Many schools in New Hampshire have students who are refugees from overseas. The city of Manchester has more experience than most places in working with these young people. About 65% of the state’s immigrant and refugee students go to Manchester schools. But this Fall, a group of students arrived who come from a more challenging background than most teachers have ever seen. New Hampshire Public Radio's Rebecca Kaufman has the story.
Sound of classroom….Track 5…teacher do you what that is…egg!...class singing ABCs…2:10…
Beech Street Elementary School is used to teaching the basics to students unfamiliar with life in America… They’ve taught refugees from Vietnam, Bosnia, and Kosovo…and immigrants from Russia, Korea and several Spanish speaking countries…About 40 percent of their students don’t speak English as their first language.
But at the end of August, about 85 children from refugee camps in Africa showed up to register for school.
About 25 of them are now at Beech Street Elementary.
When they arrived they spoke no English.
In just a few short months, they have made progress.
11 year old Hawa arrived from a camp in Kenya, although her family is from Somalia.
1:00 I am in 5th grade my teacher is Ms. Warren and Ms. Leebel, I’m lucky to have two teachers in our class, I have a lot of friends in my class
Hawa is not simply unfamiliar with being in America. Before she came here, her exposure to any kind of schooling at all was minimal.
This has made a distinct difference in the classroom. Kim Warren coordinates the English Language Learner program at Beech Street.
Track :07 they’re lovely children, they have wonderful attendance, they love coming to school, being with friends, they’re very polite, enthusiastic, they are also very physical and aggressive, because that’s what it was like in the camps
Most of the children who ended up in Manchester were born and grew up in refugee camps.
Children from Somalian families lived in a refugee camp in Kenya, children from Liberian families were in camps in the Ivory Coast.
With the exception of lining up for food rations and water, there was almost no structure to their daily lives.
Adults did not work, and they were not allowed to leave the confines of the camp. All they could do was wait to leave.
Joe Roberson is with Church World Service, an organization that provides refugee services.
He most recently visited the refugee camp in Kenya last January.
5:20 the situation in the camp is just something people in America can’t have familiarity with, to see people lives when they are essentially warehoused year after year after year, to think of one or two generations being born within a camp and really people living year after year without any hope of getting out, it’s a very difficult environment to live in
Roberson says there is school at the camps, but many children don’t go.
So many of them are not even literate in their own language.
It would be difficult to exaggerate how much is new to these students.
Henry Aliberti is the school districts assistant superintendent for elementary education.
He says the presence of these young people goes well beyond the range of abilities one finds in any classroom
Track 1:40 now you put on top of that a layer of students who have fluency, limited fluency, or no fluency, then you have this cultural layer that goes on top of that, I’m making a great cake here, you are looking at this, and saying now they don’t have an understanding of school, or a student who was just amazed at a muffin at snack time, who didn’t eat the muffin but just stared, looking at it, so its those kind of things you experience as teacher, it’s a very difficult job
The students had to be taught how to hold a pencil, and how to use an elevator…many didn’t know how to do simple things like sit in a chair. Some had never seen a set of stairs before and were reluctant to walk up them
The teachers have been able to address many of these cultural barriers.
Teacher Kim Warren say there has been definite progress in the first several months.
Cut:
Warren and the other teachers are optimistic, but there is a strong interest in gaining whatever edge they can.
The School District received a 40,000 dollar grant to help them assess what seems to be working and to get training in new techniques that could make things easier for their new students. And for them.
For NHPR news, I’m RK
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I am an ESL teacher in a rural county. We have a growth of immigrants coming into the system but not like the major cities in the east coast are experiencing. I have worked through the years overseas. Now, with the experience of ESL, I would really like to teach in a school in the refugee camps. I think it would be a great opportunity to help people before they get to America especially when it comes to salutations, bathrooms, societial do's and don'ts etc...In other words, help through teaching with culture shock and social adaptation. I know this is a little off base than the article and I did find it interesting but it made me wonder if you had any contacts with the refugee teachers/schools these students come from.
Thank you for any help you can give me and have a great day,
Stephanie (Mac)