|
|
Building Smart Education Systems |
Voices in Urban Education
Archives
Educating Newcomers
VUE Number 15, Spring 2007
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:
Making High School Work and Changing the World for Immigrant Students: The SEIS Approach
By Lorna Fast Buffalo Horse
Lorna Fast Buffalo Horse is principal of the Spanish-English International School on the Roosevelt Campus in Portland, Oregon.
> Author's biography
By recognizing the unique assets immigrant children possess, a troubled high school in Portland, Oregon, has been able to turn itself around.
Eight years ago, when I first came to work at Roosevelt High School in Portland, Oregon, students and staff alike cued me in to the internal nickname for the school: Loser-velt. Failure was internalized at multiple levels with low test scores, high dropout rates, and pernicious discipline problems. Roosevelt was at a turning point, as federal School-to-Work money was drying up and a premier career program was starting to fade with the lost funding.
The other issue that was knocking at Roosevelt's door during the same period was a change in student demographics. Roosevelt had long been a school with higher-than-average poverty and a racially and ethnically diverse population. What was new was that the Latino population alone was increasing significantly. The school was changing from a diverse student body with large numbers of White working-class, African American, Hmong, Vietnamese, Russian, and smaller numbers of Latino students to one in which Latino students were rivaling all other groups.
Latino students enrolling at Roosevelt since 1999 have tended to be newer immigrants with little or no English-language proficiency. These students had an average prior schooling level of just over six years, and several entered school as unaccompanied minors — teenagers who worked and lived with friends or siblings and whose parents not only did not live with them, but depended upon them to send support home to Mexico or Guatemala. To add to all of these challenges, many of these students came to us as undocumented immigrants — students with few prospects for legal employment and virtually no chance of receiving federal financial aid or even many private scholarships to attend post-secondary education.
The Roosevelt population change meant that staff had much to learn about language acquisition, sheltered teaching protocols, and ways to motivate and inspire students who could easily and understandably slip into hopelessness. Many students escaped pessimism, though; two contagiously hopeful ones are described here. We will start with the story of Flor.
Flor: Dashed Hopes for an Exceptional Student
Flor was born in Guatemala during that country's civil war. Her parents made the difficult decision to leave her with her grandparents there and seek political asylum in the United States. After two years, with asylum secured, they arranged to have their daughter sent to them in Oregon. Flor enrolled in school and the family settled in to a new life. More children were born and the parents became certified as foster parents who took in countless foster children. Life was good in many ways, but they still needed to resolve Flor's immigration status. They sought legal counsel, paid thousands of dollars to attorneys, and waited for years in the hope that attorneys could make her status change.
Meanwhile, Flor proved to be an excellent student. She had a dream of becoming a doctor and prepared herself for college. During her senior year of high school, she applied to colleges and for scholarships. She was accepted to a large university in Oregon and was awarded a full-ride scholarship, contingent upon her proof of legal residency. Her parents came to the school for help and the school contacted a congressional representative. The Congressman's staff made contacts on Flor's behalf and arranged for an appointment at the office of the Guatemalan Consul in San Francisco.
Warning: include(../permissions_sub.html) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /Library/WebServer/Documents/annenberg/VUE/spring07/Fast.php on line 139
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '../permissions_sub.html' for inclusion (include_path='.:') in /Library/WebServer/Documents/annenberg/VUE/spring07/Fast.php on line 139
Archives
Educating Newcomers
VUE Number 15, Spring 2007
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:
Making High School Work and Changing the World for Immigrant Students: The SEIS Approach
By Lorna Fast Buffalo Horse
Lorna Fast Buffalo Horse is principal of the Spanish-English International School on the Roosevelt Campus in Portland, Oregon.
> Author's biography
By recognizing the unique assets immigrant children possess, a troubled high school in Portland, Oregon, has been able to turn itself around.
Eight years ago, when I first came to work at Roosevelt High School in Portland, Oregon, students and staff alike cued me in to the internal nickname for the school: Loser-velt. Failure was internalized at multiple levels with low test scores, high dropout rates, and pernicious discipline problems. Roosevelt was at a turning point, as federal School-to-Work money was drying up and a premier career program was starting to fade with the lost funding.
The other issue that was knocking at Roosevelt's door during the same period was a change in student demographics. Roosevelt had long been a school with higher-than-average poverty and a racially and ethnically diverse population. What was new was that the Latino population alone was increasing significantly. The school was changing from a diverse student body with large numbers of White working-class, African American, Hmong, Vietnamese, Russian, and smaller numbers of Latino students to one in which Latino students were rivaling all other groups.
Latino students enrolling at Roosevelt since 1999 have tended to be newer immigrants with little or no English-language proficiency. These students had an average prior schooling level of just over six years, and several entered school as unaccompanied minors — teenagers who worked and lived with friends or siblings and whose parents not only did not live with them, but depended upon them to send support home to Mexico or Guatemala. To add to all of these challenges, many of these students came to us as undocumented immigrants — students with few prospects for legal employment and virtually no chance of receiving federal financial aid or even many private scholarships to attend post-secondary education.
The Roosevelt population change meant that staff had much to learn about language acquisition, sheltered teaching protocols, and ways to motivate and inspire students who could easily and understandably slip into hopelessness. Many students escaped pessimism, though; two contagiously hopeful ones are described here. We will start with the story of Flor.
Flor: Dashed Hopes for an Exceptional Student
Flor was born in Guatemala during that country's civil war. Her parents made the difficult decision to leave her with her grandparents there and seek political asylum in the United States. After two years, with asylum secured, they arranged to have their daughter sent to them in Oregon. Flor enrolled in school and the family settled in to a new life. More children were born and the parents became certified as foster parents who took in countless foster children. Life was good in many ways, but they still needed to resolve Flor's immigration status. They sought legal counsel, paid thousands of dollars to attorneys, and waited for years in the hope that attorneys could make her status change.
Meanwhile, Flor proved to be an excellent student. She had a dream of becoming a doctor and prepared herself for college. During her senior year of high school, she applied to colleges and for scholarships. She was accepted to a large university in Oregon and was awarded a full-ride scholarship, contingent upon her proof of legal residency. Her parents came to the school for help and the school contacted a congressional representative. The Congressman's staff made contacts on Flor's behalf and arranged for an appointment at the office of the Guatemalan Consul in San Francisco.
Warning: include(../permissions_sub.html) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /Library/WebServer/Documents/annenberg/VUE/spring07/Fast.php on line 139
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '../permissions_sub.html' for inclusion (include_path='.:') in /Library/WebServer/Documents/annenberg/VUE/spring07/Fast.php on line 139
|
Annenberg Institute for School Reform Brown University, Box 1985 Providence, RI 02912 |
Telephone: 401.863.7790 Fax: 401.863.1290 |
 AISR_info@brown.edu
|
© all material AISR