Returning to in-person classes after months of virtual meetings feels somewhat strange. We (researchers) are moved, and some of us have expressed a bit of fear. We still don’t know much about what will happen with the pandemic. We are returning gradually; with many protocols in place; wearing masks; and there are many recommendations to avoid physical contact, which is challenging with the children. We have prepared a set with several face masks for ourselves and the children, hand sanitizer and latex gloves. During the virtual sessions, we know that some children have not been able to connect to virtual classes, and we have not been able to establish contact with their families through any means. These situations are the most concerning because they represent the harsher side of the pandemic, isolation, and educational disconnection. Who are these children? What has happened to them during this time? What efforts have the teachers made to reach out to them? What can we do to reconnect them to the school? Is the pandemic coming to an end? We have many questions, and the only certainty we have is that we have to stay together in uncertainty. We are overwhelmed by a certain sadness and disappointment.

Our first planning meeting after the period of isolation finds us with many emotions coming to the surface. We share our difficulties in navigating this time at home; the challenges of caring for our children; working from home; being in the same space all the time; and the constant threat of illness toward ourselves and our loved ones. We are moved, tired of the protocols at the university, and have a sense of powerlessness since we can only bring four university students into the school, which greatly changes our work possibilities. The meaning of our work is linked to the students’ education, and the possibilities of bringing them to the classroom/school also shape the scope of future tasks. Sitting in a circle—with distances and health protocols to protect us—we know that we have a task of reconstruction ahead of us that must be respectful of our own time. We agree to help respectfully, without interfering, and without judging the decisions that families have made during the pandemic time. Supporting the return to in-person classes and creating the minimum conditions for educational reconnection finds us with pain and with the need to renew our capacity for creation. Sadness is evident, but there is also the joy of meeting each other again, looking into each other’s eyes.

From field notes, written by a researcher, June 2020.

Introduction

The vignette is extracted from one of the field notes conducted in 2020 during the process of returning to in-person schooling at the school where the research was conducted. Sharing this vignette allows us to showcase a challenging moment in our work, but one that also renewed our capacity for reflection and creativity about educational processes.

Since 2009, and up to the present, we have carried out various research projects in the Department of Psychology at the University of the Republic of Uruguay based on the models of the Fifth Dimension (5D) and La Clase Mágica. These models have inspired projects where we seek the development of children’s imagination, integrating the creation of narratives, creative and collaborative processes, and the use of various technological tools in community-based and school contexts. During this time, we have implemented seven projects that prioritized working with children in vulnerable situations; in disadvantaged socioeconomic contexts; children with intellectual and motor disabilities; and, in recent years, with children from Latin American migratory backgrounds. In this chapter, we will share reflections on our experience with this last population and how the activity system we built offers an opportunity for critical reflection and growth for all individuals involved (professors-researchers, university students, school teachers, and children). We reflect on our experience of working during the pandemic in a school that serves a high percentage of migrant children. In this school, we developed a multigrade, intergenerational, and intercultural classroom that provided an opportunity for critical reflection and intervention to reverse processes of educational disconnection.

The theoretical and methodological framework we present has guided the fieldwork of our projects in a continuous dialogue between theory and practice. We start from the idea that academic production must allow the creation and multiplication of knowledge. The work we do makes sense if it serves the communities and is carried out through dialogic mutuality, with the goal of improving living conditions and enabling a more dignified life for all individuals involved. We have created an interdisciplinary team for research and university outreach, where psychologists, educators, sociologists, anthropologists, along with university students—conducting pre-professional internships—come together to work with the community.

We work from a collaborative and situated research approach. Collaborative because it includes our interests and concerns as researchers, and also includes the interest of those involved in the research (children, university students, children’s families, school teachers, and community members), promoting participation, commitment, and consensus for the various activities of the program. This work is also situated, as knowledge is local, critical, and partial—this is the ethical-epistemological commitment of our work, because, “the only way to find a broader vision is to be somewhere specific” (Haraway, 1995, p. 339).

In the last 6 years, we have focused on working with migrant children because the dynamics of human mobility in Uruguay have undergone significant changes. From being a country of emigration, it has become a country of transit and settlement for people, in particular from Latin America and the Caribbean. These individuals come from countries that did not used to be a typical migration pattern for our society (e.g. Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, and Haiti). This population has been “racialized,” discriminated against, and “marked” by a large part of Uruguayan society, primarily due to the rejection of their phenotypic characteristics, educational levels, and fears of competition in the labor market (Koolhaas et al., 2017, p. 21). Although national legislation aligns with international law (Law 18,250) regarding the conception of migration as a human right, there is still much to be done in terms of public policies, societal attitudes, cultural and educational practices, discourse, and commitments to ensure access and full enjoyment of rights for the international migrant population.

In Uruguay, according to data processed by UNICEF (2020), 3% of the resident population was born in another country, and within this population, 20% are children, representing 1.7% of enrollment in public primary education. Most of this population is concentrated in schools in the downtown area, and near the port of Montevideo. According to Decree 394/009, Law 18,250 on Migrations, migrant children can access the educational system at any time of the year, even if they do not have national documentation—this regulates and guarantees access, representing a significant regional advancement. However, this advancement also comes with challenges for migrant children in their schooling.

The school is the first institutional environment that most children encounter when they arrive in their new country. It is an institution that responds to hegemonic objectives and values, power dynamics, class and gender differences, and in some cases, establishes discontinuities between school practices and children’s family practices.

Program Context

Since 2018, university researchers and professors have been working in a public school located in the central area of Montevideo—where a concentration of migrant population arriving in the country is found—with approximately 40% of migrant children in its classrooms. The downtown area of the city has the following characteristics: intense human movement, a high population density, the presence of government institutions, and the location of shelters and hotels (run by the Ministry of Social Development) that provide temporary accommodation for those in need, including migrant populations. The educational centers in the area are attended by children of diverse origins and contexts. School authorities and teachers identify this educational center as a “transit school,” a factor that intensified fears of contagion during the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The school concentrated a multitude of sociocultural realities, forming a diversity of educational scenarios historically influenced by normative discourses, contexts of precarity, and the health protocols in place since COVID-19.

The population attending the school are dealing with:

  • School disengagement in the context of the pandemic: approximately 15% of the total population according to a survey conducted in June 2020.

  • A population of children and their families with diverse geographical origins (South-South migration, residential mobility within Montevideo and between departments, and migration from other parts of the country).

  • The need for access to resources provided by the state for the organization of childcare and the material conditions of life.

During 2020, considering the changes in school practices brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed a specific support proposal for the school due to the worsening conditions affecting the children’s school attendance and transportation. We worked with children aged 4–12 years, the age range served by the school.

At the beginning of June 2020, a gradual process of returning to in-person classes was implemented, with the government authorizing a staggered return to classrooms, dividing the total number of students into two groups attending school twice a week. Social distancing measures, allowed capacities, and other health recommendations led many schools to implement alternative modalities, creating different arrangements to reduce the number of students present in the institutions while addressing situations of greater vulnerability.

In this partial return, we started attending the school once a week, with the initial task of helping identify the children who did not return to in-person classes. This task was carried out in collaboration with the school’s teachers and university students, as part of their pre-professional practice.

We found that the difficulty in returning to school for in-person classes l was primarily among families that had also not connected to the online classes offered by the school during the pandemic lockdown. These families lived in precarious circumstances: in deteriorated housing, in boarding houses, in overcrowded conditions, and with very low-economic resources. We created home visit teams with the participation of the physical education teacher, university researchers, and university students. Before making a phone call to the families or the main contact person, we visited the families’ homes, brought school materials, and invited them to return to in-person classes. In addition to the regular classroom sessions—offered twice a week—we offered another space for work and support led by university students and researchers, providing the opportunity for expressive and creative experiences related to the pandemic and COVID-19. We had the goal to generate inclusive educational processes, as we were trying to guarantee access, quality persistence, belonging, and full participation of children, regardless of their personal, ethnic-racial, social, economic, and cultural characteristics (Ainscow & Miles, 2008; Duk & Murillo, 2011).

We combined ethnographic records and participatory action focused on the reception processes of children in difficult situations of migration and were not engaging in school activities. Meetings with families, migrant children, and public school teachers allowed us to listen to their stories and observe their experiences related to both the tensions and joys associated with human migration and education during the pandemic. We have also studied national and international documents concerning the situation of migrant children and their connection, in recent times, with the pandemic. During public health emergencies—like the COVID-19 pandemic—we have witnessed an increase in difficulties for the migrant population. Given that a large increase in numbers of people infected with COVID-19 was the result of migrant mobilization, there has been an intensification of border control and closure as well as worsening working and living conditions.

In the multiple experiences that we have had in public schools, we have worked in classrooms where intercultural inclusion is a constant and complex task, developing narrative and collaborative proposals to promote encounters and recognition among children based on their differences. We work with classroom teachers and families to promote reflection on human migration processes and the importance of creating reception mechanisms (Da Silva et al., 2020). For example, when a new migrant child arrives at the school, in addition to the established administrative procedures, getting to know their educational background, facilitating their voice and travel experiences before reaching the school, and seeking alternative educational pathways is a joint welcoming task.

We understand interculturality from a critical perspective: a proposal that seeks to transform societies, institutions, and relationships, taking into account the historical and structural causes that support the colonial system (Walsh, 2010). A critical intercultural perspective requires sustaining the ongoing effort to support a transformation of the hegemonic-dominant project centered on nationalism. We have worked to build an intercultural and participatory proposal in school spaces that enables the generation of citizenship processes with all children from a human rights perspective. For this, it is necessary to understand the repertoires of experiences and learning, listen to the children, and know the barriers and challenges they face in the daily life of uruguayan schools.

In the weekly space we implemented during the return to in-person classes in 2020, we were inspired by the Fifth Dimension Model, La Clase Mágica, and the University-Community Links (UC Links) network (https://uclinks.berkeley.edu/). During these weekly sessions, undergraduate students, majoring in psychology, promoted the involvement of teachers while conducting specific reflection activities with families for the return of their children to in-person classes.

During the pandemic process, we had the goal to build strategies together with the school to ensure the continuity of quality education for all children enrolled in the school center. The strategies built were developed in three lines of work: (a) monitoring and supporting the reintegration of children who had disengaged from the education system, (b) intercultural multi-grade and intergenerational workshops, and (c) diversity and health emergency, joint efforts in the new educational pandemic scenario. These lines of work were interrelated with the goal of facilitating the construction of a space for school belonging and enabling cultural re-signification, coexistence, the recovery of voices, listening, educational trajectories, games, and learning.

Key Ideas: Monitoring and Support for Children Disengaged from the Educational System During the Pandemic

The context of the lockdown, health protection measures, and the suspension of in-person classes brought enormous challenges for educational systems. Health-related protocols had a significant impact on schools, leading to the implementation of emergency remote teaching and, subsequently, a gradual return of students to in-person classes with reduced attendance capacity. We observed that some children had stronger support networks, family presence, and protection, while others faced more complex social and family contexts—some lived in hotels and shelters, or in precarious housing solutions such as boarding houses or over-crowded homes. Furthermore, these families—often single-parent households—had intermittent sources of income due to reduced economic activities given the impact of COVID-19, and in some cases, their income relied on the informal economy.

Children from these families had difficulties in attending virtual remote classes due to their limited access to material resources. This situation was a reflection of the unequal distribution of resources in our society, affecting educational paths, psychosocial development, and socialization processes, resulting in unequal conditions of accessibility and attendance consistency.

We developed a personalized support proposal as a way to reverse the processes of educational disengagement. As mentioned earlier, we made weekly phone calls and provided educational materials to children on a weekly basis when in-person activities at school were not possible. The return to in-person classes became a challenge again as children living in more precarious situations were hesitant to return. Therefore, we actively sought them out, negotiated their return, and provided specific support, such as school supplies, flexible schedules, and assistance to families with administrative or healthcare needs. Additionally, the school designed a weekly playful and creative space to welcome students and allow them to express pandemic-related experiences This space was named “the intercultural and intergenerational multi-grade workshop.”

Key Ideas: Intercultural and Intergenerational Multigrade (IIM) Workshop

One of the initiatives of the project involved implementing a weekly workshop as a welcoming space for students returning to in-person classes. It was defined as an intercultural space, where the diverse cultural backgrounds of children and adults intersected. It was multigrade because it involved cooperation among children from early childhood education (4-years-old) up to the sixth-grade (12-years-old). It was also intergenerational since it included English and physical education teachers from the school, university students, university researchers/professors, and the children themselves. The workshop’s central theme focused on the mobility of the children, who were integrated during the project period, both due to the vulnerabilities that were already part of their lives and those caused by COVID-19.

The proposal was based on the concept of “Childhood in Motion,” which encompasses various circumstances of displacement experienced by children, whether it is international or within their own country, as well as the social spaces they navigate in their city (Leyra et al., 2014). Childhood in motion incorporates not only the mentioned diversity but also the unique travel histories of children and their families. These approaches were very informative since the population we worked with came from Latin American and Caribbean migration, as we explained above, but there were also children from Uruguay with mobility experiences within the country or in the city of Montevideo.

We worked on reconstructing a sense of belonging in the school space and re-establishing friendships among the children. The proposal was grounded in the Funds of Knowledge and Identity approach, which considers the historical and cultural resources of students and their families, their educational trajectories, and their resistance strategies (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014). With this initiative, the idea was to create opportunities for communication and expression between children and adults through collaborative narratives that were captured in various materials designed in the workshop and in a final book featuring the children’s creations (https://www.5duruguay.edu.uy/node/71). This book contains stories produced by the children in group settings during the workshop (Fig. 17.1), some of which were also represented and filmed to share with their families.

Fig. 17.1
A photograph of children at a table, painting and drawing, with art supplies and sheets laid out on it.

Development of narrative for a collaborative book

Full size image

A total of 60 children attended the IIM workshop from August to December 2020. Over time, in-person friendships were rekindled, cooperative games were played, personal experiences were shared, and collaborative narratives were constructed. We constructed a plan with key axes and topics that we considered relevant to address, based on personalized meetings with the children and their families. In Table 17.1, we share a schema of the planning that was carried out.

Table 17.1 General planning of intercultural, multigrade, and intergenerational classroom
Full size table

For each topic, we organized 2 days of activities with the children, but the theme related to “the school we have and the school we want” generated a lot of interest, and we included a third meeting. For this activity, we started with prompting questions, such as: What is in the school that I don’t find elsewhere? What do I find at school? What does school provide me? Who are we in the school? What I don’t like about the school? How would I change the school? Then, we asked children to work in subgroups to create a map of the school and its most important surrounding areas. For the most significant physical places, we asked them to include important individuals, friendships, and so on. Finally, they gave a presentation about what they had produced, sharing each of their creations with the rest of the group.

For the adults who were part of this space, this was an opportunity to reconnect with their own childhood memories and experiences, but within the context of a different school. Both the workshop’s meeting space and the book allowed a creative and humanizing process, enabling the recovery of the ability to create and express oneself in the middle of a complex social context due to the pandemic. These processes also demonstrated the importance of creating spaces for sharing feelings, questioning, expressing, and playing even in difficult times and served as a reminder to adults to not forget to be imaginative and creative in difficult times.

Key Ideas: Diversity and Health Emergency—Joint Efforts of School Teachers and University Members in the New Educational Pandemic Scenario

The processes of social precarity that many children experienced during the pandemic, and the resulting impact on school disengagement, prompted school teachers to devise alternatives in their daily work, both individually and collectively. This entailed a series of tensions regarding their educational roles, given the guiding suggestions from the public education authority that emphasized the importance of building relationships, empathy, and emotional support during the return to in-person classes (ANEP, 2020). In addition to efforts to implement remote teaching and the use of virtual platforms they were not accustomed to, they also had to provide emotional support, which made them realize their own need for support as well.

Our work in the university complemented the school teachers’ efforts and led us to reflect on our own digital skills, the possibilities of peer support, and how the difficulties faced by many of the children we worked with in returning to school during the pandemic touched us deeply.

The life situations of the children that we had to support alongside the teachers shed light on how intersecting categories exacerbate vulnerability and violence experienced by many families. Vulnerabilities intertwine, and being a migrant is not a sufficient condition to determine vulnerability. However, being a migrant and of African descent with economic difficulties makes it more likely to have a precarious life. Butler (2010) introduces the notion of “precarious lives” (p. 71), understood as lives that are not recognized within legal frameworks or as explicit beneficiaries of these frameworks. To understand this, it is necessary to analyze the relationship between regulations and the recognition of vulnerability. Those subjects that are not considered fall outside the legal framework, resulting in an unequal distribution of vulnerabilities; some lives are protected, while others are undervalued (Butler, 2010).

In addition to dealing with multiple jobs and the increased workload caused by the pandemic, school teachers had to cope with extreme vulnerability and violence in a school that lacked specific resources to address these issues. In other words, it does not have a professional technical team to support situations of violence, uprooting due to migration, family reunifications, or other complexities in the lives of many of the children. Despite this, it is worth noting the alternatives implemented to promote the educational continuity of children and reverse disengagement processes. These actions covered a wide range of activities, from home visits to printed materials provided to the children and recurrent phone calls to improve connections with family members and children, among other strategies. Once in-person classes were reinstated, specific support was provided to meet the needs of some families that were more affected by the pandemic-induced changes.

These actions reflect an interest in challenging the homogenization that often applies to children attending school, striving to prevent them from falling outside the boundaries of what is recognized, and pushing against the onset of precarization with determined efforts toward lives that do matter (Butler, 2010).

Discussion

The actions described in this chapter had the goal of diversifying responses to the educational situation experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic at the educational center where we work, which serves a diverse group of children, including a high percentage of migrant children.

Given the processes of educational disengagement that occurred during the return to in-person classes, we collaboratively built a narrative proposal that sought to create a sense of connection between children and adults, focusing on nurturing school membership by providing opportunities to express and share pandemic experiences and enabling creative and collaborative processes based on these experiences.

Intersubjective processes were manifested through the creation of a collaborative narrative that allowed the creation of the previously mentioned book created by the children, emerging from immersion in a space of play and fantasy. We understand intersubjectivity—following Rogoff’s perspective (1993)—as a bridge in the interpretation of the same situation, arising in interaction not as mere consensus but as points of convergence and divergence. The notion of intersubjectivity is related to the construction of processes of understanding, the formation of shared meanings, and the promotion of mutuality in collaborative activities.

The design and implementation of the intercultural, multigrade, and intergenerational space, inspired by the Fifth Dimension Model and La Clase Mágica, allowed for reciprocal processes between adults and children, horizontal exchanges, and interconnection in the context of dealing with a public health emergency that impacted everyone’s lives. Collaboratively, constructing a narrative that gave life to the proposal, enriched by Funds of Knowledge, understood as “culturally developed and historically accumulated bodies of knowledge, as well as the essential skills for family or individual functioning” (Moll, 1997, p. 47). The integration of the practices, norms, and strategic knowledge of migrant children into school life, the recovery of in-person encounters with games and expressive possibilities, enriched the educational experience, which had been burdened by fears and health protocols during the pandemic period.

Furthermore, the role of teachers underwent significant change during the pandemic, shifting from adherence to a traditional educational model that became exhausting for those who followed it during the crisis to a model that challenged this tradition, generating new ways to approach teaching and adapt to the needs of the population in the context of the pandemic. This change involved establishing alliances between teachers, families, and the research team, aiming to counteract the restrictive and normative results associated with the traditional educational model, which did not allow for specific responses to the difficulties of the pandemic.

This experience teaches us the importance of creating strategies that coordinate effectively to contribute to the holistic wellbeing of the entire educational community (school teachers, children, families, and researchers). In this context, it is crucial to value collective spaces for reflection, emotional support, and re-evaluating the role of teachers, with a focus on continuous and contextualized training, especially in the new scenario of hybrid teaching that has emerged with the pandemic.