The Middle of Everywhere (21 page)

I wondered what she had been like before the war. What had she been like when she had a nice house, a husband, and a flower garden? How do we evaluate a woman who has seen her husband and father killed, and who has walked past bombed villages with a hungry, traumatized son at her side? How do we judge a woman who has seen all systems fail?

She had a highly aroused flight-and-fight system that wasn't adaptive now. But her protectiveness and her fierce intensity had kept Anton alive. Seen from her vantage point, her behavior was understandable. She and Anton weren't crazy, only reacting to a crazy world. The irony was that they could really use someone to help them understand they were in a new place and could calm down.

While puberty is a biological event, adolescence is a cultural phenomenon. American adolescence is about individuation, risk taking, and experimentation. It's about wildness and freedom. Our concept of adolescence is discordant with the values of many cultures. While American children often are raised to be independent and antiauthoritarian, children from traditional cultures are raised to have great respect for adults. In Middle Eastern, Latino, Asian, and African cultures, elders are venerated. Old and young enjoy each other's company. They all enjoy the same activities; they work together and play together.

Refugees are amazed by how American teenagers treat their parents and grandparents. Many of the ELL teens plan to live at home until they are married. Some hope to live all of their lives with their families. And yet, at school, like all American teenagers, they learn to think for themselves. In fact, the major identity struggles of refugee teens involve finding the balance between independence and their obligations to family and community.

As discussed earlier, for refugee families in America, the power often shifts radically from parents to children. Children of refugees frequently become bicultural and bilingual more rapidly than their elders. As teens, they learn how to drive and get around town. Some even support their families. Parents no longer have superior knowledge of the world and they no longer have a village helping them raise their kids.

When teens become surly and disobedient, refugee parents often don't know how to respond. Their traditional means of discipline—shaming from elders, reprimands from the extended family, or physical punishments—may not be possible. Furthermore, the parents may be dependent on their child's goodwill in order to have a ride to work or even an income. This parental lack of power allows teens to rule the roost in ways that hurt the whole family and especially the teen. Many parents feel they lose their children to America.

At the high schools in Lincoln teens must call home for permission to do many things. However, since these teens speak English and their parents often don't, the school must trust them to explain problems to their parents and accurately report their parents' reactions. Parents often cannot read grade cards or talk directly to school personnel about their concerns. One boy told his parents that the school required all boys to wear expensive black leather jackets, and his impoverished parents scraped together the money to buy him one.

And yet, in spite of the many problems, I was struck by the love and loyalty refugee teens feel for their parents. When I asked teenagers, "What is your dream now?" many answered that they wanted to buy their parents a house.

Teens are caught between their families and the larger culture. They are expected to meet demands in school that vary significantly from what they experience at home. At school they may not be considered American and at home they are considered too Americanized. The most resilient kids do a lot of cultural switching. They act American at school, traditional at home. They are bicultural, or in many cases, multicultural, and they know when "to wear each culture."

Adolescents are identity-seeking organisms. They try on different identities for size and fit. Nothing is yet fixed. This experimentation is intensified for the ELL students. They hunger to be defined, to be told, "this is who you are or who you could become." Eleanor Roosevelt's definition of success is, "To cultivate and express one's talents and powers to the utmost and to use those powers for the good of the community." That is a good definition for the ELL students, many of whom want to use their gifts to serve their families. They really appreciate cultural brokers who take the time to notice what they do well and help them see how they might develop their gifts'.

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."

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 fun of a special education student who couldn't talk. Their teacher dealt with that by teaching them about mental handicaps. She encouraged students to befriend handicapped students and learn more about their experiences. Some refugees come from places where handicapped people are not respected.

Their teacher said, "We are in America now. At school everyone deserves respect for trying to learn."

Refugee students in high school seem more affected by poverty than do younger kids. They are more sensitive about class and status differences. Except for the gang kids, the ELL students can't afford the designer clothes many American kids wear. Most wear Goodwill clothes, although some kids do amazingly well with what they pull from used clothing boxes. Other kids have parents who spend their meager salaries buying them a pair of designer jeans or Doc Martins. One particularly cold year a teacher bought all the ELL kids hats and gloves for the holidays. Several marveled that they had something actually new to wear.

Some teens learn all the wrong things about America. Instead of listening to their teachers, they listen to their peers, the media, and ads. Sometimes when parents realize they have lost control and that their children are in trouble, they return to their old countries to save the teenager from American problems.

Boys, especially, are trapped in a weird bind. Their peers teach them that "to act white" is to be disloyal to their ethnic group. Studying, making good grades, being polite, or joining school clubs are all defined as "acting white." So the boys must choose between social acceptance by peers and meeting parental expectations. Many conform their way into being rebellious at school. They learn not to learn.

The Vietnamese gang boys are a good example of the perils and complexity of cultural switching. They are an odd combination of playful and tough. They often take on a "tough guise" in class. But they don't date and many work after school and hand their mothers their checks. When a community celebration occurs, they show up with their families and act like good sons, but some are dealing drugs, stealing cars, and robbing their own people.

There are Bosnian gangs, Kurdish gangs, and Latino gangs as well. The gangs meet two legitimate needs—the need for a peer community and the need for power. Gangs are default communities that exist because there is nothing better.

However, in spite of some sad stories, results from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health show a remarkably high level of general adjustment in refugee kids. They tend to make grades that are equal to or better than those of American kids and they are less likely to drop out of school. They are physically and mentally healthier. As teens they are less likely than American kids to use drugs and alcohol, to be obese, or to have asthma. This study found a high level of self-esteem compared to native-born kids. In fact, with acculturation, the well-being of refugee students actually decreases. The longer kids are in America, the less time they spend on homework and the more likely they are to be sexually active.

On the surface, it seems as if American teens would be happier than refugee teens. They generally have more money and fewer obstacles in their paths. However, American kids have much more exposure to a toxic media culture then do most of the refugee kids. They don't necessarily have the newcomer zest of refugee kids. Also, being useful gives humans great pride and satisfaction. Overcoming obstacles and transcending difficulties builds self-regard. Refugee students know they are vital to their family's functioning. American kids sometimes feel like they are a drain on family resources.

Few American students in Lincoln were interested in the ELL students. Schools often have what Jesse Jackson called "the illusion of inclusion." There are bright posters on the walls of kids of all colors, but there is little real mingling or appreciation of differences. At school, American kids never suspected that the Dinka student they passed in the halls had walked from southern Sudan to South Africa to find a safe haven. Or that the girl next to them at lunch heroically had led her family to a safe house after her father was shot in Colombia. Instead, the American students passed the ELL students in the halls for years and never spoke.

I spent a year at a high school in Lincoln, sitting in on classes, doing therapy, and interviewing students, including Liem and Anton whose stories open this chapter. I befriended students and their families and became part of their lives. I taught a few students to drive. I have tried with these stories to remain true to the spirit of the school. I have changed names and identifying details of the students. At the high school, I worked with many of the ELL teachers but, for simplicity's sake, I will refer only to one composite teacher I'll call Mrs. Kaye.

I first visited on a crisp fall day. I parked in the crowded parking lot and walked through students of all shapes, styles, and colors toward the enormous high school. On the front steps of the school, Vietnamese young men, wearing baggy pants, silky shirts, and gold chains, with their hair slicked back in a gangster look, danced to Vietnamese rap music. The young women, tiny and delicate, wore skintight pants and high heels. They alternately flirted with the boys and yawned at their antics. The girls were a funny combination of sophisticated in their dress and innocent in their behavior. They giggled and blushed but managed to look seductive as well.

Inside the big doors hung flags from twenty countries. The language rhythms of Arabic, Vietnamese, Spanish, and Bosnian jazzed up the halls. Young Iranian women in long black robes hurried past African American and Latino kids. There were lots of white kids here, too, some from poor families but many from middle-class and even wealthy families.

I walked up two flights of stairs to Mrs. Kaye's room. Her classroom had many welcome signs and a quotation by Teilhard de Chardin:
THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO GIVE THE NEXT GENERATION A REASON TO HOPE
. She had only one rule posted:
BE POLITE, IT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO BE NICE THAN TO LEARN ENGLISH.
The walls were covered with maps, piñatas, Buddhas, paper flowers, posters from various countries, and photos of "great students through the years."