Left behind?

Some say Somali students not getting what they need

By Jennifer Anderson

The Portland Tribune, Nov 12, 2009, Updated Nov 13, 2009 (5 Reader comments)

L.E. BASKOW / TRIBUNE PHOTO

Students Ali Joli, left, and Mohamed Salah, with tutor Austen Weymueller and fellow student Hussein Mohamed take part in the Kateri Park apartments’ homework club. Sponsored by Catholic Charities of Oregon, the complex is largely filled with Somali and Somali Bantu refugees whose chldren attend nearby Grout Elementary.

Three years ago, Salma Sheikh didn’t know her last name. She had never been to school, had no concept of reading or arithmetic and had never written anything except her first name – in Arabic.

Born in Somalia 18 years ago, she was raised in Nairobi and then at a refugee camp in Kenya, where she helped her mother with chores and with caring for her younger siblings.

Her entire life, she’s had no access to school at all – which makes her and most of the other 300 or so Somali and Somali Bantu refugees in Portland Public Schools a unique subset within the district’s English as a Second Language program.

Like her peers, Salma – now in her third year at Cleveland High School – has put her schooling before anything else, determined to make a life for herself and her family.

“When I get married – maybe (at age) 25 or 30,” she says,“when I get babies, I want to help my babies.”

Now, Salma speaks English well enough to say that she likes “chillin’” with her friends, and wants to study nursing at a community college because she’s heard “you can make a lot of money.”

There’s just one problem: While she and other students classified as “English language learners” can appear to be nearly fluent in speech, they are still struggling to read and write in English because they simply haven’t caught up yet. English fluency takes five to seven years, experts say.

It used to be that the district served these students with separate English as a Second Language classes and study hall periods so they could get extra tutoring support.

Starting this year, however, the district has changed its approach in response to a February state audit that said ESL students weren’t getting enough access to the broad range of curriculum at the high school level, and should instead be served in the mainstream with “sheltered” instruction by teachers.

That means teachers must make the curriculum accessible to these students through a variety of techniques, such as working in small groups or focusing on new vocabulary beforehand.

But in some classrooms, sheltering isn’t exactly working, says Kimberly Crowell, who teaches 19 English language learners among her four sophomore physics and chemistry classes at Cleveland.

“Half of mine are failing and I expect that number to go up as the year goes on,” she says, noting that she’s gotten similar reports from her colleagues.

“This group of kids is adorable, just really lovely. It just breaks my heart when they come to me and ask, ‘Why am I not getting a good score? I tried really hard.’”

Jean Fischer, interim ESL director for the district, says she hears those sentiments, but notes that studies show students who are immersed in English learn faster.

Teachers received a five-day workshop on sheltering techniques this summer and training is ongoing, Fischer says.

TRIBUNE PHOTO: L.E. BASKOW • Volunteer tutor Steve Levy has worked with Cleveland student Salma Sheikh on her English in the three years she's been in the United States. High school students have a tough time catching up, Levy and other educators say.

Still, Crowell says she finds it difficult to take time out of her lesson to explain what a test tube is for students who’ve never seen one.

In PPS, one in 10 students are classified as English language learners. Somali and Somali Bantu refugees, now numbering around 300, are growing quickly.

As of last year, Somali surpassed Russian as the fourth most-common language spoken in PPS besides English; the top three are Spanish, Vietnamese and Cantonese.

The Somali Bantu, a group of peaceful farmers, have been fleeing robbery, extortion, rape and murder in their homeland since the 1990s, but in the past five years there’s been a sharp rise as they’ve come to Portland among 47 other resettlement sites in the U.S. The refugees are coming to the U.S. legally, on track to gain a green card and apply for citizenship after five years.

Now that they’re here, Portland and other urban school districts across the country are struggling with how to serve them in the classroom.

A motivated group

In Portland, teachers and academics who work with the Somali and Somali Bantu population say they’re continually impressed by their dedication to learning English.

Several adult ESL programs in Portland are filling with refugees, many of them mothers who say they want to be able to help their children with homework.

“They’re unlike any immigrant and refugee group I’ve ever seen,” says Sam Gioia, an instructor of social work at Portland State University who began a capstone program eight years ago linking PSU students with mostly Somali Bantu students in PPS classrooms.

“Most kids, tutoring makes them feel ashamed, reminds them of what they can’t do,” he says. “These kids are demanding it.”

Some of his tutors work at one of the big Somali and Somali Bantu refugee hotspots in the city: just off Southeast Powell Boulevard and a couple of blocks from Cleveland, at the Kateri Park and adjacent Esperanza apartment complexes.

Sometimes called “Little Jilib,” after the place many of them lived in Somalia, the subsidized apartments have been a magnet because their three- and four-bedroom units offer enough room for the large Muslim families.

Catholic Charities, which opened the complex in 2005, also offers services including a food pantry, preschool and a homework club for both elementary- and high school-age kids five days a week.

At the elementary level, 20 kids come daily to work with volunteer tutors in groups of one, two or three, begging the adults for help with their printing practice, adding, subtracting, vocabulary words and reading assignments.

Elisabeth Gern, who runs the program, says there’s a marked difference in whether the child has arrived in the U.S. at a young age, when language acquisition comes more easily, or as a teenager, when they face more complex subjects and greater workload.

TRIBUNE PHOTO: L.E. BASKOW • Markham Elementary School art teacher Erica Huber, dressed as a gnome, checks on the progress of student Khadija Hassan during a gnome-building class. Markham has a large Somali population, and students whose native language is Somali now outnumber those who speak Spanish.

“High school students are so disadvantaged – their brain isn’t in the same place,” she says. “I can see how completely overwhelmed they are. There’s the homework they cannot do. If you want a dropout, do that. Completely overwhelm them.”

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