Abstract
The growing population of immigrant youth in the United States includes both documented and undocumented young people, as well as those who live in mixed status families in which some family members are authorized and at least one other family member is not (Suárez-Orozco, et al., 2011). These young people find themselves residing at the center of two worlds where education and immigration policies send mixed signals (Gonzales, 2007). School is the lodestone for many immigrant families--the attractive promise for their children's attainment of the "American dream" through free, public schooling. At the same time, school is the place where students are categorized and sorted, where they learn which kinds of experiences, languages, knowledge, and identities are valued and which are ignored. This article describes and analyzes the process of designing a daylong university symposium to bring together students, scholars, practitioners, and community partners to engage in critical discourse around policies and practices that affect the immigrant community in the areas of language policy, immigration status, and overall access to education. Through facilitated round-table discussions, participants were invited to make recommendations for improving the preparation of educators to better address the needs of immigrant students. The symposium was purposefully framed to move beyond a "what works" approach typical of many current reform efforts in education and to focus instead on the authentic ethical dilemmas facing educators--teachers, administrators, counselors--in their everyday practice.