Mindset Matters: Innovations in Sanctuary Schooling for Immigrant Students
Presentation Type
Powerpoint
Location
Reception Room
Start Date
25-2-2026 9:35 AM
End Date
25-2-2026 9:50 AM
Description (Abstract)
Sanctuary School: Innovating to Empower Immigrant Youth is an ethnographic study of an immigrant-serving public high school in New York City that examines how educators, students, and leaders transform schools into sites of protection, belonging, and educational innovation. Drawing on two academic years of fieldwork, the study situates schooling for recently arrived immigrant youth within broader political, legal, and accountability contexts. The book conceptualizes sanctuary not only as legal protection but as an educational framework enacted through curriculum, school design, leadership, policy and advocacy. Findings illustrate how educators respond to political crises, address students’ immediate material and emotional needs, cultivate cultures of belonging, and build coalitions to resist exclusionary assessment policies. The study argues that sanctuary schooling requires both protective practices and long-term innovation, offering a replicable model for immigrant-serving schools committed to equity, care, and justice-oriented educational reform. This presentation will focus on the conclusion of the book, which outlines mindset shifts educators and policy makers can adopt to better serve immigrant students, families and communities.
Keywords
Immigration, Education, Sanctuary Schools, Ethnography
Related Pillar(s)
Community, Service, Study
Mindset Matters: Innovations in Sanctuary Schooling for Immigrant Students
Reception Room
Sanctuary School: Innovating to Empower Immigrant Youth is an ethnographic study of an immigrant-serving public high school in New York City that examines how educators, students, and leaders transform schools into sites of protection, belonging, and educational innovation. Drawing on two academic years of fieldwork, the study situates schooling for recently arrived immigrant youth within broader political, legal, and accountability contexts. The book conceptualizes sanctuary not only as legal protection but as an educational framework enacted through curriculum, school design, leadership, policy and advocacy. Findings illustrate how educators respond to political crises, address students’ immediate material and emotional needs, cultivate cultures of belonging, and build coalitions to resist exclusionary assessment policies. The study argues that sanctuary schooling requires both protective practices and long-term innovation, offering a replicable model for immigrant-serving schools committed to equity, care, and justice-oriented educational reform. This presentation will focus on the conclusion of the book, which outlines mindset shifts educators and policy makers can adopt to better serve immigrant students, families and communities.
Short Biography
Chandler Patton Miranda is an Associate Professor of Education at Molloy University whose research examines immigration, schooling, and justice-oriented educational change through ethnographic and critical qualitative methods. She is the author of Sanctuary School: Innovating to Empower Immigrant Youth (Harvard Education Press, 2025), an ethnographic study of an immigrant-serving public high school that was named one of The Progressive’s Favorite Books of 2025.
Miranda has published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Harvard Educational Review, Peabody Journal of Education, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Theory Into Practice, Educational Studies, and Equity & Excellence in Education. Her research has been supported by grants from the William T. Grant Foundation, AIR/AERA’s Fellowship Program on the Study of Deeper Learning, and multiple faculty research awards. She is a faculty fellow at the CUNY-Initiative on Immigration and Education and a Concha Delgado Gaitán Presidential fellow.