Burundi Refugee Students in Rural Southern Appalachia

For the last three years, we have been engaged in ethnographic work with commitments to a postcritical perspective (Noblit, Flores, & Murillo, 2004). From 2008 to 2011, we have been learning and teaching with Burundian children and families with refugee status who live in southern Appalachia. We met the children and their families originally as English as second language [ESL] tutors. Each week we joined them to study English, play games, and complete homework at a ministry center or on a front porch or soft couch in the apartments in the public housing project where many of the Burundian families live.