that. And then so when I, whenever I ask them question, they always helped me. [Interview 2]. 198 Spring insisted that she made sure that her content area teachers were aware of the ESL students’ presence in the class so they could simplify the concepts when the ESL students needed it. She repeatedly said that she always told her teachers that she would seek their help and requested them not to panic. Her rationale for this request was that she had had some experiences in her middle school where her content area teachers explicitly said that she was annoying as she asked a lot of questions, “It made me feel like I was evil because she said I was annoying” [Interview 2]. Spring added that one of the main reasons she would ask her teachers a lot of clarification questions was because she did not want her English proficiency to impede her science and math tests. She noted, “And I will just tell them that, I need to ask you a question because probably I need to clarify or specify something that I didn't understand. Like on the tests, I need to know what it means so I can pick the correct answer” [Interview 2]. Spring also believed that by asking questions she was not only helping herself understand the content but also helping the teachers as their performance would be based on how their students performed in classes and specifically on the tests, “And if want me to do well because that's also a part of the teachers have like, um, like, people examine how well those students do on the test. So in a way, if I do well, that's contributing to their effort and teaching, which means they teach good” [Interview 4]. Crucially, she believed that constantly reminding content area teachers was the first step towards creating a space for oneself amid the majority of English- speaking students in those classes. Although she believed that it was the ESL students’ job to keep reminding the teachers about their presence in the class. She shared: Excerpt 137: Unless you tell them they’re not going to know you are there It's for me to ask them questions and they give me answers, which is helpful. But at the same time, sometimes like unless you tell them they're not going to know you are there and you need a bit extra time and help. And even if you tell them that you are an English learner, sometimes they're still going to forget. And so sometimes, they might use those like big hard words to describe something and you don't know them. But sometimes 199 there's like common words that they use that they see as easy words but don't know that word because you have never learned it. That they assume you know this word. That's when you have to ask them. The perks of being an English learner is you will want to take it to a next level, you want to learn like harder words but want to understand them first. [Interview 5] In the above excerpt, Spring’s self-advocacy is seen through two actions she would take to be acknowledged and seen in her content area classes. First, she was aware that since there were only a few ESL students in mainstream classes, she had to remind her teachers about her presence in the class by either asking clarification questions or explicitly telling the teachers that she would need extra time and support as English was not her first language. Second, she wanted to add complex vocabulary to her linguistic and content area repertoires and “take it to a next level”; however, she had to understand how those words were being used in specific contexts. Thus, she resorted to seek help from her teachers for that purpose. In addition to making herself and other ESL students visible through constant reminders to her teachers, Spring also exhibited her own visibility by choosing to sit in the front rows in her content classes, which was not an easy decision for her in the beginning. She shared: Excerpt 138: I have to be seen I used to be the student sitting in the very, very far back and hope the teacher never picks me. Oh, and that didn't help at all in learning. So, I thought why not sit in the front? And it was nerve racking in the beginning because I didn't know the answers if the teachers asked me anything, but I still chose to sit in the front. If I want to engage in something, that means I can get feedback from the teacher, but also positively engage myself in conversations and learning at the same time, I have to be seen. Now, I never sit in the back. [Interview 2] The above excerpts underscore Spring’s proactive decisions in making herself seen and noticed in the mainstream content classes. In the next section, I explore how she self-advocated by speaking up for herself when she felt unseen and her work unnoticed. While Spring reminded her teachers about her needs to her content teachers, she also told them to not give her a special treatment but to help her push her boundaries: 200 Excerpt 139: Balancing giving and receiving help I'll also let them know that please treat me just like every other student, because I want to improve my language. And this is, this might be a challenge for me in this class, but I still want to try because I want to be fluent in English. And then they'll say, I understand. Thank you for sharing this with me. And that just balanced both because they will treat me like everybody else but at the same time if I need extra help, they're there for me. [Interview 3] Self-advocacy by speaking up for herself. Spring revealed that she intentionally put efforts in advocating for herself and others, especially other ESL students. She stated that when she in her middle school in Canada, she was still struggling to utter English sentences without hesitations but wished to speak up for herself whenever she felt devalued or ignored when she asked questions. However, she felt that she was not fluent enough in English to from ideas around speaking up for herself. Spring recalled that her French teacher was the one who encouraged her to advocate for herself, even if it resulted in her being perceived as being less proficient than her peers. She recalled: Excerpt 140: A teacher taught me to speak up for myself and that changed my life She helped me learn French because at that time, French was a requirement. I'm not fluent in French. I understand a little, but I can’t speak much. But she's very important to me because I was really sad when a teacher said I was using a calculator on a test when I was not. But I could not tell her and everyone looked at me. I remember my French teacher told me, “You got to speak up even if you don't know English much”. And I was telling her, well, how can I do that when I don't know a language very well? She said, well, there's other ways you can speak. There's body gesture, words and you can help people to understand you. And like that changed my life. That is what I needed to hear like say it when you are hurt or like there is injustice done to you. After that every time I have a conversation with people, I won't shy away anymore. I just talked to them. And that's how I discovered. I don't know. [Interview 3] Spring went on to explain how her French teacher’s encouragement to speak up for herself had mobilized her to develop her self-advocacy skills of communication with her teachers in her high school every time she felt unheard, unseen, or taken advantage of. For example, on a few occasions, her English-speaking peers would ask her to hurry up during the pair or group tests in science and math. While she knew the content very well, she would struggle to understand the 201 instructions, and often took a longer time to process the information. In addition, she would want to get all or most of her answers correct after taking as much time as she needed, rather than rushing to submit and make mistakes, especially since these were untimed class tests. Once, when one of her English-speaking peers was annoyed by her taking longer time during a science test that was taken in pairs, Spring told him that she needed extra time. But because he kept doing the same next time during a group test, Spring then went to her science teacher and requested for a change in test buddy because she did not want to work with someone who did not respect her work strategy, even though the pair would eventually score 100/100 on the test. She stated: Excerpt 141: I asked the teacher to change my buddy He did not have to rush to finish the test. I wanted to contribute equally and it’s not that I did not know the content. I love Science. It’s in my genes. I just need a little extra time… He got mad at me for taking longer time and that he was behind because of me… I went to the teacher and told her to change my buddy or else I would work by myself. She knew my work style…she always appreciated my work and discipline. She rotated our buddies and I got to work with others, some were like him but some were supportive. I kept completing the tasks taking my own time… I think I am an what do you say? advocate? activist? [laughter]…yeah, I am an advovist. I speak up for myself and do not hesitate to communicate…If something is wrong, I will say it. Otherwise, it would always be in my mind and bother me like ants inside my head. [Interview 4] In the above excerpt, Spring narrated a situation when she communicated with her teacher about how she felt unheard during a group test and requested her to change her buddy. On another occasion, she had to complete a science assignment with a partner and have conversations and discussions from brainstorming the project to the final execution of the project. However, a male peer of hers told her that he would do the project with her, but he did not do his part even after being told multiple times. He told her to complete the entire project, which she did. But she then reported it to her teacher so that her hard work would not go unnoticed. She elaborated: 202 Excerpt 142: I tell people what wrong they did to me I told the teacher he didn't do anything. So he got a zero. And then he goes mad at me for like, the whole year. Oh my God. And then he came to me. He was like, you know, you're being they're annoying. He said all the bad things, some of which nasty. Okay, and then when he was done, I said, are you done? It's my turn. I told him what he did wrong and how he neglected working with me. And why he would not make a good friend to anyone with that behavior. And maybe he could change it. That was a bad experience of working with a white male student. But of course, I still collaborate with people for big projects. I'll finish my part. They’ll finish their part. And then we discuss and combine like that. And I always make sure the teacher knows if somebody didn't do their part. That way I don’t feel like a labor. [Interview 5] After Spring reported to the teacher about her peer not completing his task, and therefore he did not deserve the grading from the project she completed on her own, there was no communication between her and him for about a month. She shared that after a month, he apologized to her for ignoring her constant reminders and requests and appreciated her for being a hard-working student. Spring described the outcome as her “winning moment” [Interview 5] of learning to facilitate transparent communication. Later in the semester, she had a class presentation with the same student which, according to her, went very well because she figured out that he was “afraid of presenting in front of people” and she “loved doing that”, despite her perceived lack of English proficiency. As put it simply, “together, we crushed it” [Interview 5]. Advocacy for other ESL Students. Spring believed that not many ESL students advocate for themselves by asking teachers questions when they could not comprehend the content. She wanted to advocate for others too by being a model herself. She wanted to show other ESL students that it was acceptable to ask questions and be vulnerable rather than suffer in isolation and struggle. She wanted to not only advocate for herself but also advocate for other ESL students. She believed that knowing that the teachers could help when needed and asking for help were two different things. She believed that ESL students needed to be taught ways to ask for help in English, something which many students did not know how to do. 203 Excerpt 143: I like to support other ESL students In each of my content classes, there are a few students whose first language is not English. I can clearly see them struggle. If given a choice to group with other students, I sometimes choose to work with my English-speaking peers and sometimes choose to work with other ELLs. I share with them how I am reaching out to teachers out of the classrooms, what benefits I am receiving. A girl from Somalia has been my good friend with whom I can talk about anything. She is shy like I used to be [smiles]. She wants to practice her English. I tell her to practice with me, say whatever you want, be more confident. Once, I took her to the school counselor to report about some boys who were saying something weird about her in the auditorium. I like to support other ESL students. That gives me more confidence to advocate for myself and others. [Interview 4] On another occasion, Spring told another ESL student to let her know if the teacher who had rolled his eyes in the math class continued doing so. She would then be an ally to that student and tell either the school counselor or the principal about how the teacher was dismissive of the student due to her lack of fluency in English, even though she was smart in math. She shared: Excerpt 144: I’ll have to take it to the principal Well, I told her if he did that again, we will go to the principal. Because no, you can't do that to a student just because you're a teacher. You are not saying bad words but rolling eyes says a lot of things like how you treat your students, how you get annoyed when there is question. Like we fulfilled the requirements to be in the mainstream content class. Are you gonna let your ego get in the way because you are superior? Maybe I’ll have to take it to the principal, and you will make me look evil? I want my friend to know that she can like talk to other teachers who support her or like her counselor or principal like do something. Don’t just feel bad and sit there you know? [Interview 5] Apart from her willingness and intention to support her fellow ESL students to speak up for themselves, Spring also frequently mentioned that some content teachers would often ask comprehension questions to the whole class, and she believed that most of the ESL students in the mainstream content classes would reply that they understood the concept, even if they did not because they would not want to be looked down upon. She elaborated: Excerpt 145: Sometimes ESL students are just trying to fit in Sometimes the international students are English learners, they are afraid to say ‘no’. Then there'll be like the only one who doesn't understand and like oh, I don't want to be the outcast. For me, when everybody says yes, I'll say no, because I got to learn that word. But many ESL students are afraid of asking for help. Maybe sometime teacher needs to realize that even when an international students say yes, sometimes they're just 204 saying yes so they can fit in, you know? You got to ask them, not to embarrass them but like can somebody tell me what this means? And then the person will explain and maybe then the international students that didn't want to raise their hand can then hear the definition or answer, and then they'll be like, oh, okay, now I know. And they don't need to ask and they don't need to embarrass themself. [Interview 7] In the above excerpt, Spring touched mainly on three aspects of ESL students in mainstream content classes: their lack of help-seeking behaviors, their conformity with the majority of student responses even when they themselves would not understand the concept, and a call for the teachers to be more mindful of how they can use the comprehension questions, without embarrassing the ESL students in the class but by creating opportunities where they can hear the concept being repeated by the ones who had already comprehended the concept. In addition to advocating for other ESL students’ learning of content area concepts, Spring was also very active in advocating for all students’ mental health, especially ESL students’ mental health because she believed that they lacked tools to express their feelings and emotions in a second language, and therefore, would suffer quietly in distress. Advocacy for ESL students’ mental health. One of the topics of Spring’s interest in almost all interviews and informal conversations was her advocacy for students’ mental health. During the time of this data collection, the high school had formed a mental health committee consisting of a teacher and four student representatives. She wanted to serve on some student committee to represent ESL students and to be noticed in some actions outside of her classes. She said: Excerpt 146: I chose to serve on the mental health committee I chose to serve on the mental health committee because I think mental health is important for everyone. It is more important for ESL and immigrant and refugee students because we have extra on our plate. Everyone has got equal amount of time but we have to do more work in the same amount of time. Whenever I feel stressed, anxious, or like mad at someone, I reach out to my teachers, Mr. Rosa, Ms. Eva [both teacher participants in this study] or school counsellor for support. I decide to do so for myself, for my health, for my own growth and learning. I can’t afford to be anxious all the time. I also love Ms. Rosa’s [science teacher] care circles where we share our feelings. That keeps me sane. [Interview 3] 205 As the above excerpt demonstrates, Spring was aware of the importance of mental health for her overall wellbeing and to be able to support others in their endeavors as well. She also mentioned how her science teacher, Ms. Rosa, a teacher participant in this study, organized care circles and other resources that helped take care of Spring’s? mental health. Spring also mentioned that as part of the committee, her task was to give input about what mental health related topics would be helpful for students during the semester and/or during the semester final exams. The committee met once a month and put together monthly or weekly themes related to mental health, which then would be announced the various channels that included the principal’s daily morning address as well as through other student groups and clubs. The committee would also communicate with teachers to share relevant ideas with their students. Some of the topics Spring and her team put together were ‘distress week’ before the final exam that included destress meditations. The committee was planning to introduce dog therapy as part of distress week. In addition, some of the topics they introduced were stress, social isolation, and coping strategies. She was going to propose to the committee that they could distribute some backpack buttons or keychains so that the students would remember to take care of their mental health every time they saw those tangible items and reminders. Even though Spring was invested in student mental health, she believed that there was a lot to be done to help ESL students to talk about their feelings and their mental health-related struggles as they lacked language skills to seek help to protect their mental health. She did not want to limit her awareness of the importance of mental health to herself, but also wanted to share with her fellow ESL students, who according to her, still needed to learn to seek help. Spring revealed: 206 Excerpt 147: ESL students need help-seeking skills I am that kind of person who always asks for help if my stress is like out of my control. I’ll speak up even it looks unpleasant thing that they don’t want me to speak about who was rude to me but I will say it because that’s the reality you have to know. But if you tell ESL students to ask for help but don’t teach them how to ask for help, that’s not very helpful. If somebody is already struggling with anxiety and stress but don’t know how to say those things like in English, and then you are not helping them. [Interview 5] As seen in the above excerpt, Spring strongly believed that ESL students needed tools to ask for support to shore up their mental health. She said that many students were resistant to reach out for help, especially concerning their mental health. She acknowledged that “it just takes a lot of courage for any people to talk about mental health” [Interview 5]. Her mental health committee and other student groups organized a professional development for teachers where the teachers could go to those student groups or clubs to learn about their work and how the teachers could contribute. One of them was the mental health committee with whom some students shared stories of how their teachers could have handled things differently to help them in need. The teachers were also requested to share mental health information to the students in their respective classes, but any personal conversations around mental health were confidential between students and the social worker or the mental health committee. Spring believed that ESL students needed what? Excerpt 148: Students needed mental health awareness They need more awareness. Even the people in our club?, they will say I am open to ask for help but you know, that's not true. Because they will still keep a distance. It's like they're afraid of showing who they are inside. And they're afraid that stigma will come and tag them. And that tag is gonna stay with them forever. My international student friends are like what if the tag impacts my college admission stuff like that. They need to know like you’re not gonna make it if you don’t take care of your mental health. [Interview 5] Spring was also concerned that while some of her fellow ESL students did not know the meaning of the words like “trigger”, some of her English-speaking peers would use it lightly as she 207 described in the following excerpt, which made her think that there should be proper education around mental health to everyone. She continued: Excerpt 149: Learning about mental health in English And lots of students use like the word trigger as if it's something funny. Trigger is like a certain word, or things that can make you rethink of the past or experience unpleasant ones that you've had, and people use it as if it's some kind of joke like, oh my god, that teacher triggers me. Like we need to learn to talk about our mental health in English cuz that’s what our school counselor and social worker speaks. [Interview 5]. Advocacy for intersectionality of identities. Spring frequently stated that she wanted to advocate for women in STEM. In her opinion, women in STEM, especially women who did not speak English as their first language, had a multitude of identities to navigate to carve out their space in the field and to create value for themselves and their work. She was aware of her identities related to gender, race, and language that would demand her to work extra hard to thrive in the STEM field. Regarding her gender identity, she believed that she constantly received messages from the society and media that she could do more as a male. However, she knew that that was a wrong message, and she wanted to change that, by starting with herself at high school: Excerpt 150: This world deserves the changes for good I will say I'm an activist for gender equality, and racial equality, and social equality in society. I'm a person that, who only stands up for the right things. And I want to bring a change to this world despite of the many identities I have. My gender and race and language should not stop me to do that. I want to do everything to the best quality because if I don't do that, I will prove society right that girls are of less value. I think this world deserves the changes for good. And I think I can't just wait and see like only with people who are important right now on the news or things like that can change the world. It has to start with small people, at home and especially in school with people like me. [Interview 3] The above excerpt shows Spring’s perception of how her identities related to gender, race and language intersected with each other in her intentionality and attempt to advocate for change in her school space. In elaborating her thoughts, she recalled an incident where her gender and language identities made her reflect on her identity as a student in mainstream content class. It 208 was a high school math teacher in her previous year who had said in the class that girls usually took longer time to do math than boys. Spring did not agree with him because she was taking longer time due to the fact that she was learning math in her second language. She shared: Excerpt 151: My struggle was not math content but my English When I heard him say that I was still learning how to do math. So I thought, okay, I guess that's just the way it is. But as I grew and learned more English and different things combined, I realized that he was wrong. Maybe he's good at math and thought that boys are better than girls in solving math problem. But right now, I'm like a top A student in my math class. That means my struggle was not math content but my English. I tool longer time because he was teaching in English. So, I know that what he was saying isn't true. That what I tell other ESL students too like think if you are struggling because of content or your English. And yeah, I want to change how people say things like that. I wish I could go back and tell him, but I don’t like to see him. [Interview 2] In this excerpt, Spring’s intersectionality of gender and language related identities in her sense- making process in content classes. It also further illustrates her advocacy for other ESL students by sharing her learning with them and making them aware of what their real struggle was so they could seek specific help and support in their content classes. Expanding on her views about how she was determined to pursue her career in STEM, and how her intersectionality of identities would be challenging to her in a predominantly white English-speaking male dominated field, Spring chose to attend the women in STEM student group whenever her schedule allowed. She said: Excerpt 152: Women of color in STEM field I join most events related to females in STEM where they host a lot of empowering women of color in STEM and different things like that. I really enjoy it. I think those events really helps the younger kids, especially girls, to see they have a bright future and not just some males in the STEM fields. I think that's really important. It should begin from early age, in schools. If I could change the world, one thing I would try to change is that perception of men being higher than the women in any field, because I really don't think that's true. I can be successful if I work hard, a little extra hard maybe because my English is still improving. [Interview 2] All of the above excerpts exhibit Spring’s awareness of her multiple identities, and how her perceived intersectionality of identities played important roles in influencing her decisions to 209 communicate with her teachers and fellow students when she advocated for herself and other ESL students. Pedagogy of Care Experiences of being cared for: Affixation. Spring believed that her science teacher, Ms. Rosa, frequently told her class about how she cared for her students. She did so by checking in on students every day and also through her teaching strategies. Spring said that English in science was harder for her because of a lot of specific terms used to describe things, but her teacher’s explicit way of teaching the meanings of prefixes and suffixes helped her. She stated: Excerpt 153: Content teacher helping in science and English at the same time It helps me a lot. In one way, she's helping me learn English and Science. The other way is that now whenever I see that prefix or suffix in science, I can kind of guess what that word mean, even if I don't know what that word means. Like in DNA polymerase, poly means many. So that means it can be used in any subject. And I'm happy. I think it's a way for me to think, multitask in my brain cuz I can use the same technique in my other classes too. In science, like, whenever they named something, it's for a reason how the word is formed. So, it's pretty easy if you know the prefix and the suffix. And our science teacher does a great job telling us about it all the time and breaking words in parts. So, you can guess the meaning even if you don't know the entire word. [Interview 4] As we saw in Ms. Rosa’s chapter, she shared that her intentionality behind introducing the skill of knowing the meaning of certain suffixes was because she cared for her students. She therefore wanted to conserve their energy as much as possible by making them aware of their own learning, by developing their metacognitive skills. In corroboration with that expression of the science teacher, Ms. Rosa, Spring also believed that she found this skill very helpful not only to understand the scientific concept but also to improve her English vocabulary. Care communicated explicitly. Spring shared that Ms. Rosa, her science teacher, was very caring and communicated to her students very frequently that she cared about them. Spring interpreted Ms. Rosa’s care of her and other students in three distinct ways: treating them as humans, cultivating a space for socioemotional wellbeing in her science class through care 210 circles, and being non-judgmental of her ESL students when they shared their struggles with her. Spring stated: Excerpt 154: A human who is learning science in my second language She explains every difficult concept when I don’t understand. That's why I always raise my hand. It’s embarrassing sometime to be the only person to raise hand so many times. She does not roll her eyes no matter how many questions I ask her like she would pause or give me extra time after or before class. She reminded us that she chose to be a teacher and it's her job to help us. I can freely ask her questions because at least she treats me as a human who is learning science in my second language. And she talks to you, not just talk to you about the subject but about how I am feeling and genuinely listens to me and like how I am doing on my mental health committee like that. [Interview 4] Spring also mentioned that Ms. Rosa was the only teacher in her content classes who meant to listen to her students when she would ask them how they were doing. She would then provide them support, resources, extra times during excel hours (extra hours spread over the week to seek support) or before and after the class, or connect them to the school social worker, if needed. In addition, Spring believed that Ms. Rosa communicated about her care for her students by complimenting them for their good work, while also gently pushing them to work hard in areas they needed to work harder. Spring said: Excerpt 155: I might switch to my first language when I am nervous She would say like in simple English where I need to focus more by giving examples and pointing to the area like that. Even she would tell us how to study and like how to take care of our emotions and wellbeing. She notices when I am anxious about a difficult topic or like a big test. Most teachers don't realize it. My math teacher was like you get A on tests and you are nervous? You are fine. So. Ms. Rosa is one of the only few people that can notice this kind of things. Little things. People don't usually realize that like I get nervous before presentation too like I am thinking in like three languages, and I am afraid I will speak my first language when I am nervous, but Ms. Rosa is like you can pause and don’t pressure to like keep talking. That calms my heart. That's what I love about her. [Interview 7] The above excerpt illustrates Spring’s appreciation of her science teacher’s care that was demonstrated in multiple ways: her complementing the good work, giving feedback to improve on the things and push students out of their comfort zones, noticing changes in behaviors of 211 students and their emotions, and providing a space and grace for ESL students to take time to process the information in their second language, especially if they had to share something with the whole class. In addition to the above gestures and communication about care that Ms. Rosa executed, she frequently conducted care circles in her science class where she talked about different ways students took care of their wellbeing and what things they could do differently when they were experiencing unpleasant emotions and feelings. During class observations, I witnessed a few of the care circles that Ms. Rosa conducted in her science class, usually before the test weeks. Spring frequently mentioned that Ms. Rosa was the only teacher who showed care by sitting down with the students in a care circle, asking them about their wellbeing and telling them about the importance of mental wellbeing and listening to them as if she was also one of them. Spring also mentioned that other teachers also talked about the mental health of students at times, but they did so in a very formal presentation style. Neither did these teachers create opportunities for students to be felt, seen and heard about their mental health, thereby going beyond the content of the class. She elaborated: Excerpt 156: If you care about somebody, … not judge for your English And she really cares about us. And that really showed during that circle. And if you really care about somebody, you want to sit down properly with them, talk to them, listen with whole heart and not judge for your English. Like the other day I learned the word stigma and I think I used it incorrectly, but she did not interrupt by correcting my English like my other teacher but listened to my feeling, asking me how I feel. I think that’s what a person would do when they care about others instead of putting words into your mouth or like saying oh you look okay to me like that when I am still thinking how to say my feeling in English. [Interview 7] Spring’s experience of being cared for described above emerged not only from Ms. Rosa’s care circles, but also from Spring’s experiences with her math teacher (not the focal participant in this study), who would always dismiss her feelings after a few sentences in the beginning of the 212 conversations when she would tell her about her test anxiety. She dismissed Spring’s anxious feelings by equating them with her good test score saying “You get A on tests and you are nervous? You are fine.” Spring’s awareness of the math teacher’s dismissal of her feelings and emotions, even without giving her time to articulate her emotions very well, contributed to her perception of not cared for by her math teacher as a whole person and student in the class. Relevance of science to the real world and ethical issues. As we saw in the findings from Ms. Rosa’s data, one of the things she mentioned about caring for her students’ holistic development and learning was her striving to make the science content as a whole and the journey of learning science relevant for her students. One of the ways Spring attempted to do so was by bringing at least one new science related news to each class meeting, which she would usually share in the beginning of the class after checking in on her class. Spring’s data corroborates with Ms. Rosa’s connection between care and relevancy (see Chapter 4, Excerpts 15 & 16). She elaborated: Excerpt 157: She makes things from textbook come alive It's like she shows us that science is not just playing around some concepts in the books. It's like real world stuff that you know, we can get to explore in the future. She makes things from textbook come alive by connecting to the everyday news and like what can happen in the outside world and nature around us and like how that is connected to science. Some news is from some years ago and that is related to like today’s science topic. [Interview 2] During one of the classes I observed, the news brought to class was related to a Chinese scientist who had conducted a DNA alteration experiment without government approval. The students shared their opinions about the ethical issues and how the experiment on unborn twins was not only illegal but also unethical. She strongly believed that Ms. Rosa’s constant talking about ethics behind scientific studies had made her aware of the things she would carry with her in pursuit of her future careers and studies. She shared: 213 Excerpt 158: If your experiment harms others, you have to stop it I think it's good that she mentions about ethical issues that because I will say for lots of us, the teenagers are still learning, and especially people who are interested in this kind of subject, they might go and want to do a lot of amazing things with experiments and things. But they should also keep this in mind. So as they grow and explore, they would, I don't know, be more ethical. And in terms of their research, because I know people my age seems to have this like fearless, ambitious goal. But they got to realize like sometimes, it's not always about achieving that goal. If it harms others, they just have to stop. [Interview 7] The above excerpt shows that Spring’s interpretation of Ms. Rosa’s care in terms of making science relatable and relevant aligned with Ms. Rosa’s intention to care for her students and making them grow into ethical scientists or consumers of science. Collaboration and accountability: Buddies in scientific meaning-making. In the previous subsection that explored Spring’s emotions and self-advocacy, we saw that she had encountered some unpleasant and negative experiences with some buddies in the science class where her English-speaking peers constantly told her to speed up in finishing the group or pair tests. Despite those experiences, Spring believed that she appreciated the buddy system as a whole as it helped her in gaining different perspectives to learn the scientific concepts. Excerpt 159: Buddy system helps in gaining different perspectives I think buddy system is a good thing because I might not interact with my classmates even if I see them every day if I were not assigned with a buddy or a group because I want to take my own time. But she kind of gently forces us to have human connections and have to talk to that person. I think that's cool because it helps me in gaining different perspectives and that kind of helps in a way because you can see different point of views from different people and how they understand and describe the concept. And at the same time, I can discover what common interests we might have or what kind of thinking styles other people are adopting to help them succeed and things like that. And like we take responsibility of solving some problem together. [Interview 6] Spring believed that the buddy system instilled in her the accountability and ‘responsibility’ of solving a scientific problem. She also said that collaborating with her English-speaking peers usually helped her practice her English skills simultaneously. According to Spring, overall, the buddy system helped her “get unstuck” [Interview 6] from a situation where she would not be 214 able to make sense of a concept herself or solve a science assignment. In addition, Spring also connected the accountability and care in terms of Ms. Rosa giving her opportunities to correct her tests for grading and learning purposes. Experience of perceived lack of being cared for. Despite Spring’s perception of being cared for by her content class teachers, especially by Ms. Rosa in her science class who communicated being caring teacher to her students, Spring had some experiences where she felt a lack of being cared for. Some of the recurring themes that emerged from the data were: POGIL (process oriented guided inquiry learning) packet not simplified for ESL students, teachers not walking the talk, content teachers not trained well enough to teach mainstream classes with ESL students, and Ms. Rosa’s rapid speech delivery at times that made Spring ask a lot of questions to her. POGIL not simplified for ESL students. Although Ms. Rosa, the science teacher, had mentioned that POGIL was a simplified version of the textbook content for students to comprehend and process the complex science materials, Spring thought that it was simplified from the perspective of domestic and English-speaking students but not for the international students. She said that since the long and multiple sentences were replaced by short sentences and single words in place of descriptions, she had to work harder to look for the meanings of those words and make sense of the scientific content. She said: Excerpt 160: Tailoring simplified POGIL towards ESL students I will say its simplified but not simplified for international students. It's trying to make the sentence condense into less sentences but that means some of the words will be like one word, when replacing, like, let's say other three words or something like that. So, I think making a shorter version of the lesson does not make it simple for ESL students. It could be made a little bit more tailored towards international students’ needs but I hope not too much because that way I can't learn and make progress. I want to push my limits. [Interview 2] Although Spring believed that the POGIL was not simplified enough for ESL students, she believed that non-modified input helped her push her limits and understand the complex content. 215 She believed that starting with simpler content and gradually shifting towards relatively more difficult content would help her. Her suggestion to shift from simplified to complex language use in the content classes would help ESL students as she said, “Maybe what they could do is that when a person first comes in, he or she may not know English at all, then that's when the simplified content could be useful. But then they have to like, change it up a little bit so that person could learn it at the fastest pace they could and improve their proficiency in English and also science” [Interview 2]. Apart from her perception of the POGIL not being adequately simplified for ESL students, Spring also shared that Ms. Rosa would deliver the content with a very fast speed that made it difficult for her and other ESL students to comprehend. In that respect, she believed that her overall experience of being an ESL student was that the content teachers teaching mainstream classes were not sufficiently trained to address the needs of ESL students in their mainstream classes, an observation which corroborated with Ms. Eva’s acknowledgement (see Chapter 4, Excerpt 50 of Ms. Eva’s findings) that she, along with her fellow content teachers, needed to learn how to address ESL students in mainstream content classes they were teaching. She shared: Excerpt 161: Content teachers need some training to balance content delivery If a person's English proficiency is not as good, they're probably put into the English learning class. So, the fact that they are not in that class means they probably can meet the standards in the class of the regular ones but they are still learning English. So, unless the student tell the teacher, the teacher is never going to know that they need some support. The teacher will view all the students in the same level of English but then they won't realize one of them might be a second English learner. And it takes extra time for that person to learn the content. But it's also good because a teacher views everybody the same way. That way, you can get the advanced content and most direct way to improve your English. They have so much work to do and I think about their mental health too. [Interview 6] 216 As the above excerpt clarifies, Spring empathized with her content area teachers as they had extra work to balance between addressing ESL students’ needs, while also giving them an exposure to the kind of content that would prepare them for AP tests and post-secondary education. Since both content area teacher participants in this research study were connected to Spring (Ms. Rosa being her science teacher and Ms. Eva serving on the mental health committee with Spring), Spring mentioned that she often talked to them about their own wellbeing and inquired from them what they did to take care of themselves which was acknowledged by both teachers in different occasions. Spring said that her awareness of her teachers’ wellbeing emerged from Ms. Rosa’s communication about care and wellbeing in class, Ms. Eva’s work on the school mental health committee, and her own experiences of mental health advocacy. Summary of Spring’s Findings Spring’s interpretations of pedagogy of care centered around her science class (Ms. Rosa’s class). She asserted that Ms. Rosa’s explicit communication about her care for students made Spring feel cared for. In addition, Ms. Rosa’s practices of teaching affixation and their meanings helped Spring build her vocabulary of scientific terms as she could translate the meanings of those affixes to other root words in science. Similarly, Ms. Rosa connecting science to the real world led Spring to see things from a scientific perspective in her day-to-day life as she believed that she felt that the teacher made “things from textbooks come alive”. She also learned the ethical issues behind scientific experiments. While she found the buddy system in her science class helpful in gaining different perspectives, Spring felt that some of her non-ESL buddies judged her skills due to her ESL identity and made her nervous as they would rush her to complete the tasks, while she was still processing the information in her mind in English. Apart from that, Spring also shared that the POGILs (process oriented guided inquiry learning) were 217 not simplified enough for ESL students. Overall, she believed that mainstream content teachers needed training to address ESL students’ learning processes and trajectories in those content area learning. Spring appreciated her teachers, especially her science teacher, Ms. Rosa, for constantly reminding ESL students to advocate for themselves so she could better understand where to when and how to support their learning needs. She felt a lack of discussions around the tools to self-advocate and seek help. However, she learned to advocate for herself and her fellow ESL students by speaking up for herself, and by encouraging them to do the same. She advocated for herself by letting teachers know in the beginning of the semester that she would need a lot of extra support and time to excel in her mainstream classes. She constantly talked about being ‘seen’ and ‘visible’, “unless you tell them [her teachers], they’re not going to know you are there” while referring to the ESL students’ presence in the classes with the majority of non-ESL students. Likewise, she requested her science teacher to change her buddy in her collaborative group as he did not let her finish her task and blamed her for taking extra time. She advocated for her ESL peers, but she was concerned about them that they did not know how to ask for help. She also advocated for ESL students’ mental wellbeing by serving on the school’s mental health committee as she wanted to raise an awareness of the importance of mental health among her ESL peers. Spring expressed and exhibited a myriad of emotions related to her ESL student status in mainstream content classes. She was aware of the emergence of emotional experiences in certain contexts as she declared, “I like to show a lot of emotions” and “It’s like the stages of emotion”. Her emotions of the perceived sense of unworthiness were connected to her distinct accent, which according to her, was the first cause of being judged during initial interactions. Her 218 frustration and annoyance were related to a series of experiences regarding her self-nomination for the president position of the student council at her school, which she did not win. However, her interaction with the teacher who oversaw the election stirred her unpleasant feelings and emotions as she was asked to run for a post lower in the hierarchy but not the president position. Despite all these unpleasant emotions, Spring felt joy and pride in being multilingual as she frequently talked about being a multilingual citizen in the present globalized world. She even found joy in navigating the difficulty of making sense of the content through her multilingual resources. She did not hesitate to tell her English-speaking peers to correct her if she made mistakes in speaking English (especially with respect to sentence structures and vocabulary). She reciprocated their help by assisting them in content classes where she had to speak less English (e.g., math), and by sharing her experiences of the benefits of traveling. Spring also encouraged them to travel abroad and to gain multicultural understanding. Comparison of Zaynab’s and Spring’s Interpretation of Care, Emotions, and Advocacy Zaynab and Spring had unique experiences being ESL students as well as being in mainstream content classes in their high school. They had some similar experiences and some differences, too. I will present some similarities first. They acknowledged the feeling of being ‘seen’ when they were put on the spot in class when anything related to their home country, culture, or language appeared during the classroom discussions. However, they felt that being spotlighted without prior notice would make them nervous as the whole class would stare at them in the hope of getting some explanation and responses. While they found it an opportunity to share about their cultures and experiences, they felt the burden of being the source of information, especially when they did not know everything themselves. 219 Both of them also felt hurt with unpleasant remarks or comments related to their linguistic and cultural/religious identities. They were highly sensitive about their visibility in their learning spaces. Zaynab, for example, felt visible during the care circles and roundtable discussions because it gave her an opportunity to be seen and to see others, not behind computer screens. In addition, both felt pride in being multilingual and a sense of fulfillment and joy while helping their English-speaking peers in content that required less use of English (e.g., math). They also shared their struggles related to their test and grades related anxiety because they knew that it would impact the school’s decision whether they had to retake certain classes and also their trajectory of post-secondary education. Likewise, both mentioned that they switched to their first language repertoire to regulate their emotions. Additionally. Zaynab and Spring felt a sense of affinity with their fellow ESL students due to the perceived shared struggles, irrespective of different countries they came from and different first languages they spoke. Despite all the above mentioned shared and common experiences, Zaynab and Spring brought their own unique experiences and strategies to navigate their mainstream classes and their overall wellbeing related issues. While Zaynab resisted asking for help due to her perceived lack of help-seeking tools in English, Spring explicitly told her teachers that she would be asking them a lot of questions throughout the semester. Her proactive nature prompted her to be an active participant in the school culture as she self-nominated to run for the presidential candidate for the student council although she lost the election. She also volunteered to serve on the mental health board to represent ESL students. When they encountered situations where they felt less worthy than their English-speaking peers, Zaynab struggled to express her feelings. By contrast, Spring communicated to her peers and teachers how they made her feel in certain situations. Spring believed in articulating emotions, but Zaynab did not know how to do so in English. 220 Zaynab also had some past history of traumatic experiences in her family and relatives, and therefore, she was aware of the triggers that would resurface her past experiences. On the other hand, although Spring did not have primary traumatic experiences, she was aware of the history of trauma in the previous generations of her family due to geopolitical issues between China and Taiwan. Her intentionality behind serving on the mental health board emerged from her awareness and readings about the importance of socio-emotional wellbeing for overall success. To conclude, their shared and unique experiences were dependent on certain situations and interactions with their teachers, peers, and contested spaces, and therefore, discursive in nature. In the chapter that follows, I discuss the findings from all of my participants in relation to existing literature. 221 CHAPTER 6: FURTHER DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION In this concluding chapter, I discuss my findings in relation to previous research. Based on the findings and the discussion, I recommend some implications for school administration and teacher preparation programs that train mainstream teachers who teach ESL students from diverse backgrounds in their mainstream content area classes. I also present the limitations of my study and conclude the chapter by providing some recommendations and directions for future research. Discussion of Findings in Relation to Existing Research This study aimed to explore the intersection of three constructs: pedagogy of care, emotion, and advocacy from mainstream teachers’ and ESL students’ perspectives, and how the pedagogy of care is perceived and enacted by the teachers and interpreted by the ESL students. The findings, which are related to the pedagogy of care, emotion, and advocacy, yielded six major themes: (1) discursive nature of care, advocacy, and emotions, (2) culturally responsive pedagogy of care, (3) emotion labor and emotion reward, (4) caring practice as a space for emotion regulation, (5) care, emotions, and advocacy from students’ perspectives, and (6) mainstream teacher preparedness to teach ESL students and collaboration between mainstream and ESL teachers. Discursive nature of care, advocacy, and emotions. As the findings from the teachers’ data revealed, both content teachers (one experienced and one emerging/new teacher) expressed that they deeply cared for their students’ overall wellbeing and their learning, and their pedagogy of care and advocacy for their ESL students in their mainstream classes stirred a myriad of emotions in them. The emergence of those emotions and feelings were mostly discursive 222 (Benesch, 2018: Li & Rawal, 2018; Rawal & De Costa, 2019; Zembylas, 2005) in nature, as they occurred in certain interactions of teaching and learning and in certain discourses and contexts. The focal teacher participants, Ms. Rosa and Ms. Eva, in this study enacted caring practices through their relational caring (Noddings, 1986, 2012) as they strove to establish and cultivate relations and connections with their ESL students, with a purpose to understand their diverse backgrounds to serve them as best as they could in their mainstream classes. They attempted to do so by building a trusting relationship with their students through care circles and advocacy for their emotional wellbeing. This finding aligns with Noddings’ (2012) idea that care requires a level of trust between the carer (teacher) and cared-for (students). Findings from two focal students, Zaynab and Spring also strengthened the idea that caring as a relational practice creates a learning environment where “students will feel accepted and will be comfortable taking risks as they learn” (Isenbarger & Zembylas, 2006, p. 121), as they acknowledged and appreciated the care circles and roundtable discussions conducted by their respective teachers as an enactment of relational caring. The findings also showed that the discursive nature of caring practices of creating a classroom community, trust, a sense of belonging and creating connections and cultivating collaborations among students was a major goal in both teachers’ caring practices. Ms. Rosa attempted to achieve this goal by pairing students with their buddies and giving them instructions on how to solve problems with their buddies collaboratively. She also provided a consistent structure by bringing science news for students to learn at the beginning of every class. In addition, organizing care circles for her students where they could share their feelings about their learning, tests, wellbeing, and inspirations. 223 Similarly, Ms. Eva created a classroom community by letting students announce the class agenda every morning. She also brought all students together in a roundtable or sharing circles in the front of the class, which gave her students the opportunity to read the texts, watch the videos, and engage in discussions collaboratively as a whole class. Research has shown that building a classroom community helps students build trust and safety, which enhances their growth individually and as a group, as Zins and Elias (2007) stressed, “The classroom becomes a microcosm of the larger community, giving students an opportunity to try out and develop the social skills that elicit caring and support (p. 45)”. Zaynab and Spring also shared that these opportunities of care circles, sharing circles, science news, students announcing the class agenda, and working with buddies helped them listen to their English-speaking peers, and share their own ideas although they had a few challenges at times. For example, Spring’s buddy rushed her to complete her task during a collaborative test made her nervous, and as a result, she requested her teacher to change her buddy. Overall, Spring found working with the buddies helpful in solving the problems. Culturally responsive care and teaching. Findings from this study bolster the call for teacher education programs and in-service teacher professional development opportunities to equip mainstream teachers with culturally relevant tools to address ESL students’ needs in their content classes. Although both teachers enacted the pedagogy of care and advocacy through their intentional efforts and conscious decision making, they expressed that it was hard for them to understand the nuances of the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of their ESL students. Therefore, they strove to constantly remind their students of the importance of advocacy for their needs. Ms. Eva and Ms. Rosa also encouraged them to cultivate help-seeking behaviors and to speak up for themselves and their fellow ESL students. However, the focal ESL participants in 224 this study, Spring and Zaynab, felt a lack of help-seeking and advocacy tools to advocate for themselves and for other students, especially their fellow ESL students from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Both teachers recognized their lack of preparedness to address the cultural and linguistic diversity of students and their discursively emerging emotions due to the nuances of cultural differences (Heineke & Vera, 2022). In addition, as seen in findings from all the focal participants (teachers and students), it was expressed that mainstream teachers needed to cultivate their multicultural awareness to better address their ESL students' needs and struggles in such classes with the majority of students from non-ESL backgrounds. This finding corroborates with the findings from Heineke and Vera’s (2022) study that highlighted the need “to develop teachers’ nuanced understanding about students within a culturally responsive framework, maintaining the lens on culture without diminishing the unique backgrounds and experiences of individual students” (Heineke & Vera, 2022, p. 155). Furthermore, culturally responsive teaching practices stress the importance of considering culture to be fluid, dynamic, complex with nuances, multifaceted, and teachers who teach students from diverse backgrounds should acknowledge, respect, and validate their unique cultural aspects in their teaching practices (Gay, 2018). This was what Ms. Eva did in this study by giving a disclaimer to her students while teaching Romeo and Juliet that there would be some nude scenes. As a result, the students whose cultures and families found them inappropriate to watch those scenes could opt out of those portions of the videos. While she herself viewed nudity as a form of art based on her arts background, Ms. Eva was cognizant of its inappropriacy to some students due to their cultural and religious backgrounds. These findings are consistent with Gay’s (2018) idea of culturally responsive care that encompasses taking actions to acknowledge, and respect diverse identities of students. However, when mainstream teachers believe that they 225 are adopting culturally responsive caring practices in their teaching, the discussion should concern “whose perspectives of cultural responsiveness?”. This is because the decision should be based on the perspectives of students’ needs, backgrounds, and lived experiences, rather than what a teacher assumes they need. For example, despite Ms. Eva’s belief that the readings texts in her mainstream English language arts class were diversified, Zaynab felt that they were either about American people or about African people. She found the lack of relatability in the reading texts as there were no Asian and Muslim characters in those texts. Therefore, this discussion calls for a critical reflection on whose perspective of diversity is being highlighted in mainstream classes. The discussion around culturally responsive care also included ESL students' emotions related to being ‘seen’ in mainstream classes. One of the major themes in my findings was the student participants’ emotions related to their perceived visibility and their perceived sense of being unseen in their mainstream classes with the majority of English-speaking students. For example, Spring’s sense of being seen has two dimensions. First, she frequently shared that her sense of invisibility was related to her need to be seen in the physical space of the classroom as well as in the eyes and memory of the mainstream teachers. Regarding spatial visibility, the findings showed that she used to sit in the back rows of the classroom with a fear of being mocked for her imperfect English. However, she realized that this tendency was also potentially self-sabotaging and, therefore, she chose to sit in the front row of the classes so that her teachers would notice her, “I have to be seen” [Interview 2], as she disclosed. Second, Spring frequently reminded her teachers that she was an ESL student, and she would need extra time to complete her tasks and that she would ask them a lot of questions throughout the semester as she believed, “Unless you tell them they’re not going to know you are there” [Interview 5]. Research shows 226 that by “seeing, respecting, and assisting diverse students from their own vantage points, teachers can better help them grow academically, culturally, and psycho-emotionally” (Gay, 2018, p. 58, italics in original). Similarly, the idea that a teacher must “see” students’ diversity as “people cannot like or love people they don’t see'' (Bonilla-Silva, 2003, p. 141). This notion of ‘seeing’ and ‘being seen’ intersects with the ideas of emotions related to a sense of belonging, culturally and linguistically responsive care, and advocacy for and from students as Spring advocated for herself by reminding her teachers about her presence as per her need to be seen. Emotion labor and emotion rewards. As seen in Zaynab’s and Spring’s experiences, their emotions of being hurt by certain comments from their teachers and peers were very particular and related to their linguistic and religious identities. In Zaynab’s case, when she was associated with the word ‘terrorist’, she felt ‘devastated’. This explicit discriminatory remark from her peers in her former school made her feel excluded from interactions and the school administration’s lack of interaction with her along with her peers added a layer to her marginalization. Since there was no conversation about it, the apology coming from her peer did not feel genuine to her. Similarly, when Spring ran for the student council president, and the teacher who oversaw the election campaign suggested to her that she ran for other posts, Spring felt discriminated against due to her ESL background. These findings call for discussions around impeding emotions that emerged in such moments of implicit or explicit microaggression, in keeping with Heineke and Vera (2022) recommendation that teachers, schools, and districts adopt a critical perspective. Such a perspective considers ESL students’ “experiences in their classrooms and schools, particularly from a social-emotional lens with regard to discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion” (Heineke & Vera, 2022, p. 156). 227 The idea of emotion labor was also evident in my findings, with the two teachers believing that caring practices resulted in emotion labor (Isenbarger & Zembylas, 2006). They also felt a constant conflict between what they had to do, and what they wanted to do regarding caring and advocacy practices. They empathized with their ESL students and, therefore, wanted to create opportunities for them to flourish in their mainstream classes. However, they found themselves in a contested space due to conflict between what they had to accomplish in the limited time and what was expected of them for the whole class. This tension and emotion labor corroborated with Benesch’s (2018) findings about emotion labor which stems from a “conflict between feeling obliged to do something and uncertainty about what to do” and “conflict between professional expertise and empathy” with respect to the plagiarism policy that she investigated (p. 65). For example, Ms. Rosa stated that she constantly found herself in a conflicted space where she had to make decisions between what she wanted to do (listening to her students) and what she had to do (get things done); she mentioned, “I have this pull of what I would like to do versus what my brain still does” [Interview 2]. Despite all the teaching moments that put the two teachers into a space of emotion labor, they loved their job. As seen in the findings, Ms. Rosa often questioned why she was at a teaching job when she could go into industry and earn more money. However, she perceived her emotion reward of fulfillment that stemmed from teaching to be incomparable. Despite all her caring efforts, Ms. Rosa found herself in conflicted spaces where she found herself in a conflict between her willingness to help her students and what she had to do. Despite all these contextual instances of emotion labor that Ms. Rosa felt and shared, she restated that she loved her job even though she found herself questioning why she was at the teaching job at times, as she stated, “I still like my kids…why am I still here? I don't know why. I mean, I like 228 my job” [Interview 3]. This calls for a discussion on how the incentives and rewards of a teacher as a profession as well as the contexts that create emotion labor for teachers need to be considered and critically reflected upon at a broader socio-political level (De Costa, Rawal, & Li, 2018; Pereira, 2018). The findings from my study also showed that emotion reward resulted from the teachers’ perceived sense of purpose as mainstream teachers. In Lasky’s (2005) study, the mainstream teacher participants emphasized that their responsibility was not only to teach the curriculum or academic skills, but also to teach the whole child; specifically, “their feelings of job satisfaction came largely from their interactions with students and the feeling that they had some kind of positive influence on students’ academic, social, and emotional development” (Lasky, 2005, p. 906). In a similar vein, my teacher participants connected their sense of emotion reward with their intentionality in adopting caring practices in their teaching and the connections they made with their ESL students over the course of teaching. Ms. Eva, for example, believed that her emotion reward was her joy and delight of connecting with ESL students from diverse backgrounds, as she stated: “We get to be delighted and surprised…just the connections that you make with the students from different backgrounds, countries, languages, cultures, social strata…is the most incredible thing” [Interview 2]. Similarly, Ms. Rosa’s emotion rewards resulted from her intentionality in focusing on “learners as a whole” [Interview 7], and appreciations that came from her students “It is your determination and love for your kids that makes you my favorite teacher” [Interview 6] and parents, “they seem to think that I made a difference for their kid” [Interview 4]. Ms. Rosa believed that although it was her personal sense of job satisfaction and fulfillment that motivated her to adopt caring practices, the appreciation from her former and current students, and their parents helped her validate her efforts. Based on 229 the findings from this study and previous research, I would maintain that we need to take into account the ethic of care that is connected to teachers’ deep satisfaction, a sense of fulfillment, and positive group dynamics, and a low anxiety learning environment for learners (Cowie, 2011; Gkonou & Miller, 2019; Zembylas, 2005). Moreover, Ms. Rosa’s and Ms. Eva’s pedagogy of care contributed to their emotion reward and emotional satisfactions (Hargreaves, 1998) as mainstream teachers, which motivated them to engage more in learning ways to support ESL students in their content classes. From this discussion of my findings, I would like to invite us to consider the need for greater dialogue among teachers and teacher educators. This dialogue is imperative even though teaching diverse classes with multilingual students can be a contested space and be laden with emotion labor, especially while adopting caring pedagogical practices. However, we also need to focus on teachers’ sense of emotional satisfaction and highlight how emotion labor and emotion reward constitute and reflect a continuum of mainstream teachers’ caring practices, rather than a dichotomous opposites in teaching. Caring practice as a space for emotion regulation. The two teachers’ caring practices call for critical reflection on how to translate the concept of care to ESL students. Ms. Rosa, despite her 18 years of experience, found herself in situations where she was concerned about balancing between teaching science and constantly communicating with her students that she cared about them as human beings first and foremost and that their emotional wellbeing mattered to her. Similarly, Ms. Eva struggled to understand where her ESL students needed her support as she perceived that her ESL students might ‘conceal their struggles’ from her. She also stressed the importance of having a culture of dialogue in schools in terms of ways to support ESL students in mainstream content classes. This perceived gap in communication between teachers and their 230 students calls for a much-needed cultural shift in engaging in conversations on creating a pedagogy of care and, more importantly, enacting and communicating those intentions to ESL students. In the field of second language learning, much previous research has shown the significant role of several affective factors such as motivation, confidence, and anxiety in language learning (e.g., Dewaele, 2009; Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014; Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015). However, there is still a dire need to investigate how different affective factors and individual differences play a role in the ESL students’ development of language and content in mainstream content classes. In particular, the intersection of teachers’ and students’ emotions, and (1) how those emotions prompt teachers to navigate their pedagogy of care, and (2) how ESL students process and subsequently channel their emotions for their learning in the content area classes warrant further exploration. For example, Ms. Rosa's awareness of her ESL students’ struggle to utilize their multiple linguistic resources in the scientific meaning making process made her ‘embrace silence for information processing’. She gave her ESL students extra wait time to respond to her questions whenever possible. This finding is similar to the pedagogical practices of Jana, a teacher participant in Song and Park’s (2021) study. Jana provided her students with emotional scaffolding. She attempted to maximize her ESL students’ “emotional security and comfort, rather than challenging them to have verbal communication, because she believed that students benefit more from being feeling safe than to being pushed to verbalize their thoughts” (p. 263) in English. She also repeated students’ word usage into her instructions and “highlighted ELs’ feelings of confidence in understanding subject areas, regardless how limited their English proficiency” (p. 263). This latter practice invites comparison to my findings from Ms. Eva’s instructions in the roundtable discussions, where she recast her ESL students’ words and phrases 231 with an appreciation despite their incorrect pronunciation. Likewise, Jana engaged in dialogues with her students by asking questions such as “You look frustrated. Are you frustrated? Is it because of X?” and “believed students would eventually learn to self-regulate by being able to recognize and describe their emotions” (p. 263). This finding corroborated with mine from both teacher participants in my study. For example, Ms. Rosa co-constructed a space of check in with her students when she saw signs of distress in them, “If your head's down in class, I'm going to come and ask you, are you okay? …teaching mainstream science is more than just a job for me” [Interview 3]. She not only made her science class a caring class for her students, but also explicitly told them that they were in a reciprocal relation in their teaching and learning process. In addition, she highlighted that understanding each other’s emotions helped them learn collaboratively, noting: “They have an influence on me just as I have an influence on them” [Interview 3]. This whole pedagogical space was a site for bidirectional exchange of emotions and caring practices, which was taken up positively by the focal students; as Spring aptly observed, “she treats me as a human who is learning science in my second language” [Interview 4]. Much of the research has demonstrated that teachers’ understanding of students’ emotions and learning is a characteristic of early childhood classrooms and most upper-grade level teachers tend to avoid emotions in their mainstream content areas (Lasky, 2005). However, in my study, both teachers who taught high school mainstream classes strove to create, nurture, and cultivate a safe space for their students to express their emotions. For both of them, understanding their ESL students and their backgrounds, cultivating deeper connections with them, and understanding their emotional trajectories were important aspects of creating a teaching and learning space of emotional understanding (Denzin, 1984), building trust, and being 232 open to be vulnerable (Lasky, 2005). In similar lines, my focal teacher participants believed that sharing some of their own vulnerabilities with their students helped them present themselves in an authentic way to model how to express emotions. For example, Ms. Rosa explicitly stated that ‘vulnerability gave her freedom’ in enacting her caring practices. She had adopted this approach after many years of teaching. In contrast, Ms. Eva had stated from the beginning of data collection for this study that she did not like to show her emotions and vulnerability to her students as she considered it to be a sign of weakness; she stated: “I suppose we're expected to know how to deal with those so that we don't show that to our students” [Interview 1]. However, towards the end of the school year, Ms. Eva shared that her trajectory had evolved, and that she was now more comfortable telling her students how she was feeling, as she disclosed, “And sometimes I just tell them, yeah, that's how I'm feeling. And I think they give me some grace” [Interview 7]. I do not claim that this shift in her perception towards sharing her emotions to her students emerged as a result of this present study, but we had a lot of reflective moments from our personal lives where we talked about the strength behind being vulnerable while still maintaining boundaries with our students. In addition, part of Ms. Eva’s initial resistance might have stemmed from her being relatively a newer teacher and her perceived sense that she was still establishing herself as a good English language arts teacher in her sixth year of teaching. This discussion on teacher’s perceptions of acknowledging their emotions calls for a critical exploration of teacher positionality and emotions as part of caring pedagogy. Care, emotions, and advocacy from students’ perspectives. Based on my findings, the students’ emotions can be discussed along five major dimensions: (a) lack of connections and affinity group interactions, (b) microaggressions, (c) deficit mindsets of teachers and peers, (d) advocacy, 233 (e) barriers to active engagement in and out of the classroom, and (f) discussions around ESL students’ test anxiety. First, students’ emotions were related to their lack of connections with their fellow ESL students and mainstream peers. As the findings of my study showed, two focal ESL students, Zaynab and Spring, found themselves in a space where they felt a lack of peers with ethnic and linguistic similarities to them in their mainstream classes. Both of them came from a school culture where the same group of students would stay in the same classroom for the entire school day, especially for their mainstream content classes. The teachers who taught different classes would move from one class to another to reach the students and teach them. So, there would be a connection among students over the time as the same group of students shared all classes. However, when they moved to the US, from where and where, respectively, they found that it was the students instead who moved from one classroom to another with different groups of students for each class. They had a few peers with whom they shared the same schedule for some classes. Therefore, they found it difficult to even make connections with their peers in their mainstream content classes. Zaynab and Spring mentioned that they rarely had any opportunity to leverage on their multilingual repertoires to engage in content related discussions as there were only a few ESL students in every class they took, and these students mostly came from different countries and spoke different languages. This lack of critical mass of peers of the same ethnicity was found to be one of the barriers to participation that had a negative influence on social emotional well-being of ESL students in Vera et al. 's (2021) study of emergent bilingual high school students’ social and emotional experiences. Although my study did not include survey data to examine how many ESL students found it difficult to participate in classroom discussions and other interactions with peers due to the lack of peers who come from similar 234 ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, the narratives coming from my two student participants can shed light on what unique emotional experiences ESL students might have in their mainstream classes. This discussion on student engagement calls for further examination of how ESL students’ diverse experiences, cultural, and linguistic resources could be leveraged to help them find some shared affinity space to advocate for themselves and each other, despite their different backgrounds. Second, students’ emotions were related to their experiences of microaggressions. Although my focus in this present research was to look at care, emotions, and advocacy of four focal participants, my findings and data were not confined to their views about each other. Rather, my multi-case study investigated the overall experiences of those focal teachers and students in their teaching and learning spaces that included their peers in and outside classrooms. My two focal student participants, Zaynab and Spring, acknowledged the pedagogy of care from Ms. Eva and Ms. Rosa, respectively, and were never subjected to any microaggressive behavior from them. However, they reportedly experienced microaggressions from their mainstream peers and teachers in other classes and contexts. For example, and as you may recall, in her first year in the US in middle school, two peers in Zaynab’s class called her and her family terrorists. She found it devastating after finding out the meaning of the word ‘terrorist’ from her fellow Arabic speaking friend. Even though one of the boys told those two boys not to behave inappropriately with her by saying “you’re just getting her wrong”, and the boys apologized to her, Zaynab’s emotions of feeling ‘hurt’ went beyond that particular moment as she said, “I can’t forget that day. It still gives me chills” [Interview 3]. In addition, she did not know what the teacher had told the boys when they came back to apologize to her, but she reported that she did not hear any explicit instructions or interventions from teachers to stop peer microaggressions in and outside 235 the classroom. This example of microaggression calls for communication not only among teachers about addressing such serious issues but also letting the ESL students know through those communications that the teachers and schools are making efforts to change a perceived threatening environment into a safe learning space. Research has shown that such experiences of microaggressions can lead to learning problems (Levy et al., 2016), compromised social and emotional wellbeing and decreased academic success (Vera et al., 2021). Such experiences can also create a threatening environment where students always find themselves on the alert (Hammond, 2015). ESL students, in particular, may withdraw themselves from participating in discourses that might help them learn and grow; as noted by Zaynab, “I always, like, get away from gatherings and never put myself in such spot to get like discriminated” [Interview 3]. Third, the student’s emotions were enmeshed with their perceived deficit-based behaviors from teachers and peers. Another very important point of discussion based on the findings from the study is my focal student participants’ perceptions of their ESL identity being viewed as being deficient by some of their teachers and peers in certain contexts. For example, when Spring ran for the student council president position, the teacher who was in charge of the election campaign told her to run for some ‘less important position’. When Spring told her that she did not want to run for the less important positions, the teacher laughed at her. Although Spring did not win the election, she felt that the teacher had viewed her in deficit terms due to her ESL background. Later, Spring chose to be on the mental health committee as a representative of ESL students rather than working with the same teacher on other occasions. Similarly, when she was working with a buddy in her science class, her English-speaking male buddy reportedly made her feel less of a student as she said, “He got mad at me for taking longer time and that he was behind because of me” [Interview 5]. She could not tolerate how she was 236 treated from a deficit perspective in that situation, and requested her teacher to change her buddy because she believed that she was not deficit, “...it’s not that I did not know the content…I just need a little extra time” [Interview 5]. Fourth, the students’ perceptions of their own and teachers’ advocacy for them. From these and similar other experiences, Spring’s intentionality, and decision to advocate for herself and other fellow ESL students strengthened. She subsequently served on the school’s mental health committee as she perceived herself capable of representing ESL students on the committee; as she said, “I chose to serve on the mental health committee, and I know my importance and where I can really advocate for student mental health” [Interview 5]. While the above stated examples of microaggression and deficit-based perspectives emotionally impacted Zaynab and Spring, much instructional value can come out of Ms. Rosa’s and Ms. Eva’s pedagogy of care, as they were models of open-minded teachers who were striving to learn more about how to advocate for their ESL students and create a supportive learning environment. Previous research has also shown that supportive teachers had a positive influence on social and emotional wellbeing of ESL students (Vera et al., 2021). Fifth, students’ interpretations of care and emotions were intertwined with their experience of barriers that impeded their full participation in and out of classrooms. Apart from lack of caring practices, emotional scaffolding, and advocacy from other teachers in their school, Spring and Zaynab also missed opportunities to participate in some extracurricular activities that would provide them with affordances to engage in conversations with their peers. For example, Zaynab wanted to join swimming lessons, but she was not allowed to participate in it by her family as there were no separate swimming pools for different genders. While she found her religious background and gender as barriers to participating in those extracurricular activities, 237 she believed that her faith gave her a sense of safety and protection when she struggled in and out of school. She also mentioned that she “felt good, loving and protected when she prayed” [Interview 2]. This was one of her contested spaces where she found a conflict between her multifaceted identity and her desire to engage in activities outside her classes. Apart from these barriers, Zaynab also felt that her parents could not be involved in many of her school activities as they struggled with their English. She frequently talked about parent teacher conferences. She had to go to the parent teacher conferences with her parents so she could translate her teachers’ messages to them, and she found it ‘awkward’ to translate things about herself. She empathized with her parents because they did not feel comfortable going to her school even though she mentioned that they supported her. Sixth, my findings also showed that my ESL student participants had varied negative experiences around tests. Some of the frequently used terms by both participants were ‘test anxiety’, ‘panic’, ‘freaking hard’, ‘overwhelming’, and ‘nervousness’. It was not only the students who were saying things like “English test scares me like anything” [Zaynab, Excerpt 112] but also the teachers who mentioned that the testing times would be overwhelming for them as Ms. Rosa said, “I have an overwhelming feeling about my students’ tests [Excerpt 33]. This showed that test related expectations from students, teachers, parents and school administration resulted in mostly unpleasant emotions. This finding corroborated with the findings about test related negative emotions in Rawal and De Costa’s (2019) study. While the students’ test related anxiety was related to the medium of test instruction (i.e., English), teachers’ test related unpleasant emotions were related to their students’ preparedness and its impact on their opportunities (and lack thereof) to (re)take mainstream classes. This calls for further studies 238 around test related emotions of ESL students and how those emotions impact their learning, wellbeing, and decision making in choosing advanced mainstream classes. Mainstream teacher preparedness to teach ESL students and collaboration between mainstream and ESL teachers. The findings from this present study also showed that mainstream teachers need more preparation to address their ESL students’ needs in their classes. Ms. Eva, for example, said that she felt she needed more training and professional development opportunities for her to serve her ESL students in her mainstream English language arts class. She believed that there was not enough training for teachers to understand how to address the needs of her ESL students. Similarly, Ms. Rosa also mentioned that she attended a professional development opportunity where she learned about language acquisition, but it was mainly about language development of English-speaking students, and not about second language learning. Likewise, findings from the students also showed that they believed that their mainstream teachers needed more training to teach classes that included ESL students. For example, Spring constantly reminded her mainstream teachers that she had met the requirements to be in those classes, but she still needed extra time and support to excel in her studies. She believed that the teachers viewed “all the students in the same level of English but then they won't realize one of them might be a second English learner. And it takes extra time for that person to learn the content” [Interview 6]. All these findings highlight the importance of mainstream teacher preparedness to teach ESL students. My two focal teacher participants in this study enacted a lot of pedagogical practices of care. However, Spring’s and Zaynab’s overall experiences showed that there is a dire need for mainstream teachers to be better prepared to teach ESL students as other research studies have also shown that most mainstream teachers do not really think and talk 239 about ESL students in their classes and, therefore, they need more training and preparation to do so (Vera et al., 2021; Zablonski, 2022). My findings also suggest that some of the mainstream teachers that Spring and Zaynab were taught by looked at them as the responsibility of ESL/ELL teachers. For example, one of the mainstream math teachers Spring approached for help in solving some math problem told her that it was an English problem and not a math problem. She felt as if she had to either go to the ESL teacher all the time or figure everything out on her own, especially the struggles related to content area classes. This also highlights the perceptions of mainstream teachers towards their ESL students and their general indifference towards them, as they believed that addressing ESL students’ needs was not part of their job. As shown in some previous research, many mainstream teachers are inadequately prepared to support and advocate for their ESL students; therefore, they place the responsibility on their ESL teacher colleagues, who become the sole advocates for those ESL students, in both ESL and mainstream classes (Hutchinson, 2013). This calls for attention to some collaborative initiatives between mainstream teachers and ESL teachers (Linville, 2019; Teemant & Giraldo, 2000), rather than adding the whole burden to the ESL teachers, as they have been found to take on more advocacy roles for their ESL students (Pawan & Craig, 2011). Crucially, mainstream teachers and ESL teachers can and should collaborate to inform each other about the needs of their ESL students from their experiences, students’ shared stories, and by being ‘co-advocates’, as Linville (2019) suggested. Implications for Mainstream Teacher Preparation Programs The findings from the narratives of my four focal participants warrant a closer look at the mainstream teacher preparation programs and how teachers are prepared to teach ESL students in their mainstream content classes. I present five major implications for teacher preparation 240 programs. First, a culturally responsive care should be highlighted and cultivated in mainstream teachers because a lack of culturally responsive care and cultural disconnect between teachers and students negatively affects nondominant students (Gay, 2002, 2018; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). The cultural disconnect between teachers and students can be bridged by teachers’ efforts of “seeing, respecting, and assisting diverse students from their own vantage points” (Gay, 2018, p. 58, italics in original). Second, mainstream teacher preparation programs should stress the importance of adopting asset-based pedagogical practices while teaching ESL students. Instead of looking at them as a problematic student population, their diverse linguistic, cultural, and other semiotic repertoires should be leveraged to help them thrive in those mainstream settings. Third, mainstream teacher candidates should be taught how to critically look at their own discursive emergence of emotions, and how they impact their wellbeing and pedagogical decisions. In addition, they should also be taught how to acknowledge and notice their ESL students’ signs of emotional distress that might emerge from their experiences of being a minority student population in the mainstream classes, and potential struggles related to their diverse backgrounds and multifaceted identities. Fourth, teachers should be taught to adopt reflective practices as tools in order to cultivate their awareness of how “discourses of Whiteness work in classrooms, often in unnoticed and normalized ways “(Ennser‐Kananen, 2020, p. 2). Two teacher participants in my study acknowledged that they had a lot to do to advocate for their ESL students and they also confessed that they were striving to reflect on their own teaching practices and expand their understanding of diverse backgrounds of their ESL students. Not all teachers might be willing to accept the impact of their (un)intentional behaviors. Thus, it is highly important to train teachers on reflective practices to examine their own implicit biases and how they might influence their pedagogical decisions around care and advocacy. Fifth, the 241 teacher preparation programs should train teachers in advocating for their ESL students. The two teachers in my study wholeheartedly advocated for their ESL students and their mental wellbeing. Ms. Eva served on the mental health advisory board to learn the perspectives that students, especially ESL students, brought to the table so she could learn how to better support them. Both teachers constantly reminded their students to speak up for themselves. Spring advocated for herself and her fellow ESL students. However, Zaynab felt that she lacked the tools to seek help and did not know how to advocate for herself, even though she acknowledged Ms. Eva’s constant advocacy related messages. Hence, teachers should also be taught how to provide advocacy tools for their students so that they can advocate for themselves. Having presented all the above recommendations as implications and based on my own findings and previous research, I am very aware that caring practices can result in emotion labor. During the whole academic year of data collection, I have seen my teacher participants’ burnout (Li & Rawal, 2018) due to their workload at a usually underappreciated job, and the emotion labor of their caring practices. I contend that although mainstream teachers play a key role in advocating for their ESL students and in creating a caring teaching environment, they should not be the sole bearers of the responsibility to address ESL students’ needs. Therefore, I present some implications for school administration as well in the following subsection. Implications for School Administrations Schools can play an important role in the development of the whole child by addressing students’ socio-emotional needs (Darling-Hammond, 2015), and by creating a favorable teaching learning environment where mainstream teachers can address the emotional and academic needs of linguistically and culturally diverse ESL students (Heineke & Giatsou, 2020; Solano-Campos et al., 2020). Based on my findings and discussion, I recommend five implications for the school 242 administration that enroll ESL students in mainstream classes. First, schools could create and sustain a welcoming environment for ESL students where their unique cultural, ethnic, and linguistic identities are accepted and valued. One of the many ways this can be done is by building ambassador programs among ESL and mainstream students, where they are taught the value of diversity and provided with culturally relevant tools to share with each other their unique assets and funds of knowledge. Similarly, ESL students can also be provided with some affinity group learning situations where they leverage on their shared lived experiences and can create a support system for each other in their navigation of mainstream classes; as Spring said, “When you connect with somebody with the same challenges, and then they're like your best friend…it’s a blessing” [Interview 5]. Second, schools could establish restorative ways of handling explicit and unintended microaggressive behaviors from teachers and peers toward ESL students depending on their religious, ethnic, linguistic, and other backgrounds. A lack of interventions regarding microaggressive behaviors towards ESL might disrupt their trust and sense of belonging in the entire school community. This can even negatively impact students’ wellbeing (Vera et al, 2021). Third, schools should create collaborative space and opportunities for mainstream teachers, and ESL teachers could share their experiences working with each other to inform each other about ways of adopting asset-based teaching practices. My own findings and previous research (e.g., Zablonski, 2022) show that mainstream teachers do not necessarily know what support ESL students receive when they are pulled out of the mainstream classes for ESL support. This lack of communication creates a disconnect between the needs of students and the support they need. Thus, collaborative initiatives not only could bridge the gap but also distribute the responsibility of supporting ESL students to all teachers who can and should co- advocate for ESL students. Fourth, teachers’ emotion labor should not be considered negatively. 243 Rather, their experiences of emotion labor should be taken as “a healthy sign that institutional reform may be needed rather than an indicator of individual teachers’ emotional illiteracy” (Benesch, 2018, p. 69). As in Ms. Eva’s case, the school administration was not willing to listen to her concern about splitting her course with another teacher. Because she thought it would impede the connections she was building with her students day by day, Ms. Eva was told that the school decided to do “what’s best for the students”, which made her upset. She noted: “Well, having an upset teacher is never best for the students…And it has to be a full community emotional and mental health discussion rather than an isolated group. You can't have the administrators happy, the teachers upset and the students happy. It doesn't work like that. It trickles down or through or around whatever” [interview 1]. Hence, rather than making the decisions on their own, the administrators should look at the teaching learning situations from the vantage point of teachers and students and collaborate with them in the decision-making process to create a healthy school environment. Fifth, schools should work towards decreasing logistic barriers for ESL students’ full participation in school activities. For example, Zaynab’s parents' resistance to come to parent teacher conferences due to their lack of English tells a lot about how many non-English speaking parents of ESL students are unintentionally denied opportunities to engage in their children’s schooling. Schools could provide translation services to such parents to make them co-partners in the ESL students’ overall success and wellbeing (Rawal & De Costa, 2019). Having presented all these implications for schools, I believe that many of these efforts and initiatives require resources from school districts. Also, schools should be given agency and ample resources to enact caring environments for teachers themselves where they can advocate for their ESL students and regulate their own emotions for their overall wellbeing. Importantly, 244 the enactment of the pedagogy of care, emotions, and advocacy is intertwined with the microcosm of classes and schools and the broader socio-political setting outside schools. To conclude, the two teachers’ pedagogy of care can be a model for many mainstream teachers. However, both of them stated at times that they did not often think about the presence of the ESL students and were also not adequately prepared to teach ESL in their mainstream classes. While their pedagogy of care was praiseworthy, their perceived lack of preparedness to teach the diverse ESL students in their classes bolstered the need for teacher education programs and in-service teacher professional development programs at schools to help them engage in collaborative efforts with ESL teachers, to regulate their own emotion labor, and to continue learning ways of noticing ESL students. Limitations and Directions for Further Research My study provides insights from two mainstream teachers and two ESL students about their enactment and interpretation of care, emotion, and advocacy in a high school setting. While the generalizability of my findings can be of concern, the narratives from my participants can shed light on the nuances of how care, emotions, and advocacy for ESL students in mainstream classes can be discursive in nature, and thus can influence teachers’ pedagogical decisions and students’ learning experiences. Similarly, the two ESL students’ experiences of receiving care from the focal teachers on the one hand, and microaggressive behaviors from teachers and peers in other contexts, on the other hand, are unique experiences of my student participants. This may not be generalizable to all ESL student populations as they all come from different backgrounds and with their own unique lived experiences and imagined learning environments. Likewise, all four of my participants in this study were females and all of them were willing to engage in discussions around vulnerability, emotions, and how they navigated their emotional experiences. 245 While I would not like to make any stereotypical claims about the articulation of emotional experiences by any particular gender, having had male participants might have elicited different lived experiences and narratives, which I would like to explore in my future studies. In addition, this study is limited to one school in one school district among many in one state of the United States. My research site is not the sole representative of varied types of schools and school systems and the diversity of ESL students those schools comprise. Another limitation of my study is that the findings were mainly drawn from interview data from teachers and students. Although the interviews were informed and guided by my classroom observations of both teachers for the academic year, the classroom interactions themselves are not part of this study. Relatedly, I did not include parents’ and school administration’s perspectives into my data, which would have provided even more holistic ideas on the overall functioning of the school system to support the ESL students. Moreover, the data were collected pre-pandemic when all the classes were running in person and my visit to the school, and public library with my participants was smoother and added a different dynamic to my in-depth interviews with my participants. Thus, my findings may not speak fully to the changed dynamics of care and advocacy during and after the pandemic. Also, all four of my participants volunteered to be part of this study, which means they were willing to share their experiences. So, this does not address the experiences of teachers who would not feel comfortable sharing their experiences of teaching ESL students in their mainstream classes for a myriad of possible reasons. In addition, all the experiences of care, emotion, and advocacy were related to teaching and learning situations at school, and therefore, the emotional experiences of participants from broader and deeper layers of cultural nuances. 246 Notwithstanding the limitations, the findings from my study can open an array of possibilities and directions for further research in the field of applied linguistics and teacher education based in relation to the pedagogy of care, emotions, and advocacy. Clearly, delving deeper into the research of pedagogical practices of care, advocacy, and emotional scaffolding and studying ‘metaemotions’, i.e., ‘emotions about emotions’, (Prior, 2019, p. 519) from multicultural and multilingual perspectives would benefit teacher preparation programs to train culturally responsive caring teachers (Gay, 2018). Further research should be conducted with a larger pool of mainstream teacher and student participants to gain insights from a multitude of lived experiences of different content area teachers and their enactment of caring practices and advocacy for ESL students. Similarly, the field of applied linguistics would benefit from the analysis of the role of languages in navigating serious topics such as microaggression, trauma, and deficit-based pedagogy as experienced by ESL students from diverse backgrounds. Another future possibility of research could be the inclusion of mainstream teachers from different subject areas, race, and gendered identities and backgrounds to examine how they notice, address, and enact their pedagogy of care for ESL students in their content classes. Also, including parents’, school counselors’ and administrators’ perspectives would provide insights into more pieces and threads of the overall tapestry of caring teaching including diverse students. To conclude, my study and previous research have demonstrated that the unpacking of the pedagogy of CEA (Care, Emotions and Advocacy) is a complex process, whether it is from the students’ or teachers’ perspectives. While caring teaching is an intentional decision, caring practices are enmeshed with a myriad of emotions which can lead to a spectrum of emotions from emotion labor to emotion rewards. There is a need to look at the enactment of care, emotions, and advocacy from critical and discursive perspectives as they are connected to 247 aspects of teaching and learning at micro (e.g., students and teachers), meso (e.g., school), and macro levels (e.g., policies and standards of advocacy for ESL students). By putting together care, emotions, and advocacy carefully, critically, and intentionally, these constructs can create a nurturing teaching learning environment for ESL students in mainstream classes. 248 REFERENCES Adams S.R., & Richie, C. (2017). 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Loving out loud: Community mentors, teacher candidates, and transformational learning through a pedagogy of care and connection. Journal of Teacher Education, 69(2), 127-139. 261 APPENDIX A: Sample Introductory Interview Questions for the Teachers 1. Please introduce yourself (name, where you grew up, and anything you would like to share about yourself). 2. Where were you educated (high school, undergraduate, graduate)? What was your undergraduate/graduate major? 3. What languages have you studied and what is your proficiency in each? 4. How did you first become interested in teaching English/science? Please tell me about your teaching trajectory. 5. Have you attended any training on teaching ESL students? If yes, what were they like? 6. Do you follow a common curriculum at the school? How much freedom can you exercise in devising and revising the syllabus? 7. How do you select the reading texts for your students? Apart from readings from textbooks, what other sources do you include in selecting and teaching the texts? 8. What writing assignments have you included in your course? What (re)sources are the ESL students instructed to employ in completing those assignments? 9. What are your views about the multilingual classroom you teach (which consist of the majority of L1 English-speaking students and a few ESL students)? 10. How do you address ESL students’ needs in the classes you teach? 11. What sort of interactions between and among students do you organize? How often do those interactions take place? 12. What role does a language play in gaining and imparting content area skills and knowledge in your classroom? What other resources do you think might help the students? 13. Do you think content should be simplified for the ESL students in your classroom? If yes, why? If not, why not? 14. How do you address the common core state standards/new generation science standards/Michigan K-12 standards in your classes? 262 APPENDIX B: Sample Introductory Interview Questions for the Students 1. Please introduce yourself (name, age, where you were born and grew up, and anything you would like to share about yourself). 2. Please share something about your family (how many members, siblings and their ages, etc.) 3. When did you move to the USA? In which grade were you studying when you moved to the states? 4. What languages do you speak? How fluent are you in each of them? What language(s) do you speak at home? 5. When did you start learning English? In which setting (formal, informal, both)? 6. How do you spend your excel hours at school? 7. Is English language arts/science a part of your required courses? What other courses are you taking this year? 8. What do you think of reading texts in your language arts/science class? a. What do you find most challenging about those reading texts? b. What do you do to understand them? 9. How does your teacher present the reading texts to you? What other resources do you use along with those readings? 10. What do you think of your homework assignments? a. What tools do you use to complete them? b. Are the instructions clear? c. What do you do when you do not understand what is expected of you in those assignments? 11. How often do you work with your peers in the class (for reading and/or writing assignments or any other project)? Please tell me about your role(s) during those interactions? 12. Do you ever use languages other than English in making notes or for other purposes? If yes, please tell me more about it. 263 APPENDIX C: A Sample of Thematic Coding of Student Data Zaynab Spring Pedagogy of Pedagogy of Care as Interpreted by Zaynab (in Pedagogy of Care as Interpreted by Care English class) Spring (in Science class) Zaynab’s perception and interpretation of Experiences of being cared for pedagogy of care - Affixation - Lack of a sense of belonging and being - Care Communicated Explicitly noticed - Relevance of science to the real - Fixed mindsets of teachers in some world and ethical issues mainstream classes - Collaboration and accountability: - Lack of help seeking behaviors Buddies in scientific meaning- - Teacher’s lack of awareness in cultural making differences in literacy practices Experience of perceived lack of - Readings: Lack of cultural relevancy and being cared for relatability - POGIL not simplified for ESL - Perceived lack of teachers’ awareness of students ESL students’ presence in mainstream - Content teachers need some training classes to balance content delivery - Traumatic and cultural trigger warnings - Perceived absence of an asset-based pedagogical environment - Racism and being spotlighted Advocacy Care interpreted in terms of (self)advocacy Advocacy - Reporting harassment - Constantly reminding teachers of - Tools to express mental health related issues your presence - Self-advocacy by speaking up for herself - Advocacy for other ESL Students & their mental health - Intersectionality of identities Emotions Zaynab’s Emotions Spring’s Emotional Experiences Related to - Emotions related to being an ESL student in Her Multiple Identities mainstream classes - Pleasant Emotions (Joy of being - Pleasant emotions (Power, curiosity, multilingual, Joy of navigating confidence in helping others) difficulty, Joy of making connections - Unpleasant emotions (Text anxiety, and sharing multicultural Nervousness when abruptly spotlighted) perspectives) - Emotions related to intersectionality of - Unpleasant Emotions (Perceived religious, cultural, and gender identities unworthiness, Frustration and Annoyance) - Mixed Emotions (Being Spotlighted) 264 APPENDIX D: A Sample of Thematic Coding of Teacher Data Ms. Rosa Ms. Eva Pedagogy of Awareness and enactment of care Intentionality and enactment of care care - Understanding and connecting to ESL - Connecting with and knowing your students in mainstream biology class ESL students - Asset-based teaching - Diversifying content for students and - Student-centered teaching and cultivating making teaching culturally relevant collaboration in scientific meaning-making - Being trauma informed and - Helping students connect science to the - Giving enrichment opportunities and real world, beyond language constructive feedback for growth - Communicating and enacting intentional - Building trust, cultivating connections, care and communicating about support system Advocacy Caring as form of advocacy for ESL students - Teaching ESL students to self-advocate - Advocacy for mental and emotional - Advocating for students’ mental health wellbeing - Making content comprehensible for - Advocacy by making content accessible to your students students Emotions Care involves emotions Emotion labor and unpleasant emotions - Modeling authenticity in sharing emotions - Upset, Mad and annoyed, Anxious and Emotion labor appalled, Annoyance, Frustration, - Emotion labor related to preparing students Guilt, Disappointment for the test Emotion reward and pleasant emotions - Emotion labor of being a teacher - Delighted and surprised: Teacher Emotion Rewards identity and emotions, Curious, - Rewards of caring teaching Empathetic, Joy - Emotion rewards of giving and receiving Emotional Management/Regulation appreciations - Emotion reward when former students come back to express gratitude for the caring teaching 265