Page 4
News
Street Roots • January 30-February 5, 2015
I The Somali community
*
is the third largest
immigrant community
in Portland Public
Schools, but it’s still
waiting for district to
find a better way to teach
its failing youth
Sòmali community out en masse, asking PPS
to teach its youth in a more effective way.
Last year PPS officials told Somali parents
that the two predominant Somali languages
might be up .next for a dual language
immersion program - a program that’s been
proven to be the most effective means of
teaching non-native English speakers in U.S.
public schools. This news generated a lot of
excitement among community members.
Studies show children in dual language
programs generally do much better
academically in the long run than English
speaking students who are not in dual
language programs.
PPS has dual language immersion classes
in Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, Japanese
and Mandarin - languages that have a
higher demand among English-speaking
students that fill half the seats in a dual
language classroom. These language
programs start in kindergarten and go
through elementary school, teaching both
English and a foreign language to a
classroom filled with native speakers of both
languages. Each year, less and less of the
foreign language is taught.
While there are other languages among
immigrant students that are not represented
in this special language program, Somali is
the most commonly spoken.
n October, Musse Olol, chairman of the
Somali American Council of Oregon,.
encouraged the PPS Board of Education to
support a Somali dual language immersion
program within its system. He addressed
the board sayingthe problcius with S o in a ii—
youth are originating in PPS. “I’ve seen
today kids that are in the system, that are
prone to fail. Especially our male youth are
going to the justice system directly. In _
Seattle we have about 300 youngsters in the
jail system there, and Portland is going in
that direction if you don’t reverse,” Olol
says.
Olol says the program Would not only
benefit children who don’t speak English, it
would also help Somali youth who were born
in the U.S. to communicate better with their
parents and older relatives, and help them
to appreciate their families’ culture -
making their roots and the language spoken
at home an asset, not something to be
ashamed of.
Michael Bacon, PPS assistant director of
the Dual Language Immersion Program says
studies show students who read and write
well in their first language perform better
academically and learn a second language
much faster. He was hoping to propose a
Somali dual language program to the board
of education this month, but a feasibility
study conducted by PPS revealed major
barriers.
However, on Jan. 20 — instead of
proposing the program originally presented
to the Somali community — Bacon and
Debbie Armendariz, interim director of PPS
Dual Language Immersion Program,
proposed the creation of a native language
literacy program. This program works like
ESL. Students would be pulled out of
regular classes to learn how to read and
write in their native language for part of the
day in addition to being pulled out to learn
English for another part of the day. The
Somali language lessons would also be used
I
Batula Mohamud grew up in a refugee camp in
Kenya. When she was placed into ninth grade after
immigrating to, the U.S., she didn’t know how to ,
write her name. She wasn’t able to graduate from
high school, but was be accepted into a program at
Portland Community College’s Southeast Campus
that allowed her to continue her studies without a
diploma. She hopes to graduate with an Associate’s
in 2016.
PH O TO BY EMILY .GREEN
BY EM ILY GREEN
English as a Second Language, or ESL,
classes, usually taught by teachers who
speak only English. Statistics show that
atula Mohamud can’t tell you her age.
among language programs, the basic,
On paper she’s 26, but she says she’s
federally mandated ESL has the lowest long
most likely younger - probably 22 or
term success rate. Mohamud attended high
23 years old. She was born in Somalia but
school for four years and left after finishing
was forced to flee the country with her
her
senior year without a diploma.
mother and siblings when she was a baby to
Sheww never had a teacher who spoke
escape the ongoing conflict. For most of her
her language.
childhood, she lived in the arid, eastern
There are nearly 500 Somali youth
region of Kenya at the Dadaab Refugee
currently
attending Portland Public Schools
Camp, about 100 miles from the Somali
(PPS), and since 2010, they’ve combined to
border. She survived in the camp by
make the district’s third largest immigrant
cleaning dwellings and selling water to
community, behind Hispanics and
Somali shop owners in the mornings and
Vietnamese.
More than half don’t speak any
working in the garden and delivering food
rations to other residents of the camp in the English, and some had little, if any, formal
education prior to moving to the U.S. This
afternoons.
When she immigrated to the U.S. in 2004 is especially true of the most recent wave of
Somali immigrants. Many children in this
at the estimated age of 15, Mohamud
group were born in refugee camps in Kenya
couldn’t even write her first name. Despite
and, like Mohamud, never attended school.
her lack of any formal education, she was
In addition, few have parents with the
placed in a ninth-grade classroom.
education necessary to help them with their
In the U.S., immigrant children are
homework.
expected to assimilate. Federal law requires
Only 22 percent of Somali students in
they get pulled out of class each day to take
STAFF W R IT E R
B
Portland schools meet or exceed state
reading standards, and only 12 percent meet
or exceed state mathematics standards.
In 2013, out of 25 Somali youth in
Portland who made it to their senior year,
only nine graduated with a regular high
school diploma.
The result, say members of the Somali
commumty, is that the schools act more like
a pipeline to prison than a means of
education. Their kids struggle and then drop
out. Many join gangs and start using drugs.
Speaking through a translator, Somali
refugee Nuur Abdi says that he has two
daughters in Southwest Portland’s Wilson
High School. He says it’s difficult for them
because no teacher at their school speaks
their native language, and they don’t get
much help because they aren’t fluent in
English.
“One out of five Somali makes it to
college. Their education goes down, and
they look for jobs in warehouses, jobs with
no experience needed, no future. If they’re
lucky they might get a GED,” Abdi says.
The language situation has brought the
See SOMALI, page 5