| The growing number of immigrant children in rural communities and the public schools under-prepared to meet their linguistic needs demand education policy based upon a clearer understanding of the situations in which individuals and groups construct schooling. Investigation of the narrative plots of enacted curriculum---the outcome of interactions among educators, students, parents, and materials---can lead to more just, equitable, and effective educational policy for evolving communities.; This study focuses an ethnographic lens on a USMidwestern rural community to provide information and theorize about the effect of participants' sociocultural knowledge in a particular situational context. The pseudonym Beneville, from the Latin bene and villa expresses long-term residents' generally well-intentioned efforts to deal with unexpected demographic change arising from a local industry's intentional recruitment of Hispanic workers. In spite of such benevolent intentions, when lack of intercultural communication touches pressure points within the complex web of medical, legal, social, commercial, and educational services, both immigrant and long-term resident needs are inadequately served.; The explanatory narratives for school failure by those who have not examined the interconnectedness of race/ethnicity, class, and gender with schooling often serve only to perpetuate that same failure. In Beneville, progressive---but unclear and under-funded---State policy for the education of children whose home language is other than English surrenders its power to a discursive framework engendered and maintained by the life experiences of local educators and community leaders.; The study's innovative use of shared intercultural life history narratives offers a means of restructuring the policy formulation and implementation process in order to improve its effectiveness in responding to societal problems. Such democratic conversations broaden and deepen life experiences in order to weave a fabric more reflective of changing demographics. |
