Education

By John Dickson

Review of The Newcomers, by Helen Thorpe

“Give them a voice” is the mantra of those who work closest to refugees.  That is precisely what Helen Thorpe has done in her account of her year and a half spent in a Denver classroom.  In The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom, Thorpe gives voice to a dozen or so students – refugees, migrants and asylum seekers – as they land in an American high school, adjust, resist, adapt, settle in and eventually learn English and the ways of their new world without losing their own identity.

Their voices are needed to get beyond the impersonal statistics: 65 million people “forcibly displaced,” the highest recorded number ever; U.S. acceptance at 45,000, the smallest intake in 30 years; refugee camps holding over 65,000 people.  The numbers make us numb.  The image of a single three-year old boy lying face down in the sand on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea grabbed us and shook us out of our complacency more than all these numbers.

Helen Thorpe, with the permission of the students she tracks, has given them a voice.  We come to know and appreciate the vibrancy of Lisbeth, a young girl forced to flee El Salvador because of gang threats to her police mother and held in federal detention for over a year.  Or the two reticent Iraqi sisters, Jakleen and Mariam, whose journey took them through Syria and Turkey, along the way losing their father who had worked for the U.S. during the invasion.  Or Solomon and Methusellah, two brothers from eastern Congo, who had never gone to school before.    

Thorpe goes to their homes, talks with their parents, traces the admission and entry process, and even travels to Congo and Uganda to see first-hand the largest refugee camps in the world.

The voices echo what 2018 Teacher of the Year Mandy Manning did at the White House.

In her recent award ceremony at the White House, Manning handed the President letters from her students, who tell their stories and aspirations to the man who calls them rapists and terrorists.  Manning, and Thorpe writing about the Denver teacher, Eddie Williams, want to change the narrative, want to show the human side of this crisis, a side we now know best through those playing on our fears of the outsider, of the unknown.

There is much in here for former Peace Corps volunteers, who have also landed cold in a foreign environment, without the language, the context or enough bug spray.  Thorpe lays out a path forward for our Peace Corps Community for Refugees, describing the volunteers in the U.S. English and math classrooms, who provide one-on-one support for teachers trying to manage a dozen different languages and students in varying stages of trauma recovery.  She describes another target population for our efforts: mothers at home, lonely, without the language, friends, a job and money.

The book takes place in the course of the 2016 Presidential election, an irony that Thorpe raises, but not with a cudgel.  She goes to ground-level in a school which is one-third immigrant and paints a reality that we face in this country and will not go away with fear mongering.  She tells the story of a teacher who “lived to build bridges between people,” while a candidate for President attracts followers with promises of building walls.

Throughout, Helen Thorpe struggles to see the broader lesson for her readers.  Midway through the year, as she is learning of the horrors that these students went through, she sets up the central question.  Speaking for the teachers, she may as well have been speaking to me, to this Peace Corps affiliate, to the country: “Will we be worthy?  …… Can we rise to meet the challenges presented by such a room?”  

She answers her own question later with a sentiment that every Peace Corps Volunteer, probably every volunteer anywhere, can appreciate.  To turn away from the most vulnerable people in the world, we turn away from our own humanity.  There is a “joy of interconnectedness with the rest of the world” where we find our own humanity. 

Reading Thorpe’s book reminds us of those joys, but also of the needs faced by so many in the world.  In order, though, not to be overwhelmed by the enormity of those needs, it’s best to focus on one classroom at a time.

John Dickson was a TEFL teacher in Gabon '76-'79 and is active in two NPCA affiliates, Friends of Gabon and PCC4Refugees. He also volunteers in Gabon annually with Encore de la Paix, the social service arm of Friends of Gabon, taking on projects to repair schools, build latrines and distribute mosquito nets.   

Encore de la Paix

By Patricia Nyhan

Teacher Christopher Baughman works with newcomer students at Emerald STEAM Magnet Middle School. (Megan Wood/inewsource, 8/28/17)

As immigration policies see-saw, refugee children are arriving at schools across America in unpredictable numbers, forcing educators to scramble to meet their needs. In the Cajon Valley Union School District in a San Diego suburb, one in five students is a refugee – one of the highest numbers in the country. Last year, 897 students arrived under President Obama’s refugee resettlement policy’s higher quota, double the number from the year before. The district ran out of seats in classrooms and had to hire new teachers.

“It’s a challenge. We don’t get any information about it when it happens,” says Eyal Bergman, head of the district’s family and community outreach. Adding to the challenge is the emotional stress travel ban turmoil and anti-immigrant rhetoric can cause refugee families once they arrive. The district has embraced these challenges by creating a robust newcomers program involving teacher training, parent involvement and mental health counseling.

Staff Development

As refugees arrive, Bergman makes student placements among the district’s 26 schools and works with them on lesson content, English instruction in the classroom, and student assessment. Training includes issues of cultural sensitivity, trauma, and parent-school involvement, for instance making home visits to overcome communication breakdowns between home and school.

“Teacher training programs don’t include anything about family engagement. Yet the research is unequivocal that the more you build partnerships with parents, the more you can amplify kids’ success,” says Bergman.

Due to the wave of new arrivals last year, eleven “newcomer teachers” were added across Cajon Valley schools to teach students who aren’t ready to be mainstreamed.

Parent Involvement

Bergman also oversees an outreach program for refugee parents, working with paid community liaisons who speak some of the families' native languages: Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Swahili, or Spanish. They meet one on one with newcomer parents soon after their arrival to discuss their kids’ academic backgrounds and hopes and dreams for them. They then introduce them to school staff, and follow up with home visits. Parents can attend classes on such things as reading to their child.

Mental Health Counseling

Since many refugee students arrive with mental health issues, including PTSD, the district provides training on trauma for students and teachers. It has also hired four counselors devoted to working with children affected by trauma.

Counselors and teachers sensitized to mental health issues have helped students and their parents deal with fears for their families back home as refugee policies tighten. During the presidential campaign last year, Cajon Valley responded to the anxiety aroused by anti-immigrant rhetoric by holding private meetings with families and classes for parents. Teachers and principals have bought into the newcomers program – one of the keys to its success, says Bergman. Another is that Bergman’s team listened to the community about what they wanted, and put in place what they knew would help achieve it, he says:

“Refugees come here seeking a better life for their kids. They know that the American dream is wrapped up in the schools.”

A third reason for Cajon Valley’s success is its ongoing advocacy for resources. Bergman, whose background is in community organizing, is constantly advocating within his district for resources. Last April, the district successfully lobbied state lawmakers for a $10 million one-time funding award for districts with high numbers of refugees. In January, Bergman joined the district’s superintendent and a school board member for a trip to Washington, DC, as part of the National School Board Association’s annual gathering to raise awareness about their program and lobby their California delegation for additional federal funds.

“We’ve shown that we do good work. We invested a lot of funds in evaluation,” he says.

Do schools in your local district have programs like this? Please share on our Facebook page. Would you like to help start a newcomer program? Google the Cajon Valley Union School District to find numerous media accounts of this three-year-old model program. Take Eyal Bergman’s advice: “Do strong work and make yourself indispensable to key stakeholders.”