Narratives of Puerto Rican Middle School Students Regarding School Context and Identity: Contradictions and Possibilities

School Sites and Participants

Two schools (School A and School B) located in two metropolitan cities in Massachusetts served as sites for data collection for the larger study, and were chosen because the first author had prior collaborations and relationships with both schools that permitted respectful access. As well, each middle school was engaged in work around improving school climate and student engagement. Each served students in grades 6 to 8, and contained relatively similar percentages of students who were characterized as economically disadvantaged ² (60.4% in School A and 64.2% in School B). Although Latinx students were the largest ethnic group in both schools (63.7% in School A and 44.2% in School B), their demographic characteristics differed in two significant ways. Specifically, although White students were a minority in both schools, this was especially the case in School A (.5% of the student population). As well, the total school enrollment at School A (432 students) was considerably smaller in size than School B (791 students). Data regarding teachers’ racial backgrounds at each school was not available, but both school principals confirmed that it was their understanding that the majority of teachers were White.

Participants in the present study

The present investigation utilizes interview data from all Puerto Rican students who were part of the larger study. Specifically, seven students (five self-identified as boys, two as girls) comprise the analytic sample. Demographic information is provided in Table 1. Students were aged 12 to 15, with 13 being the modal age. All students self-identified as Puerto Rican; five were born on the island, and all but one had been living on the U.S. mainland for the majority of their childhood years (M = 8.5). Based on their own assessments, four students were fully bilingual in Spanish and English; one student described himself as somewhat fluent in Spanish (i.e., speaking Spanish with some family members) and two described themselves as speaking little to no Spanish. To provide examples of our participants’ unique voices, we also provide their abbreviated responses to the first question in the interview protocol (i.e., “what should I know about this school?”) in Table 1.

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Table 1.

Demographic Characteristics and Initial School Reflections of Study Participants.

Name (pseudonym) a	School	Age	Gender	Language (bilingual; Spanish fluency)	Place of birth/years living on Mainland	What should I know about this school? b
Yolanda	A	12	Girl	Bilingual	Puerto Rico/8 years	“Um, this school really helped me learn more- it’s the best school I went to.”
Alfredo	A	13	Boy	Bilingual	Puerto Rico/3.5 years	“Sometimes it’s too boring, and sometimes we do fun stuff.”
Kara	A	13	Girl	Bilingual	Puerto Rico/8 years	“It’s fun, but sometimes there’s like teasing going on with some kids- that’s not the fun part.”
Anton	B	13	Boy	Limited Spanish	Mainland U.S.	“Well, I heard a lot of bad things about this school, but once I came here, it’s much better.”
Enzo	B	12	Boy	Limited Spanish	Mainland U.S.	“The work is pretty hard, but the behavior- it has to be very good, or else there’s detentions, suspensions.”
Evano	B	15	Boy	Bilingual	Puerto Rico/13 years	“They expect you to actually like behavior more here, not like at my other school.”
Alfonse	B	14	Boy	Some Spanish	Puerto Rico/12 years	“School here is good, not bad- they have fun activities. . .but if you disobey what the rules are, you’ll get a detention.”

Note. Students self-reported on age, gender, their level of Spanish fluency, and place of birth/years living on the mainland, if applicable.

a

The question “what should I know about this school?” was the first question asked of all students during individual interviews.

b

Pseudonyms were chosen by the first author, not the participants.

Procedures

Researcher Reflexivity and Positionality

Reflexivity is the process of reflecting critically on the self in research; it demands that we analyze interpretations of truth and issues of power in the research process, and on the meaning we make and present from the experience (Charmaz, 2014). During the data collection process, the first author continually reflected on the obvious differences in power and positionality between herself, a White, female, academic researcher, and the early adolescent student participants, especially with regard to their candor and/or positive response bias. Notwithstanding the challenges that this dynamic might have brought forth, interactions with students were greatly mediated by components of self that were salient to the first author. First, her many years of teaching in both public school and at a small teaching college scaffolded a strong ability to develop rapport with students. Second, her own personal and professional work and study on ethnic-racial identity and whiteness, CRT, and critical multiculturalism strengthened the ability to facilitate the interviews with sensitivity, humility, and a deep sense of respect.

Detailed notes were written after each respective interview and focus group session to serve as a mechanism for examining potential biases and assumptions. Reflexivity was further enhanced during the collaborative coding process. Specifically, the second author identifies as Latina, and did not participate in the data collection. As such, she was able to read the transcripts with a fresh perspective, yet also contribute important sensitizing concepts, or initial ideas or directions to pursue in the coding process that are informed by prior research (Charmaz, 2014). For example, “conditional belonging” was one suggested concept that became prominent in our analyses. As well, she was able to offer key insights on the ways that aspects of students’ narratives (such as conditional belonging) were reflected in her own past experiences in public school, as a Latina student.

Overview of Coding and Analysis

We employed several qualitative approaches to code individual and focus group data, using both deductive and inductive methods. To address the first research question regarding students’ perceptions of the school context, coding began with individual interviews. We selected three prominent dimensions of school context that have been associated with school fit in middle school as a deductive framework for the coding process: teacher support (Wentzel et al., 2010), ethnic-racial climate (Morales-Chicas & Graham, 2016), and belonging and importance (Goodenow & Grady, 1993). Each case was examined separately with respect to each dimension, using initial coding with gerunds to focus on participant’s actions (Charmaz, 2014). Next, during focused coding, codes were refined and collapsed using constant comparative analysis (Corbin & Strauss, 2007). Discrete concepts were determined to be higher-level categories, while the processes that supported that category were separated into subcategories. In the final stage of analysis, what Charmaz (2014) refers to as theoretical coding was conducted. This resulted in three final, empirically-driven themes to illustrate what we found to be contradictory dimensions of students’ experiences within each category of school context. These dimensions, categories, and their interrelations are depicted in Figure 1, which also includes representative text segments.

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Figure 1.

Themes and categories illustrating contradictory dimensions of school context and their interrelations.

Subsequently, both interview and focus group data were coded to answer the second research question regarding students’ identity constructions on “being Puerto Rican.” Each author first independently coded all seven transcripts, using open coding with gerunds. Next, focused coding was completed jointly through constant comparison, discussion, and consensus, resulting in two higher-level categories that reflected self-focused aspects of “being Puerto Rican.” Both focus groups were then coded using the same processes, and revealed two, more relational dimensions of Puerto Rican identity that were not identified in individual interviews.

Teachers: Supportive Yet Complacent

The presence of supportive teachers who showed an orientation to students’ learning, and whose actions were highly student-centered, was a key dimension of all students’ positive experiences in school. Students described teachers as integral to their success, articulating the ways they encouraged them to do their best work, helped them to solve problems, and provided help for learning. Yolanda described how teachers’ commitment to student learning rendered her school the “best one” she had ever attended:

Um, this school really helped me to learn more, and I think of the other schools that I went to, this is the best school I went to. Because in the other schools I kind of learned, but didn’t understand, and I feel like in this school, the teachers explain more, and they help me learn more, and things that I don’t know.

Good teachers were also described as caring individuals who were generous with their time, and were both relatable and relational. This is strikingly illustrated in Alfonse’s comment that a good teacher “treats you like you’re his son. Like he makes you feel kind of special. He connects with you.” This is good news, and is similar to earlier work by Rolón-Dow (2005), who found that Puerto Rican middle school girls’ perceptions of teacher caring were defined by relational and culturally respectful interactions and support.

The frequency of students’ positive appraisals of their teachers, however, were tempered by their descriptions of teacher behaviors that reflected a sense of complacency about their academic performance, as has been documented in other work on teachers’ racialized expectations for achievement (see Gershenson et al., 2016). Despite an admittance by Alfredo that a good teacher should “push me, push me a lot,” only two other students discussed similar academic press from teachers; rather, the majority of students described an environment where just passing work in, irrespective of its quality, was good enough. This is clearly illustrated in a comment by Evano, who was our oldest participant, as he described teachers’ expectations; “they [teachers] expect your work to be at least done- like pass it in. They don’t really care if it’s like wrong or good.”

A second dimension of teacher complacency that was illustrated in students’ narratives regarded what they perceived as negative or disrespectful affect toward students. In contrast to both female students, male students often described such disrespectful attitudes as targeted at them, personally, as Alfredo’s comment in Figure 1 illustrates. Importantly, these kinds of affective teacher behaviors had a racialized tone for four out of the five male participants. Alfonse, who had a very dark phenotypic complexion, offered the following striking example:

. . .my math teacher- he might think- well people say I got that face of looking like a criminal, or got, like I did something bad. But. . .my teacher will be like “people probably say that because they don’t really know you. They think you might do that because you’re that person, you look like it. But really, on the inside, you’re just different.

Several of Alfonse’s statements above are telling. First, they suggest that he is aware of society’s attributions of what a “criminal” should look like (namely, that [darker] “face”). Second, although it is couched in a supportive comment (“on the inside, you’re just different”), the teacher actually affirms this perception, noting that others might assume him likely to engage in bad behavior because “you look like it [a criminal].”

Although we acknowledge that there were no other examples of students’ referencing their phenotypic characteristics in exactly this way, using the lens of LatCrit, this seems a powerful and noteworthy example of the way that colorism can mediate (negatively) Puerto Rican students’ interactions in school that must be named. The textual example of Alfonse’s interaction noted above illustrates an expectation by a teacher that is racially coded (i.e., “they think you might do that because you’re that person, you look like it [a criminal].” As will be shown in the next category, such examples of teacher affect map on to vivid examples of more explicitly racialized behaviors among teachers.

Ethnic-Racial Climate: Color-Blind, Yet Racialized

Each student drew upon the school’s ethnic-racial diversity to justify the ethnic climate as positive, where everyone was important, opportunities were equal, and one’s effort determined success. In response to questions about their peer context, students insisted that being Puerto Rican, or ones’ ethnicity-race more generally, did not matter, and were in fact subordinate to what students believed were universal aspects of being “a human being.” Such sentiments were prominent across all narratives, as illustrated by Anton in the following segment, after being asked whether he felt “less than anyone because you are Puerto Rican at this school”:

No. I'm fine. I'm a human being. It's just like. . . It's like M&Ms, there's just so many different ones, so what's the difference between one and the other? Nothing. . .I think about, I'm, I don't see what's different from me and the next person next to me. . .there's nothing different between us, you know? We're all human beings. It's really just how we are and how we act and sort of like what, how we are.

Perceptions of equal treatment regardless of ethnicity-race was a key aspect of students’ feelings of acceptance within the school environment, as our subsequent discussion of the Belonging and Importance category will illustrate. This was especially the case with regard to perceptions of teacher behaviors. For example, when asked to clarify the importance of being Puerto Rican at her school, Kara first noted that it was important, because there were “a lot of Latinos” enrolled. When asked to elaborate further, she equivocated, struggling to articulate its salience for teachers, in particular: “I’m not kind of like that sure if it’s that important. “Cause like I don’t think they [teachers] like, unless [sigh]- I’m not trying to say that like they don’t care, I’m just saying like, they’re not like paying that big attention to like your race.”

Despite the frequency of comments that attested to the insignificance of ethnicity-race, all but one student referenced differential, racialized treatment of students in their social interactions on at least one occasion, as noted earlier. Such racialized incidents occurred with both teachers and peers, but varied according to students’ gender. Specifically, for both girls, racialized treatment was perceived exclusively within their peer group in the form of teasing. For example, Kara noted the way ethnicity-race often constrained students’ perceptions of each other, but cast this in Black/White terms in commenting that students often warn each other, “oh, you’re White, you can’t do this. . .you’re Black, you’re not supposed to do that.” Yolanda noted an example of when her Puerto Rican ethnicity, in particular, was perceived negatively, in response to the question of whether ethnicity or race were important when thinking about friend groups at school:

Because like for example at the beginning of the year they [peers] don't wanna hang out with you. . .at first, they be like, "Oh no, she's Puerto Rican, I don't like her; I don't wanna. [Interviewer: Is it easy or hard to make friends from other ethnic-racial groups?]. Um, for me sometimes hard but easy sometimes. Like I have Puerto Rican and Dominican friends, and ones from here [mainland United States]. But sometimes it’s hard because like you have nothing in common and like you don't have anything to talk about.

Yolanda’s comment also implies that the salience of ethnicity within the peer group is nuanced, however; her statement attesting to her friends “from here” (Yolanda was born in Puerto Rico) that is quickly followed by her admittance that “sometimes it’s hard,” may imply that Puerto Rican and other Latinx ethnicities afforded more potential for commonality, from her point of view.

Although only two of the five boys provided an example of racialized interactions with peers, four of the five discussed examples of racialized behavior from teachers that were distinct (yet connected) from the affective dimension of teacher complacency highlighted earlier. While Evano’s comment in Figure 1 illustrates his perception that teachers more readily call on White students as their “favorites,” a comment regarding racialized teacher behaviors by Alfredo is more overt: “we got some teachers that might be racist. . .screaming at Black kids more than White kids, or smart kids and stupid kids. . .”

LatCrit challenges binary notions of racial phenomena. In this regard, we find the students’ tendency to describe racialized interactions in the above examples using a Black/White binary noteworthy, as it regards their Puerto Rican ethnicity. First, all three student comments may well suggest that they have internalized the widely-held tendency to view race relations in terms of a Black/White dichotomy. This begs the question of how Puerto Rican early adolescents conceptualize their own racialized experiences or positionality with regard to the color line, since Puerto Ricans are a racially diverse group. In her qualitative work on race and belonging among U.S.-born Latinx millennials, Flores-González (2017) found that the majority of her young adult participants actively resisted binary notions of the U.S. racial order, articulating instead a complex “racial middle” that varied according to individual characteristics, such as phenotype, but also included factors such as proximity to other racial groups in terms of cultural affinity, social class, and racialized experiences. Our findings suggest that students in middle school have not yet reached this level of sophistication, highlighting an area that they would benefit from discussion and support in.

Another way that teacher behaviors were racialized as described by students centered on language, specifically regarding their reactions to hearing Spanish spoken in the classroom. From the perspective of LatCrit, the practice of maligning Spanish in schools devalues cultural expression and native speech for Latinx students and their families. The comment by Alfredo below illustrates the way being a native speaker of Spanish still mastering academic English might position many Puerto Rican students in this regard:

Like for a Spanish [speaking] kid it's too hard because most of the teachers don't, don't, don't care if you speak Spanish because, well, you need- you know like, some kids in my class will ask me what- what are they saying? And the teachers don't care, and they tell me to shut up because I can, uh, I can explain what, uh, do I need to say. So, it's rough for, uh, for the other kids to not speak Spanish.

In the selection above, it is striking that Alfredo perceives the teacher as unsympathetic to native Spanish speakers, which might be implied in his comments that teachers “don’t care,” and in being told to “shut up.” In point of fact, we found no evidence for the affirmation of Spanish language by teachers in students’ narratives. Instead, our data reflect evidence of linguistic hegemony and English monolingualism in both schools, despite the fact that Latinx students constituted the majority in each. Several students described being discouraged from speaking Spanish, and as illustrated in the segment above, were sometimes maligned by teachers when they did so. The internalization of English as superior may also be present in a comment by Enzo, himself a limited Spanish speaker, in a comment where he “problematizes” Spanish; Enzo noted that his peers of color were not judged in school, even if “they have a Spanish problem.” Indeed, the way that Spanish is maligned in the above examples can serve as a powerful threat to belonging and identity for Puerto Rican students, regardless of whether Spanish is their heritage language or not (Irizarry & Antrop-González, 2013; Nieto, 2004).

A final dimension of the way that ethnic-racial incidents in the school environment were prominent in student narratives regarded the presence of ethnically-based stereotypes about Puerto Ricans, the nature of which again varied by gender. Specifically, although both girls admitted that sometimes other students “call Puerto Ricans names,” or “say stuff” about Puerto Ricans (Yolanda and Kara, respectively), neither specified their content. However, three of the five boys spontaneously articulated stereotypes about Puerto Ricans, all of which were decidedly negative. Such stereotypes appeared to us as generalized beliefs that were internalized by students, but emerged in their descriptions of the school context. Yet, they also informed their personal evaluations of being Puerto Rican (i.e., private regard), as well as their perceptions of how others viewed them (i.e., public regard). Alfredo’s explanation of whether being Puerto Rican influenced his experiences in school is a striking description of what he sees as dominant behavioral features of his ethnic group:

I don't follow the rules and I wanna do whatever I want. And people from other countries, it's like, they're- I'm not saying like they're not like us [Puerto Ricans] but, I think, like, we're more, like, intense because, you know, we don't follow nobody's rule. . .Like, some people from other countries, they like to follow the rules. But we Puerto Ricans just like do crazy stuff and. . . sometimes they might go bad, like, shooting.

Both Alfonse and Evano also reflected an awareness of the perception of Puerto Ricans as violent (what Alfredo’s comment about “crazy stuff” seems to imply). Several times during his interview, Alfonse lamented that both teachers and adults in the community often “put names on us [Puerto Rican males], like ‘oh, they’re thugs’, they do this and that.” Similarly, Evano clearly names the perception that Puerto Ricans will “kill someone” as a prominent stereotype among his peers, after being asked about what other kids at school think about Puerto Ricans:

Like they [peers] would think. . .I don't know 'cause like, there's like a stereotype of, like, all Puerto Ricans- like, you'll see them- they'll always kill someone or something. . .not a lot of White people will kill but, like, most Puerto Ricans and Blacks do. They'll treat you a little different 'cause of it.

The negative stereotypes about Puerto Ricans as violent or criminals that found in the narratives of our male participants map on to extant cultural stereotypes in the U.S. that associate being Black or Latino, and male, with dangerousness and threat (Benner et al., 2018). From the perspective of LatCrit, then, it is not unreasonable to conclude that these examples of negative valence toward Puerto Ricans—whether located in generalized teasing or overtly racialized stereotypes of Puerto Ricans as “violent”—have the potential to undermine students’ school adjustment across domains, including the extent to which they see themselves as having a sense of place within their school environment.

Belonging and Importance: Anchored by Peers, Yet Conditional

The category of Belonging and Importance was largely generated as a function of both teacher support and the ethnic climate; that is, the elements of both categories were essential and contributed uniquely to students’ sense of belonging and importance in school. Although positive relationships with both peers and teachers were integral to students’ sense of belonging, acceptance within the peer group was a more frequent contingency. Specifically, all but one student responded to the direct questions of whether they belonged and were important at school by stating the relevance of peers, as clearly explained by Anton: “I think it’s [belonging] really my friends and how they are. I sort of think it’s my friends. It’s like 75 percent my friends and 25 percent teachers.” Hence, “getting along with everyone” and having friends provided students with both psychological and academic support, encouragement, and camaraderie; Alfredo likened having friends and helping one another to “being allies.”

Regarding teachers, while students’ most frequent descriptions of teachers centered on the ways they provided them with support and encouragement, their ability to treat students fairly—most often defined as being treated “the same,” was an important component of their sense of acceptance and belonging in school. In fact, every student described their school as a place where teachers did not explicitly acknowledge their ethnicity-race; as we noted earlier, this was viewed as a necessary component of their ability to provide equitable instruction. Despite this, the relation between Puerto Rican ethnicity and equal treatment was touched upon in a more nuanced way by two students. In response to the question of how she felt about being Puerto Rican, Yolanda answered:

[being Puerto Rican] is important to me, personally, because I wanna be like- I’m Puerto Rican, but I want to be treated the same way that people- other people are treated no matter who they are.

Although somewhat interpretive, the link Yolanda makes between the importance of being Puerto Rican and being treated “the same way” as others might suggest that she has knowledge or experience that this is not always the case (i.e., being Puerto Rican elicits differential treatment). Enzo’s description of the presumed insignificance of Puerto Rican ethnicity contains similar ambiguity, along with the internalization of English language hegemony we commented on earlier:

It [Puerto Rican ethnicity] doesn’t [matter]. It doesn’t. Well, it doesn't matter because no one's judging anyone. . . Um, no one's either like pushing people to. . .to do stuff because they're this color or, ‘oh since you have a Spanish problem then you have to do this,’ or, you know, ‘you have a speaking problem so don't talk to me.’

Despite the aforementioned ways that peer and teachers’ equal treatment contributed to students’ feelings of belonging and importance, there was an important “contextual contingency” to belonging that was located in a belief that their academic competence or performance greatly mattered in this regard. Specifically, five students referred to the success with which they managed their grades or test scores in response to the direct questions of whether they belonged or were important at school, as illustrated by the example in Figure 1. In another example, Yolanda vividly equated her own perceptions of importance at school as dependent upon ways in which she contributed to the school environment, or “[made] this school better”:

Well, sometimes I feel like I’m an important part of the school because sometimes I feel like I make this school better, and with my grades, and in how I treat people. [Interviewer: are there times when you feel like you aren’t an important part?] When I give up and don’t try my best.

While aspects of Yolanda’s comment are certainly positive, the implications of her conclusion that her importance at school is contingent upon her motivation should be considered carefully. Indeed, there is great variability in students’ academic motivation during the middle school transition (Roeser & Eccles, 1998). Although it is reasonable to conclude that all students internalize the belief that their academic performance and positive contributions matter, LatCrit helps us to interrogate the ways that Latinx students’ ethnic-racial positioning renders such beliefs as adaptive or not with regard to sense of belonging in the school environment. For White students, their motivation to put forth their best efforts unfold within school spaces that are not racially neutral, but fundamentally White in tone (Durand & Tavaras, 2021), derived from the monocultural (i.e., White, Eurocentric) and assimilationist ideology that has fueled the institution of schooling in America since its inception (Ladson-Billings, 2018). From this perspective, White students as a racial group will likely feel an inherent sense of belonging in U.S. schools. This, we argue, provides a sense of psychological safety for White students that not only supports their desire to succeed, but buffers some of the pressures associated with having to “perform” well in school.

For students of color and Puerto Rican ethnics, in particular, the situation is fundamentally different. Because of the subordinate status of Latinx peoples in the racial hierarchy within the U.S., sense of belonging and importance is undoubtedly a complicated issue that cannot be taken for granted in any context, especially among young people. This is illustrated in the aforementioned work on race and belonging by Flores-González (2017). Based on interviews with nearly 100 Latinx youth, she found that their narratives reflected a persistent sense of racial exclusion in the U.S. Although phenotypic or linguistic features that marked them as Latinx contributed to this, participants referred often to the ways that their (Latinx) exclusion from conventional U.S. racial categories eroded their sense of belonging that coalesced in their feelings of being “citizens” but not “Americans.”

This outsider status may be uniquely complicated for Puerto Rican ethnics when viewed in terms of their birthright citizenry that is itself a marker of the colonial relationship between the island and the mainland U.S. Hence, viewed through the lens of LatCrit, we argue that the feelings of conditional belonging among students that we uncovered in our analyses are concerning, and worthy of particular attention by schools and teachers during this developmental period.

Dimension of Self

Students saw ethnicity as something that everyone had, and as an important dimension of self that could not be changed, because “it’s part of you,” as Kara explained. In this way, ethnicity had a kind of deterministic quality for students, as suggested by Alfredo’s musing that “you need to be the person from your country.” Although students spoke of ethnicity as something that distinguished people and should be a source of pride, several were careful to note that such an understanding did not make one “better” than anyone else, as illustrated by Anton:

You should never find a reason to make- be- try to be more than anybody else, and especially for like ethnicity or race. You should never be able to be able to do anything like that or say ‘I'm better than you because of that’. . .But like at the same time you want to be proud of who you are and how you are, but you don't want to do it so that you make other people feel bad or tear somebody down.

Previous studies have found that a strong Puerto Rican identity is a factor in academic success for high-achieving Puerto Rican youth in high school (e.g., Flores-González, 2002; Garrett et al., 2010; Rolón, 2000). Hence, students’ articulation of ethnicity as an important component of their emerging sense of self found in our data is consistent with other work that attests to its salience among ethnic minority youth in early adolescence (Way et al., 2013). Students’ inability to claim the importance of their ethnic background without equivocation might speak to its more burgeoning quality during this period, but also suggests that they would benefit from increased opportunities to explore dimensions of ERI within trusted peer and adult groups.

Spanish Language and Bilingualism

Spanish language was a salient dimension of Puerto Rican identity for four out of five bilingual students. The impact of language was articulated in two ways: as something that marked them as different within an English-speaking school community, yet was a positive asset in both their present and future contexts. For example, Alfredo elaborated on the primacy of language multiple times, linking a lack of English fluency with a reduced sense of belonging within the school, as evidenced in one of his earlier comments about things being “too hard” for “Spanish kids. Yet being a native Spanish speaker was also integral to his Puerto Rican identity:

Nobody can change the way you are, or from where you are. If you wanna speak Spanish, you can speak Spanish, but nobody needs to force you to speak English. In the classroom, in ELL, we always speak Spanish.

Building on what Nieto (2004) would consider an adaptive strength of Alfredo’s—his resistance to being “forced” to speak English—two students also described the ways that being bilingual Spanish speakers afforded them skills and resources that they were proud of. In response to questions regarding the importance of being Puerto Rican, Evano and Alfonse immediately mentioned language, respectively, each commenting that their ability to communicate with different groups of people was something that allowed them to be “helpful” in school. In addition to communicative skills, Evano also acknowledged that being bilingual was important because it allowed him to “multi-task” better. Overall, Spanish language and bilingualism was a concrete dimension of their ethnicity that students discussed with both immediacy and pride.

Hence, despite the strong focus on English language competency in both school settings, for bilingual students, maintaining fluency in Spanish language was considered an asset that allowed them to contribute in unique and helpful ways in and out of school. This is consistent with Zavala’s (2000) research that points to the primacy of language in identity construction for Puerto Rican adolescents, whereby youth viewed Spanish as a way to express Puerto Rican ethnic pride and share family traditions.

Ingroup Connection and Affinity

While sometimes (but not always) buttressed by shared Spanish language, another feature of students’ conceptions of their ERI was a sense of connection and affinity toward other Puerto Rican students in their school. In both focus groups, this was discussed in terms of having a natural kinship and respect for one another that was rooted in ethnic heritage and geography, as when Yolanda noted during her conversation with Alfredo that being Puerto Rican meant that “we should treat each other like we’re family, because we’re like from the same place.” In the second focus group, this ingroup connection was described in terms of the sense of psychological support and comfort that having Puerto Rican friends offered. During this particular point in the conversation, Anton and Enzo ⁴ reflected on what it would be like as Puerto Rican students in a majority-White school. The exchange below illustrates the feelings of connection and comfort they derive from being in the presence of other Puerto Rican students, alternately described as “mates” and “family”:

If there was a school with different people than us [Puerto Ricans], I would love to go, but I’m just going to say that sometimes it might be too overwhelming. . .you might just want to keep staying with your friends because you think they’re family, because you think they came from the same country, so you want to stay with them. . .you can forget about everything else, and you just want to stick with your, your mates. (Enzo)

They feel family with others. (Anton)

Family with people who look like them, who are Puerto Rican like them? (Interviewer)

Definitely. (Anton)

It is noteworthy that Yolanda, Enzo, and Anton spontaneously use the word “family” in their descriptions of the connection they feel to other Puerto Rican students and friends. This finding may be reflective the cultural belief in familismo—the valuing of family ties and relationships—that is highly endorsed among Latinx ethnics (Halgunseth et al., 2006). In work that examined Puerto Rican adolescents’ evaluative judgements of autonomy vs familismo values, Villalobos Solís et al. (2017) found a stronger orientation to the latter in students’ interpretation of hypothetical scenarios. Our finding here brings forth the possibility that this cultural value might contribute to adolescents’ emerging identity constructions as well.

Ethnic Pride in Shared History

Similar to the way that the salience of being Puerto Rican was linked to having an ethnic ingroup with which to identify, students in both focus groups acknowledged that knowing aspects of their ethnic history was linked to their understanding of themselves as Puerto Rican. Pride in ethnic history was particularly evident in an exchange between Alfredo and Yolanda, who were born and had lived several years on the island:

You know, like some Puerto Ricans have a lot of history. You know, like boxers, baseball players, are sometimes Spanish. (Alfredo)

And why should you know about them? (Interviewer)

Because, they’re like, Puerto Ricans, Puerto Rico’s heroes, you know? They show that Puerto Rico is like, alive. (Alfredo)

Do you learn about Puerto Rico in school here? (Interviewer)

No. (Alfredo)

It’s like Alfredo said. We should learn about our heroes, and things about places there we’ve never been before. (Yolanda)

The brief exchange above is heartening, since a knowledge of ethnic history and pride in one’s heritage have been shown to have both promotive and protective influences on the emergence of ERI in early adolescence (Neblett et al., 2012). This holds significance for the education of Puerto Rican students. As noted by Berson et al. (2019), mainland U.S. students receive very little instruction on the history of Puerto Rico over and above geography. Berson et al. (2019) assert that challenging simplistic representations of the island that render its people as merely colonized subjects is integral to the civic engagement of Puerto Rican students. As key socializing contexts, schools have an integral role to play in this endeavor.

Addressing Contradictions: From Colorblind to “Cultural Commuting”

In the context of preparing Puerto Rican students to thrive as informed citizens in a society where ethnicity-race shape one’s life experiences, interactions, and outcomes (Sue, 2015), the contradictions in students’ perceptions of their school environment in this study are important for schools to consider. In particular, similar to other work we have done with students of color in middle school (see Durand, 2020) the ideology of color-blindness was woven throughout students’ narratives. Using the term color-blind racial ideology (CBRI), Neville et al. (2013) provide more specificity to this construct, delineating the strategies of color-evasion (i.e., denying racial difference and emphasizing sameness) and power-evasion (emphasizing meritocratic beliefs and equal opportunity) as core dimensions upon which CBRI is manifested. Students’ claims that “we’re all human,” that teachers “didn’t pay attention” to their ethnicity-race and treated them “equally” (in the face of examples where they described the opposite), and that they did not belong when they did not “try hard,” fit within these dimensions. This may suggest that students have already internalized the core features of CBRI, and are using them to understand their school experiences and potential for success.

In order to reconcile presumed dissonance between their own lived experiences in school and the color-blind narratives they hear, students require conceptual knowledge on systemic forms of inequality in society, and an understanding of the historical and contemporary significance of race and racism in peoples’ lives (Neville et al., 2013). For example, while students in our sample expressed interest in learning more about their heritage and Puerto Rican history, they acknowledged that their schools did not teach them about Puerto Rico. For Puerto Rican students, an examination of the colonial relationship between the mainland and the island that does not neglect the powerful history of oppression, resistance, and political advocacy among both island and mainland Puerto Ricans is necessary, and early adolescence is a critical time for this learning to occur (Irizarry & Antrop-González, 2013). These conversations and instruction can be built into curricular content in middle schools and out-of-school youth programs using a critical multicultural approach (see Durand & Tavaras, 2021). Such an approach requires racial literacy among teachers (Rogers & Mosley, 2008), whereby they have developed the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to examine the relationship between race and power, and the ways that social, economic, and political advantages for Whites are maintained in institutions, including schools.

A striking and relevant example of racially literate pedagogy in action is Tucker-Raymond et al.’s (2011) work with middle school Puerto Rican students, which illustrates the powerful ways one after school-based arts program challenged their “ahistorical” treatment by schools, thereby increasing their sense of agency, unity, and sense of place. Offering these kinds of activities to Puerto Rican adolescents engages them in the process of examining historical systems of power, and provides a legitimization of their culture. Such opportunities for cultural commuting among Puerto Rican students (see Nieto, 2004) can challenge the racialized, assimilationist school experiences that were described among our participants, and facilitate a more authentic sense of belonging in school.

Nurturing Possibilities: Identity-Based Resiliency

As our findings suggest, both teachers and peers serve an important role in validating (or invalidating) Puerto Rican students’ ERI; this, in turn, is linked with students’ ability to identify in a positive way with teachers, and consequently, with schools and learning (Nieto, 2004). Hence, teachers should allow for student-led discussions regarding identity and what identity means to them (Vedder & van Geel, 2017). For example, a promising school intervention, the Identity Project, provides an 8-week curriculum designed to promote ERI exploration for youth from any ethnic-racial minority and majority background (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2018). This evidence-based curriculum is currently being implemented in the U.S. in several states, and offers opportunities for students to build self-confidence in exploring identity, gain knowledge about ethnicity-race in society, generate critical questions, and improve classroom community (see https://umana-taylorlab.gse.harvard.edu/identity-project).

How would such a curriculum be tailored for Puerto Rican students in middle school? Our findings point to several areas upon which to focus. First, students might begin to examine the inadequacy of the Black/White binary in reflecting their diverse experiences and cultural backgrounds as Puerto Ricans, and begin to grapple with what Flores-González (2017) theorizes as a “racial middle” positioning that legitimizes the roles both race and ethnicity play in how Latinx form self-understandings. Acknowledging and “claiming” this unique and separate position in the U.S. racial structure is a form of resistance and critical consciousness by which Latinx youth “stake claims of belonging” (Flores-González, 2017, p. 154) that can be especially powerful for Puerto Rican students, in particular. Understanding the way that colorism operates as a stratifying mechanism (Monk, 2021) for Puerto Ricans not just on the mainland and the island, but globally, can guard against the internalization of oppressive beliefs by providing students with a broader, more systemic perspective, and build resilience.

Notwithstanding this, since stereotypes are a lens through which one views and evaluates the self, we find it imperative that dominant stereotypes about Puerto Ricans are addressed directly with students. Middle school teachers and youth programming curricula are ideally positioned to capitalize on early adolescents’ emerging capacity for more abstract reasoning to guide them in analyzing the fallacy of the kinds of stereotypes that were revealed in our participants’ narratives. The use of counter-storytelling (Perry et al., 2004; Sleeter & Delgado Bernal, 2004) can greatly enhance such efforts; that is, providing opportunities for other Puerto Rican adult models (e.g., family and community members, clergy) to share their lived experiences with success, adaptation, resistance, and belonging in America that disrupts hegemonic, deficit-oriented views of Puerto Ricans in the larger society.

It was clear from several students’ narratives that the use of Spanish language was a source of both pride and potential, and a salient aspect of their identity. Teachers, schools, and youth developers must affirm heritage language and the benefits of bilingualism for Puerto Rican students—regardless of state, local, and school language policies—since language is indeed “the skin that we speak” (Delpit & Kilgour Dowdy, 2008). Indeed, the linguistic repertoire of Puerto Ricans that includes many lexical fusions (e.g., drawn from Taino, Spanish, English, mainland, and island vernaculars) should be viewed as a cultural strength. This linguistic facility among Puerto Ricans is at once a manifestation of successful adaptation and integration into new communities, as well as resistance to English hegemony (Zentella, 2009). The concept of translanguaging (see García & Lin, 2017) provides a framework for teachers to consider these kinds of metalinguistic and contextual adaptations in language form and usage, and to provide students with classroom opportunities to examine this in creative ways. For example, relations between language and identity may be influenced by Puerto Rican students’ ability to travel freely between the island and the mainland. Although alluded to by only two of our participants, the transnational consciousness that often results from such circular migratory experiences could be a point of discussion for students, framed as an adaptive skill that contributes to their ability to be global citizens.

Building on bilingualism as a cultural asset, other strengths-based dimensions of “being Puerto Rican” identified by students, such as having affinity and a sense of familismo (Halgunseth et al., 2006) with other Puerto Rican students, as well as ethnic pride, seem to us exciting examples of psychological resilience in students upon which to capitalize during this pivotal developmental period of growth and change. Community can be built around these factors in the classroom and in youth development spaces. Importantly, however, despite such cultural commonalities that might exist, students must be provided the opportunity to discuss dimensions of diversity in the Puerto Rican experience as a result of variables such as geographic location, social class, gender, language, and skin color, to name a few. Helping students to consider these intersectional factors guards against essentialized notions of what it means to be Puerto Rican, and empowers them to embark upon issues of identity as young adolescents with fluidity, choice, and affirmation.