









































ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1


Vol. 1, Issue 1 

ENGAGE! 2019 Vol. 1 No. 1 https://doi.org/10.18060/22818 

Copyright © 2019 Author(s). 

 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. 

 

 ARTFUL SPACES/SAFE PLACES: A GALLERY PROVOKES VOICES THAT INTERROGATE 
COMMON NARRATIVES OF LATINO IMMIGRANT CHILDREN 

CINDY BIXLER BORGMANN AND STACY PEÑALVA  

ABSTRACT 
What do Latino immigrant children’s voices 

say as they are provided a safe community space to be 

heard and soft clay through which to speak? Through 

art work, focus groups, gallery exhibitions, and filtering 

data (Peñalva, 2018) this critical ethnographic research 

(Madison, 2012; Merriam & Tissdell, 2016; Wolcott, 

2008; Thomas, 1993) exposes the complex political 

nature of linguistic, cultural, and national negotiations 

in which Latino children and their families in this 

study engage daily.  This work troubles stereotypic 

mainstream narratives (Dillard, 2012; Hooks, 1990, 

1994; Janks, 2010) and points out the need for strong 

community/university collaborations to impact the 

excavation of deeper understandings of people in our 

neighborhoods. This ethnographic portrait of families, 

part of a larger study, involved the community director 

in an urban Spanish speaking church and faculty from 

literacy education and visual art at IUPUI.  In this 

study children created clay objects called “hanging 

journals” during a summer program.  These clay 

artworks acted as semiotic mediators (Kress, 2010; Pahl 

& Rowsell, 2012; Borgmann & Berghoff, 2005) for voices 

of this group—voices which routinely go unheard, or 

are devalued.  In other words, the clay became a 

container for meaning and was imbued with life stories 

and memories of the young artists.  Using theoretical 

frameworks from the fields of literacy and art, layered 

with ethnographic tools of observation, dialogue, 

reflection, interview, video, and analysis, the volume 

on these important and complicated voices was turned 

up to hear buried stories and to interrogate commonly 

accepted narratives that swirl around Latino 

immigrants and their families.  

 This study provides a peek into the authentic 

narratives of children as they share daily navigation 

across national, cultural, and language boundaries and 

shows the power of the arts to communicate across 

contested spaces - spaces of fear, tension, and 

resistance. This study embraces the necessity of 

authentic university/community collaborations as a 

two-way street to understand and empower Latino 

youth, to better prepare future teachers as agents of 

change, and to expose versions of immigrant ways of 

being and knowing that are misconstrued. 

 

Stacy: Are you all able to speak Spanish in 
school? 

Carla: Oh yes, we speak Spanish with our 
friends. 

Stacy: Really! So your teacher lets you speak 
Spanish at school? 

Carla: Well, we hide under our desks and 
that’s where we speak Spanish with our 

friends at school. 
Peñalva, 2016. Focus group with children from first 

generation, Latino immigrant families 

https://doi.org/10.18060/22818
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/


ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1 Borgmann/ Artful Spaces 

 

6 

 

Stacy has known Carla since she was born.  Her 

parents are immigrants from Honduras, and have been 

members of the church (where the community center 

site of this research is housed) for many years.  While 

she has worked among the Latino immigrants at this 

site for decades as a pastor’s wife and teacher, this was 

one of her first conversations with the children at the 

site as a researcher.   

 The literal as well as the metaphorical impact 

of Carla’s statement did not go un-noticed. Here the 

voice of a strong, bilingual and confident little girl was 

being “shoved under the desk,” hidden, devalued, not 

welcomed in that school room.  There was a strong 

disconnect between the community center and the 

school; between a place where immigrant voices were 

heard and welcomed and a place where native 

language and all the identity and family history 

wrapped up in that tongue were rendered unimportant 

and forced to be hidden.  Subsequent research grew 

from this desire to hear and value the voices of 

immigrant children and their families—what would 

these voices say if they had a safe place to speak?  How 

could the volume on these voices be turned up to 

understand their deep undertones, histories and 

nuances?  

SITUATING THE STUDY 

This paper, part of a much larger research 

study, explores how spaces can be created to truly hear 

voices of immigrant children and their families. The 

study strains to hear what those voices are really saying 

by examining the children’s artwork and the voices 

that flow from that work, and interrogates ways that 

academia and community spaces can work together to 

hear, value and learn from those voices. 

THE RESEARCHERS  

Stacy 

I was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in a 

monolingual, predominantly white, middle class world.  

Upon attending college, I met people from other 

countries who spoke other languages and had much 

different histories than mine.  I married a man from 

Honduras, and went to live in the mountains outside 

the capital city of Tegucigalpa for 5 years.  There I lived 

my life as “the other,” learning a new language and 

muddling through an unfamiliar culture.  My two 

oldest sons were born there, and I watched with 

wonder as they learned two languages simultaneously 

and navigated the countries and cultures of their birth 

with apparent ease.  This is where my curiosity began 

regarding the ways that people navigate daily across 

the borders of language, nations and cultures - 

translingual, transnational, and transcultural.   

 For the last 30 years I have worked in a church 

and community center where first generation Latino 

immigrant families congregate and form bonds, 

sharing histories, languages and struggles. In recent 

years I have worked among this group as the pastor’s 

wife and community director but also as a researcher, 

digging into stories they willingly share and trying to 

honor their voices—all the while in awe of their 

resilience and resourcefulness as they carve out a life in 

this country (Peñalva, Coggin and Medina, 2014; 

Peñalva, 2016).   My stance as an advocate and partner 

with those who “come to a new awareness of selfhood, 

looking critically at the social situation in which they 

find themselves” (Freire, 1970/2009) is unapologetically 

evident in this research.  

 



ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1 Borgmann/ Artful Spaces 

 

7 

 

Cindy 

 I was born in Indianapolis and, like Stacy, grew 

up in a monolingual, predominantly white, middle 

class world.  As an art teacher I taught in the suburbs 

of Indianapolis, completed graduate school working 

with colleagues from different cultures, nations, and 

languages, and entered higher education at Indiana 

University Purdue University Indianapolis. For the last 

30 years I have taught in the urban teacher preparation 

program at Herron School of Art and Design working 

with schools and teachers across the city. Our school 

now sits where a long history of immigrants once 

resided and our campus is neighbor to Latino 

residents. Like many major cities, Indianapolis schools 

have experienced a rapid increase in immigrant 

populations, though curricula have not been as quick 

to change. In my work with urban teachers I have seen 

the struggle of crossing language barriers in a scripted 

curriculum and empathize with students and teachers 

as they negotiate new terrain.  Through my research, 

studying the impact of arts-integrated curricula in 

general urban classrooms, I have seen the power of the 

arts in providing equal access to knowledge where high 

stakes testing, dominant language curricula have 

denied it to all but the mainstream culture. I have 

witnessed the transformative power of the aesthetic 

experience afforded through the arts, to unleash 

personal voice, nurture agency and empathy, and 

change dispositions in students and teachers.  

Teachers have used this newfound agency to push back 

against test prep, pre-packaged curricula that privilege 

one way of knowing, and to bring student voice back to 

their classrooms (Borgmann & Berghoff, 2013).  Art 

provides an avenue for personal expression, empathy, 

and meaningful narrative often denied learners outside 

the dominant language. Providing space in classrooms 

for a visual language where all can communicate helps 

break down stereotypic narratives and biases in both 

learners and teachers.  

The arts allow teachers to cross language 

barriers, to find space in the general curriculum for 

children’s voices, to honor multiple ways of knowing 

and being, and to provide more equitable and caring 

learning communities for all. (Borgmann & Berghoff, 

2011, 2013). 

 

 Through this work Stacy, a language arts 

doctoral student at the time, invited me onto her 

doctoral committee to join in this study on the voices 

of Latino youth using art media. On visiting her youth 

group at the community center it was apparent these 

children were comfortable in their “habitus” (Bourdieu, 

19983/1991 space of the church - at home with the 

Director.  As the gatekeeper of this group, Stacy 

provided access that would be the envy of any 

teacher/researcher. Here students spoke openly and 

candidly of their opinions, faith, and their responses to 

the day – in English and Spanish. We interpreted the 

work of Maria Lomas Garza’s work, an artist who 

paints the rich stories and histories of Latino culture, 

If teachers have passion for the arts, for 
storytelling, and for the cultural 

histories of their students they will push 
art into the cracks of tightly packed 

curricula to elicit evocative responses 
from those students and allow everyone 

to be heard. 

 



ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1 Borgmann/ Artful Spaces 

 

8 

 

and the children painted important objects, food, and 

traditions from their daily life. As these children 

painted, defenses were down and the voices flowed in 

this safe, faith-based community space.  Stacy 

continued curating that safe, artful space using 

children’s clay objects strung together to tell stories of 

daily life – life as immigrants. These clay objects 

became “hanging journals” operating as visual text and 

are the focus of this present manuscript.  

THE SITE 

 To the west of campus sits an old church, built 

in 1924 and a longtime home to immigrant families in 

the city. For 30 years Stacy and her pastor husband 

have served a dominant Latino population at this site 

with 150 church members from many different Latin 

American countries and a community center which 

provides classes and services for the neighborhood 

around the building.  The church/community center is 

a place where Latino immigrant families come to share 

language, faith, and fellowship.  They share a similar 

story in their struggle to arrive at this city and make a 

life here.  They hope for a better future for their 

children, many who were born here in the U.S., 

resulting in mixed status families or families where the 

parent(s) are undocumented and the children are 

citizens.   

 This church is an in-between space where 

English, Spanish and the hybridization (Medina, 2010; 

Canagarajah, 2013) of the two are routinely heard 

through the building.  It is a place where children eat 

pizza and play on their phones while parents prepare 

tamales and laugh in Spanish. A place where the 

mixing of cultures, languages and national affiliations 

create a “zone of contact” (Pratt, 1991) allowing and 

even welcoming the bumping together and jostling 

around of cultures, languages, ways of doing and 

knowing.  It is an in-between space where these 

transnavigations -- flowing through available cultures 

and languages, become common and every day.  For 

example, when the children were shown a picture of 

food (see photo 1) and asked to talk about it, they 

noted nothing out of the ordinary.  The Mexican crema 

and typical American macaroni and cheese sit on the 

shelf side-by-side at a neighborhood store just down 

the street from the community center as 

unceremoniously as the children in the church mix 

their stories from native lands and current residence.  

This is a powerful narrative, yet has become so 

embedded into the lives of the people in this “in-

between” space that they do not notice it as 

conversation-worthy.  It just IS.   

  

 

(Photo 1: The ordinary side-by-side nature of transnavigation as seen on 

a neighborhood store shelf -- a reflection of how immigrant children 

understand their lives.) 

 

How could spaces be opened to explore the complex 

choreography of this intricate dance through 



ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1 Borgmann/ Artful Spaces 

 

9 

 

languages, cultures and national identities which 

seemed to be such a natural way of life for the 

children?  How could the volume on voices at this 

church/community center be turned up to allow 

typically non-sanctioned topics to be interrogated 

freely (Jones, 2004)? Only by genuinely and profoundly 

hearing these voices could one come to know (Palmer, 

1993) and understand this complex group who are 

often characterized by stereotypical or simplistic 

narratives.  

THE PARTICIPANTS 

 The research discussed in this publication is 

part of a much larger study but due to limited space, 

we will focus our discussion around data obtained from 

one child (Maria). However, each of the 20 children-

artists who participated in the original study share 

certain characteristics with Maria.  They are all 

children from first generation Latino immigrant 

families.  All know the story of their parents’ journey to 

this new land—some are more horrendous than 

others.  Each one is bilingual, with Spanish as their 

first language.  Each child’s family is involved in this 

church and each child attended a summer program at 

the community center located there.  It was during the 

summer program that the children engaged in an art 

making project called “hanging journals” that became a 

focus of this research.   

All the children in the annual summer program 

were between the ages of 6 and 12 during this project. 

Maria was 8 at the time. When Maria speaks, it is hard 

to tell that she spoke Spanish exclusively for the first 

few years of her life, since she speaks English as clearly 

as any other L1 English speaker.  Maria was born in the 

U.S. Her parents are from Mexico, and while her father 

has permission to live and work in this country, her 

mother does not.  She has two brothers, one older and 

one younger, who were also born in the U.S.  Maria’s 

family is typical of many families at this church.  Her 

parents work long, hard hours.  Her father has a 

painting business.  Her mother helps with the business 

and does other work as it is available.  They own a 

home not far from the church, and are deeply involved 

in the life of the church.  Stacy had known Maria for 4 

years at the start of the research since she had 

participated in many of the programs at the 

community center.   This study using art as a mediator 

(as a conduit to hear voice) helped to understand and 

know her in ways not previously imagined.  

CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHIC 
METHODOLOGY/DATA ANALYSIS 

Ethnography as a research methodology is 

devoted to describing the ways of life of human kind -- 

in this case, children from immigrant families. Goodall 

says that “voice is the sound of the ethnographic world 

being called into being” (Goodall, 2000, p. 139-140 as 

cited in Madison, 2012. p. 228). In this study, criticality 

blends with ethnography as the work involves an effort 

to confront issues of power and injustice through the 

sharing of voice…  

The critical ethnographer resists 
domestication…by using the resources, skills 

and privileges available to her to make 
accessible…the voices and experiences of 

people whose stories are otherwise restrained 
and out of reach.  This means the critical 

ethnographer contributes to emancipatory 
knowledge and discourses of social justice. 

Madison, 2012, p. 6 



ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1 Borgmann/ Artful Spaces 

 

10 

 

 During the summer program, the children 

participated in a curricular activity called “hanging 

journals.” Here they were asked to think about their 

lives and to remember important events. Next they 

thought of a way to represent this event by forming 

clay objects. These objects were hung from sticks 

decorated with colorful yarn that created a visual story 

of the child’s life -- a text full of storied significance 

(see photo 2).  

Each child was asked to talk about his/her 

hanging journal with a videographer who created a 

video with snippets from each interview.  

 

 

(Photo 2: Maria’s hanging journal) 

 

A gallery was created where the journals hung 

alongside words the child used to talk about that 

journal (see photo 3). A video monitor in the gallery 

showed the movie created during the interviews on a 

loop. The gallery was called “Voices/Voces.” It had a 

grand opening and became a popular space in the 

church/community center for both the children artists 

and other visitors.  

 

 

(Photo 3: The Gallery called Voces/Voices located at the 

church/community center) 

 

 A few months after the gallery installation 

went up, Stacy held a focus group with a dozen of the 

artists. We met in the gallery and talked about their art 

and topics that emerged from their hanging journals. 

Shortly after that, another focus group with 8 of the 

artists’ mothers provided yet another layer of data to 

understand the deep historical narratives contained in 

the artwork. Transcribed voices were coded for 

emerging themes and axial analysis -- examining the 

data across all the sets collected -- (Merriam, 1998; 

Cresswell, 2007; Patton, 2002) revealed explanations 

that interrogated the simple “one story” of immigrant 

families, providing a peek into what it truly means to 

live as a child in such a family.  

 



ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1 Borgmann/ Artful Spaces 

 

11 

 

HEARING MARIA 

THE HEART 

Maria chose to put a heart on her hanging 

journal (see photo 4).  

 

(photo 4: Maria’s clay heart) 

 

She briefly told the videographer about this 

part of her journal:  

Maria: I put a heart because my family is always 

with me. 

We might expect this comment from an eight-year-

old girl as she talks about her mother -- this feeling of 

closeness and love. But as Maria’s voice continued, 

other nuances and more obscured narratives seem to 

peek out from those sweet words. Why did she and 

many of the other children seem to emphasize this 

sense of always? Linda and Gabby, for example, also 

seemed to focus in on the importance of permanence in 

family love… 

Linda: This is my family and I will cherish them 

forever.  

Gabby: And I put three family, and it’s important 

to me ‘cause if something happens to my family, 

it’s my family still.  

I wondered if I was hearing a barely audible 

message of family togetherness as a tenuous or fragile 

condition.  

Later, during the artist focus group in the 

gallery, Maria’s artful voice was articulated in deeper 

ways, as she turned up the volume on the message 

mediated by her clay heart. Apparently, the heart told 

of a story deeper than just affection shared by a young 

girl and her family.  

Maria: My mom uses the other side of this (she 

is wearing a necklace with half a heart) and this 

reminds me of her when I’m at school. ‘Cause I 

always wear it, but if I wear it inside the shower 

it will get ruined.  

 The clay seems to be speaking louder now -- it 

is actually a model of her necklace, a physical 

connection between the two -- a way to feel her 

mother close even when they are apart. Now it 

becomes clearer why she said the heart meant that her 

family is always with her.  

 Later in the artist focus group, Maria 

uncovered the meaning contained in that little clay 

heart even further. Listen to the voice of this citizen 

child from an immigrant family as she and her friends 

got around to the topic of deportation:  



ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1 Borgmann/ Artful Spaces 

 

12 

 

Maria: We can’t go to Mexico. My mom said we 

are not going to go anywhere. We are just going 

to stay here until they kick us out of our house.  

While this may be an unsanctioned topic in 

many settings, here at this in-between space (Soja, 

1996; Gutierrez, 2008) where citizen children live in 

mixed status households, the topic was not only 

sanctioned but a daily lived experience. All the 

children have been touched in one way or another by 

deportation. Those who have parents without proper 

documentation take on the life of hiding and fear so 

common of undocumented people. Maria, a U.S. 

citizen, hides in her house, close to her mother with 

whom she shares the heart, in fear that they will be 

kicked out.  

She is not the only child who lives this fear… 

Gaby: Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. A 

couple just came to my house and say you need 

to go back to where you are from and your kids 

too. You’d have to live with others, other 

members. You might have to go to a place where 

kids don’t have parents.  

 The most terrifying scenario for the children in 

this group seemed to be the possibility of separation 

from their parents. They talked openly about the fear 

of being taken away from parents who could be 

deported. This fear became clearer and the aching 

anxiety and love pulsing in the clay heart more 

profound as Maria’s mother spoke at our mother’s 

focus group.  

Gracia (Maria’s mother): The question you 

asked, Miss Stacy, about it being a carga 

(burden or heavy load) that we give our children 

knowing if we are legal. For me, yes, it was a 

carga because when she (Maria) listened to 

things in school, she cried. She would come 

home crying saying, ‘I don’t want them to send 

you to Mexico and with whom will we live?’ And 

I told them not to worry because your dad at 

least has a permit. If something would happen, 

if I would not come home, don’t go out in the 

street looking. Just wait for your dad and he will 

take care of things because one never knows 

what could happen. 

The voice flowing from the mediator -- that 

clay heart -- became more meaningful after hearing the 

words and seeing the heart as situated in Maria’s lived 

histories and everyday realities.  

Maria: I put a heart because my family is always 

with me. 

The art along with the dialogue around it 

turned up the volume on the voice of this young girl 

from an immigrant family. Now we hear her saying 

that the clay heart presents narratives that swirl 

around a piece of jewelry she shares with her mother -- 

narratives that speak about fear of separation, of hiding 

in the house together, of hoping to be together always. 

As this little girl sits in a classroom each day, wearing 

her precious half-heart necklace, how many know 

about her hidden terror, her obscured narratives of 

potential separation from her family on any given day, 

her fear about what she might encounter as she arrives 

home from school?                              

THE FLAG 

Maria also chose to put an American flag on 

her hanging journal. Of all the many memories or 

important events that she could have included on her 

journal, she chose to craft the flag (see photo 5). In 



ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1 Borgmann/ Artful Spaces 

 

13 

 

fact, many of the children voiced deep connections to 

the United States. Notice the clay is structured with 

American stripes colored in red and white but in place 

of stars is a field of green, the color of the flag of 

Mexico – a blending of cultures.  

 

(Photo 5: Maria’s flag) 

 

She spoke of her flag: 

Maria: This is the flag of the United States. 

Every time I go to school in the morning I say 

the Pledge of Allegiance.  

  In fact, Maria pledges allegiance to the flag 

which stands for the same government from which she 

hides, which might snatch away her home and her 

family. This citizen-child lives in the world of the 

undocumented with all the feelings of powerlessness 

and fear wrapped up in that existence. Does her 

teacher hear the conflicted voice as she wears a heart 

that assures connection to her mother, while pledging 

allegiance to the same country that could rip her 

mother away? In the everyday-ness of Maria’s 

recitation is a political message that could only be 

heard as the artful mediator opened up safe spaces at 

this community center for talk that is often unwelcome 

or misunderstood in schools (Garcia, 2002). Maria’s 

voice now sounds loud and political -– the outcry of a 

citizen-child who has put on the fear and 

powerlessness of her “illegal” parent. It is a voice that 

grapples with both entitlement and fear.  This is a 

narrative not often acknowledged in the typical 

immigrant story.  

THE T.V.  

Maria chose to put a television on her hanging journal 

to represent this part of her life story (see photo 6). She 

states… 

In this one I tried to draw me watching T.V. with 

my family. Sometimes I watch movies with my 

family and it makes me feel good.  

 

(Photo 6: Maria’s T.V. artwork) 



ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1 Borgmann/ Artful Spaces 

 

14 

 

Her story around family togetherness is 

contained in this artwork, creating a picture of warm 

times, gathered around the T.V., watching favorite 

movies in her home. Her mother’s voice from the 

parent focus group adds complexity to this simple 

narrative providing deeper insights…  

Gracia: For me, I watch cartoons with the 

children, because they repeat and repeat so that 

children can learn things, and for me it is easier. 

I have been here almost 14 years and don’t know 

how to speak English, but it’s because I was 

always watching everything in Spanish, until my 

husband said, ‘No more. We are going to take 

away all that so you can learn English watching 

cartoons with the children.’ And so now I watch 

T.V. in English. I cannot speak, because I get 

nervous and tongue tied, but I understand most 

of what they are saying. If I put a movie and 

watch with the children, I can understand 80%. 

I have realized that it is a good way to learn 

English, watching the television with the 

children in English. And when I say a word 

wrong, they correct me.  

 In this new portrait, painted with deeper and 

more historical colors, Maria and her family sit on the 

couch to watch T.V. not just for fun times but for 

learning a language that provides access to the 

dominant culture and to power (Bourdieu, 1983/1991). 

Re-interpreting that clay piece, we now hear a story of 

a mom who has been willing to surrender her place as 

the one in charge, and become the student. She 

watches children’s programs and learns a new language 

from her children who have become the patient and 

capable language instructors. This is the “resistance 

story” (Whitehead, 2012, p 36) that when told counters 

stereotypic narratives and positions Latino youth as 

assets (Cosier, & Gude, 2012). This story was 

completely missed in that clay piece, until re-

interpreted and shared through dialogue during the 

parent focus group. As parents spoke together, sharing 

common stories and engaging in dialogue full of trust 

and caring with others who share similar narrative, 

they provided a profound and powerful backdrop to 

meanings contained in the children’s clay artifacts! 

 This little clay medallion unwrapped a story 

full of unexpected scenes: a mom watching cartoons 

together with her children, children patiently helping 

her to understand the English dialogue, children softly 

and maybe laughingly correcting mom’s 

mispronunciations, and lots of good feelings and love. 

This scene is one that makes Maria “feel good.”  

Maria’s hanging journal was tacitly telling this 

story of family support and caring all along, but the 

buried and obscured narrative was not uncovered until 

all the voices were heard and the volume carefully 

turned up. By considering the data across all available 

sets (the artifact, the children’s stories and the parents’ 

voices), powerful counter-stories could be heard.  

THE BORDERLANDS CREATED AT THE 

GALLERY THRESHOLD 

 The children in this group live in the 

borderlands -- linguistically, culturally and 

geographically -- navigating the choppy waters of their 

lives as children who have ties to more than one 

language, historical storyline, and national affiliation 

(Campano, 2007). But these are not the only kinds of 

borderlands these children pilot through. Sometimes 

the children in the research study constructed their 



ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1 Borgmann/ Artful Spaces 

 

15 

 

own borders, and these borders reflected lived stories, 

real life struggles, and the enactment of agency.  

 For example, the threshold into the gallery -- a 

place that contained the life stories of the children 

molded into clay -- was constructed as a line that was 

meant to keep some in and some out. The children 

defined the boundary line at the doorway and acted as 

the sentries there. Maria and many of the other 

children understood this borderland, and were clear 

about who could cross and who could not. Their 

comments seem to be emblematic of a much larger 

narrative that examines the notions of knowing and 

caring (Noddings, 1984) -- things that Maria and her 

friends wish they had more of at school. They believe 

the gallery may be the type of place to elicit that love 

and compassion.  

Stacy: Why do you think it’s important that 

other people from outside our group see your 

work [in the gallery]? 

Maria: So that they can see that we worked 

hard, cause at school let’s say someone  comes 

to church from your school and you tell them 

that you have been working really hard on your 

art, and they don’t believe you, but if they come 

and you can prove it cause it’s in the gallery.  

The gallery seemed to be a place where the art 

was validated -- those who came across the 

borderlands would be able to believe that you really 

did work hard. Those who did not come in may not 

believe that you had worked hard.   

Stacy: What would be important for your 

teacher to know about you that maybe you 

never had a chance to tell her or she never asked 

you?  

Maria: Like, more stuff about you, ‘cause when I 

go to school I just tell them about my week and I 

want them to know more about me.  

Hector: Sometimes people don’t know you … 

your teacher could know that you are unique.  

Gaby: If my teacher came in here and it was just 

me and her I would tell her about my life and 

about my journal and now she can understand 

what happens in my life and home and at 

school.  

 This community space promoted conversation 

around the need for knowing and caring in the form of 

teacher action (Noddings, 1984, p. 10) so coveted by the 

children. One wonders if Maria’s teacher realized how 

desperately this little artist longed to be known in deep 

and intimate ways. Maria wanted her teacher to know 

more than simply what she does in her week. Maria 

goes on to converse with her friends in the gallery, 

noting the frustrating disconnect that she feels with 

her teacher.  

Maria: One day my teacher was just eating an 

apple, that’s all, just eating the apple. And I said 

I wanted to tell her something and she was like, 

“I’m eating right now.”  

Stacy: Maybe she can’t eat and talk at the same 

time.  

 Maria:  But when we are eating she bothers us!  

Gaby:  Yeah, because they just don’t want to 

hear it -- they say “hold on, I’m busy” but then 

you look at them just doing nothing and you’re 

like, come on! 

 While the teacher’s voice seems to be 

considered important and valid, Maria feels like she is 

being pushed away and that her voice does not matter. 



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In this case the powerful teacher demands respect at 

all times (demanding attention when she speaks and 

silence when she does not want to listen), while the 

docile student is expected to comply - here the teacher 

talks and the students meekly listen (Freire, 

1970/2009). Various children in the group used their 

voice and the notion of the gallery border to express 

their yearning for a teacher who hears them. They 

would gladly open the border of the gallery for this 

teacher and invite her to truly hear their voices.  

 There is quite a contrast in reaction when the 

artists were asked what they would say if President 

Donald Trump came into the gallery -- across that 

same borderline. Reactions ranged from running away, 

to lying about the hanging journal to telling him to get 

out or locking him in the gallery and not letting him 

out. These citizen children held firm to secure a 

boundary where powerful forces threatening their 

families attempted to cross. In fact, Maria had a 

question for President Trump: 

Stacy: Maria, what would you tell Donald 

Trump?  

 Maria: Why are you going to build a wall?  

She questioned the construction of a border 

wall, just as she constructs her own border, trying to 

keep out a government that she sees as a threat to her 

family unity.  

The children defined and decided who would 

be welcomed across this border and who would not.  

Maria and the other children longed for the teachers to 

cross the border into the gallery, to hear about their 

journals and truly get to know them -- something that 

had not been happening in school. On the other hand, 

they guarded the border from government and power, 

pushing the President of the United States out and 

telling him lies. 

Stacy: Kenzie, what would you want Donald 

Trump to know about you.  

Kenzie: Nothing!  

Gaby: If Donald Trump came in here I would 

open up the thing and throw him out of the 

thing. 

Camila: I would run away, because one of my 

friends got deported back to Mexico.  

It is the same space, the same border, and yet 

extremely different decisions and demonstrations of 

agency at the line. The same space defined by the same 

border became at once a place of welcome (for 

teachers) and a place of contention and dispute (for 

the president). 

DISCUSSION: PERSONAL NARRATIVE AS 
COUNTER DISCOURSE 

The arts are forms of communication about 

things that count (Anderson, et.al., 2010) Anderson & 

Milbrandt, 2005, Dewey, 1958/1934). Through the 

mediated sign of visual imagery artists of all ages shape 

media into personal expressions that dance around the 

core of life -- big issues such as identity, power, or 

place. (Walker, 2001, Robertson & McDaniel, 2017)  

These hanging journals had culturally 

significant meaning encoded into the bits of clay that 

told complex stories of their identity. In a classroom 

where teachers are taught to unwrap these artworks to 

hear the powerful narratives of all children, the results 

can be transformative. 

  Humans construct what they know and who 

they are through narrative -- or story -- in word, text, 



ENGAGE! / Vol. 1, Issue 1 Borgmann/ Artful Spaces 

 

17 

 

gesture, visual imagery, or song. As a way of knowing, 

narratives seek to establish personal truth. Narratives 

emerge from an individual’s reflections on life. As we 

tell our stories, we organize and re-organize our 

memory, and construct our own reality (Bruner, 1985). 

It is not only critical that students have opportunities 

to create these narratives, but that they have time to 

reflect on and dialogue with others about these stories. 

 These Latino children share their fears, 

struggles, and joys as they work, each with unique 

families and stories, but a common theme begins to 

emerge. The cultural histories of separation from 

border crossing and the threat of deportation or 

separation from loved ones is a constant fear. Yet, 

these children build bridges of resilience around the 

threat that looms close, finding normalcy in this way of 

life. It is through the voices of children that we see 

beyond the black and white of immigration. These 

children are active participants that do not take family 

responsibility lightly -- they shoulder the burden 

together.  

 The Latino children in this study do not see 

themselves or their families as helpless victims of a 

political system or as ones who break the law. Their 

voices offer counter discourses to stereotypic 

narratives of Latino youth by the mainstream culture 

(Alarcón, 2014). They are not slow, uneducated, lazy, or 

disrespectful. They love school, follow the rules, and 

desperately want to be valued as worthy, respected 

contributors of their class. They are resourceful, 

exuberant, and full of agency. And, they have taken on 

heavy family responsibilities as they navigate through 

the in-between spaces of different cultures, nations, 

and languages. Spaces that are further troubled with 

the social stereotypes of an often-misinformed 

mainstream culture.  

 Curricula focused on high stakes testing of the 

dominant culture privilege one way of being in the 

world. They create invisible boundaries which leave 

little room for empowering projects such as these in 

schools. As O’Loughlin (2009) explains, 

Schools are the chief ideological 
instruments of governments … and are 
therefore likely to be held on a tight 
ideological leash. Teachers are part of the 
establishment, and any subversive 
leanings that they might have are 
typically disciplined through extensive 
mandated curricular requirements and 
onerous regulation that appears to be 
increasingly global in reach. (O’Loughlin, 
2009.p. 146)  
 

 However, teachers can find gaps in the daily 

curriculum through which to integrate the arts and 

support the personal narratives of all students, not just 

those of the dominant culture. Providing curricular 

spaces for these personal narratives or counter 

discourses offers a prime opportunity to break down 

stereotypes and turn up the volume on all voices. Here 

O’Loughlin (2009) explains the critical role of the 

community group: 

Such counter discourses need to 
emerge organically out of community 
members and must be cultivated from 
the felt needs of particular groups 
rather than being handed down from 
on high. O’Loughlin, 2009. p. 147) 

IMPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNITY/ACADEMIC 
COLLABORATIONS 

This community center space, an in-between 

space with regards to languages, cultures and national 



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18 

 

ties, presents certain affordances when it comes to 

accessing voices of children from immigrant families.  

In the case of Maria and the children in the 

summer program at the community center, narratives 

were permitted to unravel out of hanging journal -- 

stories that may not have been expected and that are 

often not welcome in schools or more formal settings. 

The arts intersecting with open and safe community 

space sanctioned topics that may often be absent from 

discourse in academic settings. These rich stories, full 

of insights around what it means to be a child in a 

mixed status Latino immigrant family, are beautiful 

and powerful but often hidden or buried in the 

regimentation of school or academia. Through 

collaborative art making and subsequent dialogue and 

reflection around artwork, stories spilled from the 

artists. The stories told of struggle, fear and agency. 

They told of critical political issues of deportation, 

family separation, the upside-down picture of family 

power regarding language, and the real ways that 

children construct and act as sentries to their 

personally created borderlands.  

 There is nothing mindless or disconnected in 

the art experience. When children form clay into 

significant shapes from their world a story evolves. The 

form becomes a visible placeholder for this thought. 

Each time we encounter that form we bring new 

information to it, but the form remains to invite us in -

- the viewer or the artist -- for yet another 

interpretation. The beauty of art is that it is 

presentational -- its very form presents the idea 

providing wide access not bound by language (Eisner, 

2002). Another critical part of this study was the 

dialogue shared while interpreting the clay pieces as 

conversations that might have otherwise never been 

spoken flowed from reflecting around the art and the 

themes it posed. 

This dialogue around the stories with which 

the clay was imbued gave the works meaning that was 

mediated in such a way that we -- the outsiders -- 

could “get it.” Not to be overlooked, however, is the 

way that the art allowed the children and parent 

participants to gain deeper understanding of 

themselves, their conditions and their connections 

with others of like history. While the project informed 

us -- the outsiders -- it also provided a consciousness 

raising (Freire, 1970/2009 experience for those engaged 

in dialogue around the art, unraveling and reflecting 

upon their own stories collaboratively. Using visual 

imagery with clay as well as dialogue allowed for 

multiple ways of presenting information and making 

meaning (Serafini, 2014). As the unexpected narratives 

emerged, a more profound and intimate picture of 

Maria (and her family and friends) came to light. 

Suddenly, through her simple artwork, we began to 

understand her fear of separation from her mother. We 

felt her patience and admiration for her mom as she 

worked so hard to learn English. We felt her longing 

for a teacher who cared enough to know her. We 

began to relate to her frustration with a government 

who would, for some reason, want to keep her and 

others like her out with a wall.  

 This little girl is a student in any school. She 

could be a student of any teacher. She sits quietly at 

her desk, says the Pledge of Allegiance, and comes to 

school each day with the blessing of her mom and dad. 

She longs for a teacher and her peers to know and 

respect her, and strives to understand why anyone 



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19 

 

would want to kick her, or people like her, out of the 

United States. She is a citizen of the United States, 

reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and yet takes on the 

cloak of an “illegal” hiding in her house until she gets 

kicked out. Does her teacher know this complex and 

powerful girl? Does her teacher ask her about her life, 

her struggles, and her fears? Does her teacher 

recognize her strengths, gifts and resourcefulness 

which she lives day to day? Or does her teacher 

administer high stakes tests and characterize her as a 

number or a level -- understanding her through the 

common and stereotypical “one story” of Latino 

immigrant families in this city, and labeling her rich 

and diverse historical gifts as a problem to be solved.  

 As neighborhoods, families and academic 

entities partner together, we envision a wide open and 

caring space where identity and authentic story enter 

the classroom as welcomed ingredients to a 

community of learning that sees families, histories, 

languages and cultures as important parts to the recipe 

for inclusive and equitable learning sites. We envision 

caring as:  

We see the nurturing of a “social imagination” 

-- envisioning possibilities that attend to the justice 

and equity of all humans (Greene, 2003). We see a 

place where obscured stories are heard, sanctioned and 

valued. We see classrooms where children like Maria 

are seen as capable, full of strengths, and with voices 

important enough to be valued and heard. We hope to 

see teachers who open up their arms and hearts and 

even become learners (Freire, 1980), willing to truly 

know and appreciate their students. We hope that 

stories, though hard to talk about and uncomfortable 

for those of us who have not lived them, are invited in 

and entertained.  

In this work, we have noted the ways that art 

can open up those spaces, unravel those narratives and 

create collaborative communities willing to reflect 

upon topics shared by voices that may have been 

“shoved under the desk,” but are now loud, clear and 

full of beauty. We have shown here how visual art 

transcends language and provides all equal access to 

learning. If teachers have passion for the arts, for 

storytelling, and for the cultural histories of their 

students they will push art into the cracks of tightly 

packed curricula to elicit evocative responses from 

those students and allow everyone to be heard. These 

alternative discourses trouble stereotypical narratives 

and begin a process of understanding of and empathy 

for “the other.” Teachers and community places can 

collaborate to make sure all children can find a sense 

of identity and self-respect as they construct personal 

narratives of possibility.  

  

Stepping out of one’s own personal frame 
of reference into another’s. When we care 
we consider the other’s point of view.  
 

(Noddings, 1984, p. 24) 

 



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	Abstract
	Situating the study
	Critical Ethnographic Methodology/Data Analysis
	Hearing Maria
	Discussion: Personal Narrative as Counter Discourse
	Implications for Community/Academic collaborations
	References

