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Newcomers School bridges language gap among Guilford students

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A Lee Enterprises, Incorporated newspaper. Majority shareholder: David Hoffmann, Hoffmann Media Group.

Learning to Understand

Newcomers School bridges language gap among Guilford students

Part 2 of a 2-part series

1 of 7

03_sh_opportunity.language

Vung Ksor assists Kang Rocham, a Vietnamese immigrant, during a English as a second language class at a Women’s Learning Group session in Greensboro in May.

05_sh_opportunity.language

Vietnamese immigrants write sentences in English as they attend ESOL classes at Womens Learning Group session in Greensboro, NC on May 7, 2015. (H. SCOTT HOFFMANN/ News & Record)

Vietnamese immigrants Chin Siu asks a question of Karla McDonald as she attends ESOL classes at Womens Learning Group session in Greensboro, NC on May 7, 2015. (H. SCOTT HOFFMANN/ News & Record)

Betsy Renfrew assists Vietnamese immigrants Hng Lund Fnu (center) and Hlang Romah with ESOL classes at Womens Learning Group session in Greensboro, NC on May 7, 2015. (H. SCOTT HOFFMANN/ News & Record)

Vietnamese immigrants write sentences in English as they attend ESOL classes at Womens Learning Group session in Greensboro, NC on May 7, 2015. (H. SCOTT HOFFMANN/ News & Record)

A mural on the front doors greets students as they enter the Newcomers School in Greensboro.

Vietnamese immigrants Raben H and Nger H (center) attend ESOL classes and also learn to knit and crochet at Womens Learning Group sessions in Greensboro, NC on May 7, 2015. (H. SCOTT HOFFMANN/ News & Record)

About the Equity Reporting Project

Money from a program called the Equity Reporting Project paid for some elements of this report. 

Journalists awarded fellowships through this program receive small stipends to put toward the costs of their work. The News & Record used a portion of its stipend to pay for an interactive online map and to buy lunch for a group of students who participated in a roundtable discussion about their experiences in local schools.

The Equity Reporting Project was started last year through Renaissance Journalism, a program of San Francisco State University's journalism department. The project is funded with a grant from the Ford Foundation, a New York-based private philanthropy.

The project focuses on the disadvantages some students face because of opportunity gaps or systemic issues such as teacher quality, de facto segregation and the approach to English language instruction. Opportunity gaps are considered the underlying reasons for the much-discussed achievement gaps seen between students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, among other things.

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By Marquita Brown

GREENSBORO — A 30-minute nap in class each day at Newcomers School was the only rest one student got for weeks.

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Contact Marquita Brown at (336) 373-7002, and follow @mbrownNR on Twitter.

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Read part one, "Language, culture barriers slow learning for some Guilford students."

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'It's about learning an entirely different culture'

Many teachers said they didn’t know what to do earlier this century when hundreds of students — immigrants and refugees who spoke little to no English — started enrolling in Guilford County Schools.

These students never had attended a U.S. school. They arrived with varying levels of formal education. They caused standardized test scores to plunge.

“We couldn’t talk to them; they couldn’t talk to us,” said Betty Stratford, who at the time was a media assistant at Mendenhall Middle School. “It was just like, what are we supposed to do?”

The school system responded by creating the Newcomers School in Greensboro.

The language barrier was a significant challenge for teachers of students in the upper grades, according to Terry Grier, who was superintendent at the time.

“We had children whose needs were not met, and we had teachers who were not prepared to meet the children’s needs," Grier, now superintendent of Houston Independent School District in Texas, said in a recent phone interview with the News & Record.

Grier studied newcomers programs in other states experiencing an influx of immigrants similar to Guilford County's.

In 2007, the Guilford County Board of Education agreed to spend about $2.4 million to create a new program and house it in the old Guilford Primary School. The school opened that August.

Eight years later, Newcomers is the only school of its kind in North Carolina and one of only a handful in the nation.

The challenges teachers and students faced before Newcomers help explain why the school was needed.

“It’s not just about learning English,” Grier said. “It’s about learning about an entirely different culture.”

Life skills taught

Aside from reading, writing and math, the students also learn about practical, everyday life, such as how to tell time on a clock or flush a toilet — things someone from a more rural, less-developed country might not have experienced.

A huge gap exists for these students, but it is cultural and not intellectual, Grier said, noting that they are very intelligent.

Stratford recalled one experience at Mendenhall with an immigrant student whose father put him on the bus for school but had not enrolled him.

“He just got off the bus, and he stood there speaking French,” Stratford said. “We were like, what do we do now?”

The boy clearly was scared, she said.

“You could see him shaking.”

Stratford found a teacher who had studied French in high school. With that help, she said, they got the boy’s name — Ferdinand. His father had lived in Greensboro for a while and recently had brought over his children from Togo, a country in West Africa.

After helping get Ferdinand enrolled, Stratford worked on other ways to help him succeed in his new school.

She recruited a neighbor who spoke French to be his tutor. They worked together for about two years, Stratford said.

Outside help

At Mendenhall, Stratford had sought money and volunteers to help resolve problems that arose for immigrants and refugees at the school.

She started a fund to buy glasses for students. Otherwise, she said, they would have to wait for months to get a pair through Medicaid. She persuaded physicians to give student athletes who were immigrants or refugees discounted rates for physicals.

Newcomers programs in public school systems provide social connections to immigrant families in a way regular schools often can’t, said Deborah Short, a national researcher on newcomers programs and education of English language learners. Such programs are a bigger resource than just education, she said.

Some offer English classes for adults. They tend to have workers who can connect families to social services, such as mental health care.

“You have to think about the whole child,” Short said.

To break down barriers to learning, Guilford’s Newcomers School has a full-time social worker and four interpreters. A clothes closet fills up one mobile classroom, and families are free to shop there during the school day. Various community groups help stock a food pantry at the school.

Newcomers doesn’t have a traditional PTA. Officials say it’s difficult to start one given the language and transportation challenges for parents, as well as the one-year time limit for students.

Instead, the singles ministry at Westover Church steps in. This group buys supplies and other items needed at the school. Some church members take families to buy groceries.

The church also hosts after-school tutoring, summer camps and other programs for Newcomers students, their families, and for other local immigrants and refugees.

There is no after-school tutoring or sports because students are bused to the school from across the county. The school system does bus students and their parents to Newcomers on weekends for language classes and tutoring.

The school partners with the UNC-Greensboro Psychology Clinic to provide counseling for families. The school also offers peer counseling, which Principal Candice Bailey likens to group therapy. 

Test struggles

The federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as No Child Left Behind, might be part of the reason why few school districts operate standalone newcomers schools, Short said. Such schools would never meet the required proficiency standards, she said. English learners by definition are not proficient.

Stratford said she recalls how some of her students struggled with tests.

“These children had to take the same tests even though they didn’t know what was on it. They didn’t have the faintest idea,” she said. “But they tried so hard, and it just broke my heart to watch them because they tried so hard and were so frustrated in trying so hard to learn."

And typical subject matter or assignments could prove difficult for some students, but not for academic reasons.

Stratford asked teachers to consider an alternative assignment for students who would get upset while studying the Holocaust.

She said a lot of children had survived violent conflicts before coming here.

That hadn’t occurred to some teachers, Stratford said.

She also suggested that instead of photographs, students look at paintings or less graphic depictions of historical events, such as wars.

Stratford said she doesn’t know of anyone, outside of Newcomers School, doing the type of work she did.

“I worry about children in the other schools that have an ESL (English as a second language) teacher, some of them only halftime and some of them fulltime, that don’t have a fund to buy shoes and glasses and things like that,” Stratford said.

The teachers need to concentrate on teaching, and they usually only have about 45 minutes a day to do that, sometimes just a few days a week.

“It’s just not enough," she said. 

Students' stories

Moses’ journey

Betty Stratford has dozens of stories about the students who are immigrants or refugees she helped at Mendenhall Middle School years ago as a media specialist.

She saw them struggle, in the days before Guilford County had a school for students new to the United States and who didn't speak English.

One of those stories is about a boy from Burma who was called Moses instead of his real name.

He was about 7 and an only child when he fled with his parents, Stratford said.

“In the midst of traveling, something happened and both of his parents got separated from him,” she said.

She asked him, “What did you do?”

He told her he was afraid, but he kept walking with the rest of the group. A man in the group realized he was alone and took him to a nearby aid station. From there, the boy went to an orphanage where he stayed for several months.

“Did you ever think that you would see your parents again?” she recalled asking him.

No, he said. “I thought I was going to be alone for the rest of my life.”

“That just about broke my heart,” Stratford said.

The boy and his parents did reunite after a few months and came together to Guilford County. Stratford saw that Moses had separation anxiety. He was reluctant to go on field trips.

Stratford pushed him to break that cycle because she was afraid it would get worse as he got older.

She convinced Moses and his parents to let him go with other eighth-graders on an annual trip to Washington. It worked, Stratford said.

When he later moved on to Page High, the boy she had to push to be independent was in charge of different student groups.

Phun's story

She doesn’t remember the journey or her family fleeing in the middle of the night with other members of the Bunong tribe of Montagnards. They fled the Dak Mil region in the central highlands of Vietnam, walking through forests to a refugee camp in Cambodia.

Phun H was about 3 years old then. She was about 5 when her family left the refugee camp and resettled in Greensboro.

She doesn’t know what the breaking point was for her parents, but she knows why they couldn’t stay in Vietnam.

“I just know that we were oppressed and they took away our land,” H said. “Land is a very big deal in Vietnam because we live off of our land.”

In Vietnam, her parents were subsistence farmers who mainly grew coffee beans. Here, her father works for a metal-scrapping company in Winston-Salem. Her mother works in a Greensboro factory that makes handles for shopping bags and other similar products.

Like most people, they complain about costs. “They complain about taxes a lot,” she said. Complaints aside, the family lives a pretty good life, H said.

“I know they’re happy over here because I know how difficult their life was in Vietnam,” she said.

She remembers walking through the presents aisle of a grocery store with her mother. Her mother showed her the twisted handle of a gift bag and said with pride that she made it.

H said she doesn’t know how to describe how she felt then, just that it was difficult.

“She doesn’t get paid a lot,” she said of her mother. “She does what she can.”

H and her parents no longer share the Bunong language. She can understand her parents when they scold her in Bunong — something they do that a lot, she said with a laugh. But she can only respond to them in English.

Her parents also couldn’t help her with school. She said they didn’t know what the grades meant. But Peggy Bradt, the family’s sponsor and friend, understood, H said.

So when she struggled with math in fourth grade, eventually earning a C, H worried she would upset Bradt.

“I was like, Phun, you’ve got to change. This is not OK.”

She pushed herself to do better and earned nothing less than B since then, she said.

H said Bradt, who attended her graduation from Page High, still motivates her. So does H's older sister, who took Advanced Placement classes in high school and now is a student at UNC-Wilmington. The two have a friendly competition, she said.

H said her parents also are one of her biggest sources of inspiration.

“My parents, they would always complain about how hard they are working, and these were like labor jobs,” H said. “I just remember them saying, ‘I don’t want you to ever do this. You need to make sure you get a good job.’”

H graduated in June from Page High. She plans to start classes at UNC-Chapel Hill after spending a year abroad, possibly volunteering in Cambodia or Thailand.

Proud to be different

After talking about their experiences in local schools, some students offered advice to others who are immigrants or refugees.

José Oliva, a Bonner Scholar at Guilford College, urged students to be proud of who they are.

“A lot of people, when they move to the United States, want to change their name because they want to be accepted into the community,” he said. “But never acculturate to that, you know? You are who you are. Your mom and dad gave you the name you have. Be proud of it. … If you were born in Nepal, be proud of being born in Nepal. If you were born in Vietnam, be proud of it. Because that’s who you are.”

He said some might struggle, thinking everyone in the U.S. is smarter and has the right answers, but that’s not true.

“You have the same brain, and I think, God created us all the same,” Oliva said. “You have your own thoughts and you can think for yourself. Don’t think because someone grew up in this other country that seems to be better off than yours they have the right answers. You have the same ability and capacity to distinguish what’s right and wrong.

"So always stand up for what you believe in and be proud of who you are.”

Andrew Young, an advocate who works with refugee and immigrant communities, said it’s important for students who are immigrants or refugees to be proud of their parents.

“You be proud of what you did and how you’re struggling, and just remember the struggle that your parents have gone through as well, because it’s not easy,” Young said.

It’s difficult for someone who is older to come to this country and try to learn the language, said Young, who also is a research fellow at the Center for New North Carolinians and the volunteer training coordinator at the Bonner Center for Community Service and Learning.

“Our parents really care for us and they really love us,” said Risuin Ksor, a Bonner Scholar at Guilford College. “One other reason why they’re doing certain things is that, yeah, they don’t know the American culture and they still have that old world mentality. That’s why they’re doing certain things. But what I learned is you have to communicate with your parents. You have to tell them what you’re doing because they’re worried. They have no idea what you’re doing in school, you know?”

Ksor urged students to communicate with their parents.

“And be calm, OK? Arguing is not going to help,” he said. “That’s just going to make everything worse.”

Before he traveled to El Salvador in January, Young said, he spent about two or three weeks trying to learn some Spanish and practicing with Oliva.

While there, “the people were laughing at me,” he said. “I’m an adult, I can take a joke, but I can also know how really hurtful it can be.”

Being bullied

What has bothered Balkissa Aboubacar most with her education so far in the U.S. has been other students.

“They bullied me,” Aboubacar said. “They were like, ‘Oh, you don’t speak English. You have (an) accent.’”

Aboubacar attended Grimsley High after spending about six months at Newcomers School. She said she still had difficulty speaking the language with teachers. Before starting classes at Grimsley, she said, she emailed her teachers to introduce herself and let them know she’s still learning the language.

The students teased her about her accent, said Aboubacar, who had moved to Guilford County from Niger about a year ago. She said they also asked her “stupid” questions.

Are there cars in Niger? What food do they eat? Why did she come here? Does she plan to go back?

She recalled trying to help one student with classwork when he asked her why she has such a strong accent. He told her he had trouble understanding her.

“And I told him, ‘Look, my accent is on my tongue,’” Aboubacar said. She told him she was doing her best to speak and for him to understand her.

“It was just difficult,” she said.

Aboubacar, who has since moved away, said she worried about how she would sometimes respond to the students. She talked with her counselor, who then talked with the student she was trying to help and resolved the situation.

Cultural misunderstandings

Barriers of language and culture make some students who are immigrants or refugees particularly vulnerable.

Raleigh Bailey, who retired two years ago as director of the Center for New North Carolinians, recalled an incident at Smith High in the mid- to late 1990s that he said illustrates how barriers of language and culture can hurt students.

A student from Thailand who did not speak English well was walking through a hallway at Smith, oblivious to the principal talking to him from behind, Bailey said.

Bailey couldn’t remember the principal’s name, just that he was new and he was supposed to be tough and straighten out discipline problems at the school.

“The principal starts yelling at him,” Bailey said. “Well, he doesn’t even know he’s talking to him because he doesn’t understand.”

Then the principal, thinking the boy was being defiant, grabbed him and pushed him against a wall, Bailey said.

“Well, he was pretty traumatized,” Bailey said of the student. “He was afraid to go back to school.”

Bailey said he thinks the principal was just trying to be a disciplinarian.

“I don’t think there was evil intended,” he said.

Still, he said, that type of situation is difficult.

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03_sh_opportunity.language

Vung Ksor assists Kang Rocham, a Vietnamese immigrant, during a English as a second language class at a Women’s Learning Group session in Greensboro in May.

Vietnamese immigrants write sentences in English as they attend ESOL classes at Womens Learning Group session in Greensboro, NC on May 7, 2015. (H. SCOTT HOFFMANN/ News & Record)

Vietnamese immigrants Chin Siu asks a question of Karla McDonald as she attends ESOL classes at Womens Learning Group session in Greensboro, NC on May 7, 2015. (H. SCOTT HOFFMANN/ News & Record)

Betsy Renfrew assists Vietnamese immigrants Hng Lund Fnu (center) and Hlang Romah with ESOL classes at Womens Learning Group session in Greensboro, NC on May 7, 2015. (H. SCOTT HOFFMANN/ News & Record)

Vietnamese immigrants write sentences in English as they attend ESOL classes at Womens Learning Group session in Greensboro, NC on May 7, 2015. (H. SCOTT HOFFMANN/ News & Record)

A mural on the front doors greets students as they enter the Newcomers School in Greensboro.

Vietnamese immigrants Raben H and Nger H (center) attend ESOL classes and also learn to knit and crochet at Womens Learning Group sessions in Greensboro, NC on May 7, 2015. (H. SCOTT HOFFMANN/ News & Record)

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