Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [72]
Most students take great pride in their home countries. They bring pictures of their countries to school. They like to talk to Americans who have visited their country and know a few words of their language. They love to share information about their home countries. One of the best things an American can do is ask about their homelands.
A Vietnamese boy told me he felt sorry for white teens who had no ethnic group to identify with. He said, "They are really unlucky. They have no real culture. They go around trying to steal other people's groups—blacks, Asians, just so they can find some identity."
HIGH SCHOOL
Refugees are allowed to attend our high schools until they are twenty-one. Many have to drop out and work, but those who can stay feel lucky to be in high school. Many of the students work after school, both part-time and full-time jobs. Others go home to clean, cook, and care for younger siblings while their parents work. One Guatemalan student, who was in Nebraska without parents, worked all night at a factory. A Croatian student supported her family by working in housekeeping at a downtown hotel.
The teachers' biggest challenge is helping students with English vocabularies of two-year-olds to feel respected as adults. These students can express so little of what they are thinking and feeling. Mainstream classes are hard. Often students don't have prerequisites. Some teachers talk too fast and won't repeat.
The students make small but significant mistakes. A Bosnian girl, assigned a report on Stokely Carmichael, misunderstood and researched Hoagy Carmichael for her political science class. One Kurdish girl liked the flower-covered packaging of a box of raspberry douche. She thought it was perfume or lotion and bought it for the school gift exchange. Fortunately a teacher intercepted this gift and found something less personal for her to give her seat mate.
ELL students are often smart and eager. They speak several languages and possess many life skills. However, because of language problems, many have low ACT scores. The older students are at the time they start American schools, the more difficult it is for them to catch up. Sometimes students surmount all the academic hurdles and are accepted to college, but then they do not have the right INS paperwork to qualify for loans or grants.
Many of the students feel tremendous pressure to succeed. Their parents have literally risked their lives so that they can go to school. And yet some start from far behind their American peers—some students don't know that the earth revolves around the sun. They've never heard of gravity, of germs, or of fractions.
Between past traumas and present stresses, students are often upset. Many report headaches, stomachaches, tiredness, or dizziness. During class, students periodically "check out." Their teachers touch them gently and say their names to bring them back to the classroom. Other times, students are so anxious they run out of the room or burst into tears. Small changes in the classroom trigger anxiety. A loud noise or a chair felling can make them jump. The regular Wednesday 10:15 A.M. civil defense siren upsets students. Many are fearful of thunderstorms and tornadoes.
These students are expected to have a lot of emotional stretch. A Bosnian student whose father was killed two weeks earlier came to his first day of school. He had no friends and spoke no English. At the same time he was grieving his father's death, he was learning the states and capitals and how to work American machine tools.
Some students express their emotional difficulties with cruel practical jokes, bullying, and harsh teasing. Many come from places where homosexuals are feared, reviled, and even killed, and hence many are homophobic. Once some ELL students made