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Educating Newcomers
VUE Number 15, Spring 2007

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EXCERPT:
Stories of War and Schooling: The Children Left Behind

By Alina Newman
Alina Newman is an adjunct assistant professor of literacy studies and curriculum and teaching at Hofstra University and a teacher of English as a Second Language in Long Island, New York.
> Author's biography


Children who come from war-torn and impoverished areas of Central America and the Caribbean often bring with them backgrounds that schools seldom acknowledge or take into account.

Joan DiBono was not particularly thrilled during the fall of 1991. Our suburban school district, already overwhelmed with students,was forced to create new classrooms in order to accommodate a growing surge of immigrants. The principal was counting on Joan to "bite the bullet," give up her treasured seniority in third grade, and teach one of the newly formed first grades. When she brought Alberto to my ESL room on that late September morning, Joan did not look happy, and neither did her frightened charge.

"MRS. NEWMAN." Her eyes glittered with rage. "I would like you to meet Al-ber-to? He's just arrived from El Salvador and speaks no English?" Her hand rested on a little boy's shoulders. "Al-ber-to can't hold a pencil. Al-ber-to stuck his hand in my fish tank. I don't think he's ever been in a school building before. Could you have a happy little talk with him about acceptable classroom behavior?"


A New Challenge for All Teachers

Joan faced a pedagogical challenge that most mainstream monolingual educators in suburbia were unprepared to handle. The acculturation of immigrant children was, until recently, considered almost exclusively to be the responsibility of the English as a second language (ESL) teacher. Poor Alberto had escaped a bloody civil war only to get caught in a political, pedagogical, and racial riptide that threatened to drag him under. My job was to help him swim to shore, and quickly.

Thus began my sixteen-year career as a bilingual ESL teacher in Long Island, New York. Hundreds of second-language learners have crossed the threshold of my ESL classroom since 1990, survivors of senseless violence or desperate poverty. Salvadorans sought safety and freedom from civil war; Guatemalans fled political turmoil and genocide; Dominicans sought a brighter economic future. Families continue to seek the promise of America with little more than a burning desire to survive and erase the political madness or hardships left behind.


Struggling Children, Heart-Wrenching Stories

For these folks, there is no definitive processing center like Ellis Island, but an undetermined borderland that separates aliens from those who hold power; an emotional border crossed with struggle that "has always been inner, and is played out in the outer terrains" (Anzaldœa 1987, p. 109). Paulo Freire wrote that true teaching comes from a common ground based on respect, humility, and mutual admiration. Thus, I am increasingly conscious of my outward behavior, knowing full well that perceptions can cause even the most dedicated to make wrong assumptions about people whose lives they do not understand.
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