The Middle of Everywhere (15 page)

Schools are therapeutic environments. Half the world's refugees are children and adolescents, many of whom arrive in the United States malnourished and with health problems. Many students have lost siblings, parents, or other family members. Teachers may not deal with trauma directly, but they are part of the healing process. They give their students order and predictability. After the chaos and confusion of their lives, nothing is more comforting than routines. Kids like the same things to happen at the same time with the same people. Students need to receive the message that school is a safe place. Order, ritual, and predictability are part of this reassurance.

Relationships with kind, consistent adults are deeply healing. Good teachers, to quote Nellie Morton, "hear people to speech." They give children lap time, pats, and nonverbal reassurance that they are going to be okay. Physical affection and smiles can occur in the absence of a common language. A hug has a universal meaning.

Teachers connect the dots between the world of family and of school, the old culture and America, the past and the future. They help children understand how their worlds fit together and they teach empathy and good manners. Children become moral beings, not through lectures, but through coundess daily encounters with moral people. They learn how to be good through stories about honesty, kindness, responsibility, and courage. Moral behavior is essentially a set of good habits. Good teachers help children form those good habits.

The class story that follows is about ELL students and their teacher, who is a cheerleader, an instiller of hope, a cultural broker, a therapist, and an occasional comedian. I worked in elementary schools and summer ELL camps. Over the course of my research, I met hundreds of children, all of whom had interesting stories. However, for the purposes of this book, I will limit my discussion to one classroom at one school, which I'll call Sycamore Elementary School.

The class actually had twenty-five kids, too many for one teacher. Grace was an excellent teacher, but there wasn't enough of her to go around. Many kids who were eager to work couldn't get the help they needed. For this story I chose to describe only ten of the kids. I picked both kids whose parents were doing a good job making choices in America and kids whose parents were choosing all the wrong things. And I picked kids who varied in resilience and overall adjustment to America.

The number one thing is to care for children.

CLASS ROSTER:

September 6, 1999

Sycamore Elementary School is a three-story redbrick building just off a busy street that is lined with a McDonald's, Arab and Mexican markets, liquor stores, pawnshops, and a Vietnamese karaoke bar. The houses around the school are small, close together, and dilapidated. Police cars cruise the area. Unemployed men stand on the corners and in the alleys. The school was built for the children of Czechs and Germans, but it now welcomes students of all colors and ethnic groups.

Walking in the first day, I admired a sycamore tree with its sheltering white branches and big greeny gold leaves. There is something about the shape of a sycamore that reminds me of embracing arms. On the playground, a Latino boy scored in a vigorous soccer game and his team shouted and high-fived each other. Soccer is the universal solvent in Lincoln—Vietnamese, Mexican, Haitian, Romanian, and Serbian kids all like soccer.

Inside the school, a boy who looked like a biker's kid, wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt, watched a girl with dreadlocks twirl in circles, singing to herself. A teacher listened to an Arabic-speaking mother in a hijab. The mother was surrounded by her four wide-eyed kids, the youngest of whom clung to her skirt. The teacher imitated talking on a phone, then she wrote down a phone number and handed it to the mother.

I walked past a sign that said
YOU HAVE ONLY ONE CHANCE TO HAVE A CHILDHOOD
. I examined pictures of houses from all over the world—a Thai houseboat, Panamanian hutches, a Somali camp—and a display of macaroni-and-cereal necklaces, some of which had been nibbled on.

I signed in at the front office and a third grader named Judy Running Wolf escorted me to a portable classroom, a trailer outside the main building beside the clothing and food distribution center. My new class was a ragtag group, dressed in Salvation Army clothes, with an amazing array of bad haircuts. Most of them looked between eight and eleven, although some might have been small twelve-year-olds.

They were holding Village Inn menus and practicing how to order. The kids giggled and pointed at the glossy pictures of cheeseburgers and blueberry pie. In a dozen languages they discussed the pictures as if they were rare objets d'art. These kids came from many religious traditions and had food taboos and preferences. Some kids don't eat lettuce. Others didn't like milk. But today several ordered pretend hamburgers and boasted they had eaten before at McDonald's. Others ordered the most expensive dishes on the menu and bragged about how much it cost.

Their teacher watched them converse. Grace was a pretty woman in her late thirties. She didn't miss much and nothing rattled her. She spoke softly, laughed easily, and kept the room reasonably calm without making threats. As the kids ordered pretend meals, she told me a little about each of them.

Grace's biggest worry was Abdul, a beautiful kid with nut-colored skin and deep dimples. He was an Iraqi boy who had watched his younger brother freeze to death in the snow when his family walked barefoot across mountains into Turkey. Possibly he was brain damaged from gas attacks during the Gulf War. Abdul rarely did his work and he didn't seem to connect with anyone. Other teachers thought he should be in special education classes, but Grace wanted to give him a chance to adjust. She said many of the ELL kids look like special education kids at first, but then they adapted.

Pavel sat beside Abdul. He was a big awkward kid from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) with tangled blond hair and his shirt half tucked in. Grace said he was much indulged by his parents. Pavel was good-natured, but restless and lazy. He preferred playing with Nibbles the rat to doing his studies.

Ignazio was a good-hearted Mexican boy whose parents worked long hours at a sugar beet refinery. Nobody at home seemed able to help him with his studies. He was lovable and well behaved, but not very focused. Grace worried that Ignazio might be picked on because he was chubby and innocent.

Khoa was skinny and wore tight polyester pants that didn't reach his ankles. He wore a torn Star Wars T-shirt and his shiny hair badly needed a wash and a cut. He was clowning and hamming it up, making everyone laugh at his outrageous order of four hamburgers and three malts. Grace said his family had experienced great trauma getting to this country from Vietnam. In Lincoln, he lived in a rough neighborhood and his older brother had been in trouble with the law. Khoa was a fan of violent video games and twice Grace had confiscated nunchaks from him. Still, she felt he was essentially a good person.

Beside Khoa sat three Vietnamese girls. Grace said, "I put them beside Khoa because he can make them laugh."

Ly was a Vietnamese girl from a big hardworking family. Her parents were strict and Ly had extremely good manners. Her schoolwork was consistently A-plus.

Mai was a small angry-looking girl on the edge of the group. She had lost her mother when she was three, just before she and her father came to America. Her father had remarried and Mai lived with her father, stepmother, and new baby brother. Mai was troubled and had few ways to deal with her troubles. She scratched her arms or pulled her hair when she was upset.

Beside Mai, Trinh stared at her glossy menu. Grace said, "Trinh will not answer questions. I haven't heard her speak yet." Her parents had drowned crossing from Vietnam into Thailand. She lived with her grandparents, who had told Grace that Trinh spoke occasionally at home.

Walat was a handsome, self-contained, and competent boy from Iraq. His family was part of the close community of Kurds. His dad had been an engineer in Kurdistan and, even without credentials, he had found related work in America. Walat's mother was able to stay at home, study English, and help the kids with their homework.

As Grace told me about Deena's life, the small blond-haired girl ordered an imaginary ice-cream sundae. She had seen her grandparents and uncles killed in Bosnia, then she and her parents had been herded into an internment camp. Her mother was depressed and her father was incapacitated by stress. Solid, energetic, and intelligent, Deena spoke the best English in her family and was often kept out of school to translate.

Next to Deena, Fatima held up her menu and, like Deena, she ordered a pretend ice-cream sundae. Fatima was a Kurdish girl who'd been burned on her face and arms when Iraqis bombed her village. Grace told me that her scars had caused her some trouble at school. Some ELL kids came from cultures where deformed people are shunned. These kids did not want to hold her hand. "In America," Grace had explained, "We treat all people with respect." Fatima's father could not work, and her mother supported the family of five by working at a food-processing factory. Grace said, "Fatima can wear me out asking for validation."

Grace tapped on her desk and the kids stopped ordering food and looked up. She introduced me as "Miss Mary" and the kids stared at me with interest. Ly smiled. Khoa loudly declared that I looked old, very old. He kept saying this and finally I said to him, "Yes, I could be your grandmother." After that, he stopped.

Grace picked the name of a helper out of a hat. Today it was Fatima, whose job it would be to feed Nibbles and distribute supplies. Grace had the class look at a calendar and take turns saying, "It's Tuesday, September 6, 1999." She asked what kind of weather it was. "Clear," shouted Khoa, and Grace smacked a yellow plastic sun on the calendar board.

As Fatima, Deena, and Ly worked at their spelling, Khoa talked about poop and eating boogers. He looked like he needed everything—a bath, a good meal, a full night's sleep, and lap time with a patient adult. He watched me as closely as I watched him, and he winked whenever our eyes met.

Pavel twisted in his seat as if he were being tortured, broke his pencil, and wrinkled and smeared his papers. But like Khoa, he somehow managed to be disruptive and sociable at the same time. Together they gave the class a certain energy that wasn't all bad.

Grace went over the spelling words: "father," "mother," and "uncle." Then she began a discussion of what people needed to do at home. She wrote down phrases on the board such as "sew clothes," "mow yard," "cook food," "change baby's diapers." When she said this, Khoa shouted out, "Change the diapers or the baby will get a stinky butt." He laughed uproariously at his own joke. Grace cleared her throat and asked what else should families do at home.

Ignazio shouted, "Buy food." Deena said, "The number one thing is to care for the children." Ignazio elaborated, "Without food you might die." Fatima said, "Buy clothes. Without clothes you can't go outside." Mai said, "Take care of the baby."

Grace asked what chores were not so important to do. Pavel shouted out, "It's not important to pay the bills." Grace said gendy, "In America that is pretty important."

Grace asked the class to write a story about a family who forgets to do some jobs. I pulled my little chair up by Abdul. He bristled and turned away as if he were allergic to me. However, for the first time that day, he did some work. He hunched away from me, working on his assignment so that I wouldn't stay with him. Grimly, I reflected that I was helping him, but it wasn't much fan. When he finished, I checked his work. Then I turned to Pavel who had been waiting impatiently for help. He was a big teddy bear of a kid. He wrote, "Good dads take their sons fishing."

I asked him if he liked to fish and his eyes brightened. Stupidly, I said maybe the class could go fishing sometime. Pavel was riveted by the suggestion. He asked, "Tomorrow? Where? How would we get there? Could I bring my own pole?"

I realized what I had done and tried to put the rabbit back in the hat, but, of course, I failed. Other kids also got excited. We never finished the spelling words.

It was time to go. Fatima picked up papers and pencils. I helped Ignazio with the broken zipper on his coat. Ly flashed me a smile and said, "I'll see you next Monday, Miss Mary." Trinh and Deena slipped out, but Fatima waved shyly at me. I gave Abdul a hug, but he shrugged it off. Pavel had one last fishing question and I smiled sheepishly at Grace, remarking, "I've created a monster." As Khoa dashed out the door with his shoelaces untied, he asked me, "Will you come back tomorrow?"

As I watched Mai walk across the yard into the main school building, I thought about her complex situation. I wanted to help her with her feelings about her baby brother, her stepmother, and even about her mother's death. She was raised in a culture that teaches the suppression of negative emotions. It was unlikely she knew what to do with her troubled feelings.

Her scratches were a call for help. I recommended that Grace do all she could to feature Mai in class, to give her some power and visibility. I suggested a Big Sister from the YWCA so that she could have one person who cared just for her.

These children had many complicated needs, including the need to heal from great sadness. Some dealt with the sadness by withdrawing, others by clinging. Trinh, Deena, Mai, and Abdul needed therapists, but they all came from places where mental problems are unacceptable. Many students came from cultures where creative expression in children isn't valued. Yet, they had great needs to understand and share their experiences. Group storytelling would be great, and art and music therapy might work because children don't need verbal skills for them. Play and laughter are therapeutic. I had never been around kids who loved to laugh as much as ELL kids.