Each Child

After a lengthy orientation process (a good thing), Sam and I finally met the Somali refugee family with whom we will work on English language learning and schoolwork during the next year. Four children ranging in age from six to eleven, with bright eyes and quick smiles and sing-song voices chirruping utterly incomprehensible stories. I don't speak any Somali (yet). They don't speak much English. Which creates a bit of a tricky situation when it comes to helping them meet the requirements of common core educational standards.

When Sam was entering second grade the public school system where we lived shuffled school boundary lines, so we were assigned to a different public school. We had loved her public school for all of Kindergarten and first grade. Bloomington, IN, tends to have wonderful schools, due in part to the university's provision of student teachers, educational aides and extensive best-practices research (Go IU!), as well as a solid tax-base that provides necessary funding. We used the reshuffling as an opportunity to explore school options, which included visiting schools, reviewing curriculum, meeting teachers and evaluating test scores.

I remember wondering about those standardized test scores as we visited. The administration of the various schools presented the test scores as though comparing apples to apples. But I was working for Child Protective Services at the time. And I knew that a child who is hungry and homeless does not learn as well, let alone test as well, as his well-fed and sheltered classmate across town. A child who was barely spoken to let alone read to in their first years of life does not have the same foundational cognitive skills as their born-to-caring-and-well-educated-parents peer. What about children who learn differently? Does a standardized test score truly show their potential or, even more important, how to empower that potential?

We ended up enrolling Sam in a small Christian school for second grade. Their standardized test scores weren't as good as the public school from which we came nor the public school to which we were assigned, but I knew this was due, in part, to several children with difficult backgrounds and learning differences whose parents chose the school for the personalized and caring attention their children received. It was at this school that the teacher alerted us to the potential underlying cause of Sam's struggles with reading, and we were able to provide interventions. The transformation when those auditory connections were made and when phonics suddenly made sense, when reading became FUN, still makes me smile.

Our Somali students are attending a public school on the south side of Louisville. I met the principal of this school several years ago at a book talk I gave on Jericho Walls. He was exuberant and passionate and seemed enamored with my work (which was undoubtedly appealing). We worked together to arrange funding for every fifth grader to receive an autographed copy of Jericho Walls to correlate with a unit on the civil rights movement. It was evident he loved his students and he cared about their success. I'm thrilled our Somali students are attending this school.

It is a school with poor comparative test scores. It is considered a "near-to-failing" school.

It is a school with a large percentage of refugee students, students for whom English is their second, third, even fourth language. Students who were born into poverty, without access to books, education, food, shelter.

I know, from our extensive orientation training, that refugee children in Kentucky comprise a large number of high school drop outs. The struggles to acclimate to, let alone succeed in, our educational process is too great. Their families need them to spend that study time working to provide enough to make ends meet. If they are failing to meet standards, anyway, why not just get a job?

When I hear a news report on United States students' academic ranking worldwide I'm always curious about averages versus range. Because I know many US students at the top of international standardized testing. I know because many of these students attend Sam's current school - they are brilliant and hard working and creative and academically gifted. I also know there are many more students across Louisville who spent their early childhoods fleeing war and homelessness and devastation. They are brilliant and hard working and creative and have no idea how to complete the sentence: There is no doubt that Larry is a genuine ------- : he excels at telling stories that fascinate his listeners.

I don't know the answers. (To the overarching questions, that is. The answer to the question above is raconteur. I know that because I was born to well-educated, upper income parents who read to me and  supported my learning.) Teachers are overworked and underpaid and under appreciated as it is. Curriculum and educational practices are normed to the middle, to averages. Meeting the needs of the exceptionally gifted as well as those who struggle outside that bell curve requires individualized assessment that isn't possible with standardized testing; it requires individualized attention that just isn't feasible in the majority of educational environments. 

But Sam and I will do our best to stand in the gap for each of our four. Guul ayaan kuu rajaynayaa!