	March/April, 2005
Full Circle: One Hmong Refugee's Life By Kristin Bair, ELL Outlook™ Staff Writer Mo Chang remembers two things very clearly about her journey as a child from a refugee camp in Thailand to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where her family was initially resettled: (1) She didn't like the food on the airplane, but because she didn't speak any English, she couldn't ask for anything else; and (2) the American people love to smile, even when they don't know you. "You don't have to speak English to understand that," Chang says. "It's a welcoming." Like many people displaced by the Vietnam War, Chang was born in Laos in the 1960s. Her family lived an urban, middle-class life. She had four brothers at the time (now five brothers and a sister) and, luckily, parents who could afford to educate their children and believed that girls deserved the same education as boys. Her father, William B. Yang, was a well-educated lieutenant colonel in the army, and just before Laos became too dangerous for Chang's family to remain, he was elected mayor of their town, a position he never got to hold. Chang remembers how life changed during the Vietnam War. "I remember one time," she says, "while the war was going on, one of the bombs hit on the side of our house. It was during dinner, and everyone ran to hide in the bomb shelter. They all did, but they forgot about me sleeping in the bedroom. When my dad found out I wasn't with them, he ran back and got me. We could hear the bombs going." Chang was in the second grade at a public school when her family was forced to flee. "We all had to fight to get into the plane," she explains. "And I remember my mom and dad had to carry me up to the plane and push me in. There were so many people. It was daytime, and there were many people left on the ground." The plane took them to Thailand, where they lived in their first refugee camp. A few months later, they were moved to Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, where they lived for the next year. Though Chang recognizes that transitioning from a nice home to a refugee camp was very difficult for the adults, she also remembers how much fun it was for the children. "There was a church and a school," she explains. "You live in a camp, and as a little kid, you have church and school and all your relatives and friends. You just have fun every day." After living in the second camp for about a year, Chang's family took the opportunity to resettle in the United States. They were sponsored by seven Lutheran churches in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Chang credits the congregations of these churches and their great generosity with her family's successful resettlement. "I remember when we first got there," she explains. "They rented a trailer for us, but it wasn't ready so they put us in a church. They put food in the refrigerator and told us when we were hungry to help ourselves. Church members brought in potluck, different types of food. There was a contact person, a sponsor, who came to visit us. And there was an older lady we called Mother who came to teach us English after we moved to the trailer." Chang and her brothers enrolled in school immediately. Chang started in the second grade, and though the teachers were kind and welcoming, there wasn't an ESL program in place. In fact, Chang remembers that she and her brothers were the only Asian students in the entire school. For the first month, they just sat in their mainstream classrooms watching the American kids work and study while they silently sat at their desks. "It was very frustrating," Chang says, "because you're so used to going to school and learning and participating and now you can't. You get so upset inside because you want to do so much. I felt bad. I felt like, here's a child, you know, and I think I'm capable of doing things, but the language stopped me. I felt isolated and excluded, but I couldn't communicate that to anybody." After a month or two, the school found someone to pull Chang and her brothers out of the mainstream classrooms and do one-on-one English instruction. "We did lots of reading, reading and writing," Chang says. "That's how I learned to read. Just read and reread until I memorized it. Because I was a little older and I'd missed some of the phonics when you do pronunciation, like B-AT, BAT. I didn't really learn that way." After a year and a half in North Carolina, Chang's family moved to Minnesota. There was a growing Hmong population in St. Paul and many educational opportunities. "They had ESL services for us, but they were pull-out," Chang explains. "That was a model I didn't like. I missed a lot of the instruction, and when they pull you out, you feel like something's wrong with you." But despite the challenges of the pull-out program, Chang excelled. Thirty years after the resettlement of her own family in the United States, Chang is the Charter Schools Liaison and Special Projects Coordinator for St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS). She has a bachelor's degree in public administration, a master's degree in the education of teaching and learning, a principal's license, a superintendent's license, and within the next year, she will finish her doctorate at St. Mary's University. She has been working in some capacity in SPPS since her senior year of high school. "The St. Paul schools did a great job," she says. "Look at where I am now . . . working for them to help kids in a position very similar to my own." Chang's journey, from her home in Laos to the refugee camps in Thailand and finally to the United States, has been a long, successful one. In 2004, she and the rest of the educators in SPPS learned that 15,000 Hmong refugees from Wat Tham Krabok, a refugee camp in Thailand, would be resettled in the United States, many in St. Paul. Her interest was piqued. It was the perfect opportunity to bring her life full circle. Everything she had experienced and accomplished had led her to be the ideal person to help fellow Hmong refugee children transition to a new culture, a new language, and a new home. Shortly after the St. Paul community learned of the upcoming Hmong resettlement, St. Paul mayor Randy Kelly chose Chang to be a part of the group that traveled to Wat Tham Krabok in April 2004. "Of the 21-member delegation," Chang says, "about seven were Hmong professionals, and five [of the seven] were women. I think it made a real impact on the children and families in that camp. Our presence provided a role model. We had lots of discussions, and people would come up throughout the whole camp to surround us and ask what it's like to be in America and what opportunities they would have because they get mixed messages. For us to be there to reassure and give them the true story was wonderful. After all, we are the story... you can't make those things up." Chang's visit to the Wat was eye-opening. Once there, she realized that although she shared culture, language, history, and even many similar experiences with these people, there were also some very stark differences. "I guess I thought I was well informed about what was going on [at the Wat], but little did I know that things weren't the way I experienced them to be," Chang says. Unlike the camps she had lived in, Wat Tham Krabok was not a sanctioned refugee camp. While food and all other necessities had been provided to her family when she was young, she discovered that anything the people of the Wat needed, they had to procure for themselves. That included food, water, money, clothes, medicine, an organized system of government within the camp, and education. "A lot of people had sewing machines," Chang explains. "And they do a lot of hand embroidery so they could send things to their relatives in the United States to sell and send money back. That's the number one source of income." Chang says that everyone at the Wat embroidered: men, women, and children. "When we were in the camp, we saw children four and five embroidering. The whole family helps, even the boys." The military presence was different as well. Although the government had patrolled the camps she'd lived in, they stayed outside the camps and usually only checked residents going in and out of the gate. "There was a very visible presence of [Thai] soldiers at the Wat," she explains, "in and around the camp. And they were armed." While at the Wat, Chang and the other members of the St. Paul delegation made two especially important discoveries: (1) The majority of the children who would be enrolling in the St. Paul schools had been born in the camp, so the camp was their only life experience; and (2) only half of the children had ever been in school. These discoveries allowed the delegation to make informed decisions about how to organize the ESL/newcomer programs back home. One such decision led to Chang spearheading a mentoring program for the children. From her own experience, Chang knew that the children were going to need a lot of support during the resettlement, including having a Hmong adult to talk to in their own language about anything and everything. "The goal of the program is to provide academic, social, and cultural support to each student once a week for 45 minutes to an hour," Chang explains. "We work on reading, cultural and social activities. Mentors work on a volunteer basis. There are over 200 students in the program, and over 100 mentors. The mentors are either Hmong professionals or college or high school students." Chang remembers the generosity of spirit she received from the members of the seven Lutheran churches that sponsored her family in the 1970s. She is anxious to offer that and more to the children from Wat Tham Krabok. "What's nice is that when I was there, I took a tour of the school. I got to know the kids a little bit, and when they came here, some of them remembered me. One of the students I mentor now remembered me," Chang explains. In addition to heading up the program, Chang herself mentors two teenagers from the Wat. She says that, like most refugee children when they first arrive, they lack confidence and belief in their ability to succeed. Chang takes every opportunity to reassure them. She uses herself as an example. "They're very shy," she says, "and they think that because they came late [to the United States] that they won't have the opportunity to become successful. But every day I tell them, 'No, if I can do it, you can do it.' I always tell them, you can do anything you want to; the only person that can stop you from becoming successful is yourself. This makes them smile." According to Chang, the St. Paul Public Schools and the St. Paul community have provided all of the necessary elements for a successful resettlement experience. She says everything is in place: a strong support system, a terrific educational system, the support of the mayor and the superintendent, a well-established Hmong community, and lots of businesses in the Hmong community. But they also have one more strong support that she fails to mention, one that will surely help these children become successful, productive people: Mo Chang. If you have any comments about this article or questions for for the author, please send them to: alex@coursecrafters.com.
Copyright © 2005 Course Crafters, Inc.® All rights reserved.

March/April, 2005

Full Circle: One Hmong Refugee's Life

By Kristin Bair, ELL Outlook™ Staff Writer

Mo Chang remembers two things very clearly about her journey as a child from a refugee camp in Thailand to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where her family was initially resettled: (1) She didn't like the food on the airplane, but because she didn't speak any English, she couldn't ask for anything else; and (2) the American people love to smile, even when they don't know you.

"You don't have to speak English to understand that," Chang says. "It's a welcoming."

Like many people displaced by the Vietnam War, Chang was born in Laos in the 1960s. Her family lived an urban, middle-class life. She had four brothers at the time (now five brothers and a sister) and, luckily, parents who could afford to educate their children and believed that girls deserved the same education as boys. Her father, William B. Yang, was a well-educated lieutenant colonel in the army, and just before Laos became too dangerous for Chang's family to remain, he was elected mayor of their town, a position he never got to hold.

Chang remembers how life changed during the Vietnam War. "I remember one time," she says, "while the war was going on, one of the bombs hit on the side of our house. It was during dinner, and everyone ran to hide in the bomb shelter. They all did, but they forgot about me sleeping in the bedroom. When my dad found out I wasn't with them, he ran back and got me. We could hear the bombs going."

Chang was in the second grade at a public school when her family was forced to flee. "We all had to fight to get into the plane," she explains. "And I remember my mom and dad had to carry me up to the plane and push me in. There were so many people. It was daytime, and there were many people left on the ground."

The plane took them to Thailand, where they lived in their first refugee camp. A few months later, they were moved to Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, where they lived for the next year. Though Chang recognizes that transitioning from a nice home to a refugee camp was very difficult for the adults, she also remembers how much fun it was for the children.

"There was a church and a school," she explains. "You live in a camp, and as a little kid, you have church and school and all your relatives and friends. You just have fun every day."

After living in the second camp for about a year, Chang's family took the opportunity to resettle in the United States. They were sponsored by seven Lutheran churches in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Chang credits the congregations of these churches and their great generosity with her family's successful resettlement.

"I remember when we first got there," she explains. "They rented a trailer for us, but it wasn't ready so they put us in a church. They put food in the refrigerator and told us when we were hungry to help ourselves. Church members brought in potluck, different types of food. There was a contact person, a sponsor, who came to visit us. And there was an older lady we called Mother who came to teach us English after we moved to the trailer."

Chang and her brothers enrolled in school immediately. Chang started in the second grade, and though the teachers were kind and welcoming, there wasn't an ESL program in place. In fact, Chang remembers that she and her brothers were the only Asian students in the entire school. For the first month, they just sat in their mainstream classrooms watching the American kids work and study while they silently sat at their desks.

"It was very frustrating," Chang says, "because you're so used to going to school and learning and participating and now you can't. You get so upset inside because you want to do so much. I felt bad. I felt like, here's a child, you know, and I think I'm capable of doing things, but the language stopped me. I felt isolated and excluded, but I couldn't communicate that to anybody."

After a month or two, the school found someone to pull Chang and her brothers out of the mainstream classrooms and do one-on-one English instruction.

"We did lots of reading, reading and writing," Chang says. "That's how I learned to read. Just read and reread until I memorized it. Because I was a little older and I'd missed some of the phonics when you do pronunciation, like B-AT, BAT. I didn't really learn that way."

After a year and a half in North Carolina, Chang's family moved to Minnesota. There was a growing Hmong population in St. Paul and many educational opportunities.

"They had ESL services for us, but they were pull-out," Chang explains. "That was a model I didn't like. I missed a lot of the instruction, and when they pull you out, you feel like something's wrong with you."

But despite the challenges of the pull-out program, Chang excelled. Thirty years after the resettlement of her own family in the United States, Chang is the Charter Schools Liaison and Special Projects Coordinator for St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS). She has a bachelor's degree in public administration, a master's degree in the education of teaching and learning, a principal's license, a superintendent's license, and within the next year, she will finish her doctorate at St. Mary's University. She has been working in some capacity in SPPS since her senior year of high school.

"The St. Paul schools did a great job," she says. "Look at where I am now . . . working for them to help kids in a position very similar to my own."

Chang's journey, from her home in Laos to the refugee camps in Thailand and finally to the United States, has been a long, successful one. In 2004, she and the rest of the educators in SPPS learned that 15,000 Hmong refugees from Wat Tham Krabok, a refugee camp in Thailand, would be resettled in the United States, many in St. Paul. Her interest was piqued. It was the perfect opportunity to bring her life full circle. Everything she had experienced and accomplished had led her to be the ideal person to help fellow Hmong refugee children transition to a new culture, a new language, and a new home.

Shortly after the St. Paul community learned of the upcoming Hmong resettlement, St. Paul mayor Randy Kelly chose Chang to be a part of the group that traveled to Wat Tham Krabok in April 2004.

"Of the 21-member delegation," Chang says, "about seven were Hmong professionals, and five [of the seven] were women. I think it made a real impact on the children and families in that camp. Our presence provided a role model. We had lots of discussions, and people would come up throughout the whole camp to surround us and ask what it's like to be in America and what opportunities they would have because they get mixed messages. For us to be there to reassure and give them the true story was wonderful. After all, we are the story... you can't make those things up."

Chang's visit to the Wat was eye-opening. Once there, she realized that although she shared culture, language, history, and even many similar experiences with these people, there were also some very stark differences.

"I guess I thought I was well informed about what was going on [at the Wat], but little did I know that things weren't the way I experienced them to be," Chang says.

Unlike the camps she had lived in, Wat Tham Krabok was not a sanctioned refugee camp. While food and all other necessities had been provided to her family when she was young, she discovered that anything the people of the Wat needed, they had to procure for themselves. That included food, water, money, clothes, medicine, an organized system of government within the camp, and education.

"A lot of people had sewing machines," Chang explains. "And they do a lot of hand embroidery so they could send things to their relatives in the United States to sell and send money back. That's the number one source of income." Chang says that everyone at the Wat embroidered: men, women, and children. "When we were in the camp, we saw children four and five embroidering. The whole family helps, even the boys."

The military presence was different as well. Although the government had patrolled the camps she'd lived in, they stayed outside the camps and usually only checked residents going in and out of the gate.

"There was a very visible presence of [Thai] soldiers at the Wat," she explains, "in and around the camp. And they were armed."

While at the Wat, Chang and the other members of the St. Paul delegation made two especially important discoveries: (1) The majority of the children who would be enrolling in the St. Paul schools had been born in the camp, so the camp was their only life experience; and (2) only half of the children had ever been in school. These discoveries allowed the delegation to make informed decisions about how to organize the ESL/newcomer programs back home.

One such decision led to Chang spearheading a mentoring program for the children. From her own experience, Chang knew that the children were going to need a lot of support during the resettlement, including having a Hmong adult to talk to in their own language about anything and everything.

"The goal of the program is to provide academic, social, and cultural support to each student once a week for 45 minutes to an hour," Chang explains. "We work on reading, cultural and social activities. Mentors work on a volunteer basis. There are over 200 students in the program, and over 100 mentors. The mentors are either Hmong professionals or college or high school students."

Chang remembers the generosity of spirit she received from the members of the seven Lutheran churches that sponsored her family in the 1970s. She is anxious to offer that and more to the children from Wat Tham Krabok.

"What's nice is that when I was there, I took a tour of the school. I got to know the kids a little bit, and when they came here, some of them remembered me. One of the students I mentor now remembered me," Chang explains.

In addition to heading up the program, Chang herself mentors two teenagers from the Wat. She says that, like most refugee children when they first arrive, they lack confidence and belief in their ability to succeed. Chang takes every opportunity to reassure them. She uses herself as an example.

"They're very shy," she says, "and they think that because they came late [to the United States] that they won't have the opportunity to become successful. But every day I tell them, 'No, if I can do it, you can do it.' I always tell them, you can do anything you want to; the only person that can stop you from becoming successful is yourself. This makes them smile."

According to Chang, the St. Paul Public Schools and the St. Paul community have provided all of the necessary elements for a successful resettlement experience. She says everything is in place: a strong support system, a terrific educational system, the support of the mayor and the superintendent, a well-established Hmong community, and lots of businesses in the Hmong community.

But they also have one more strong support that she fails to mention, one that will surely help these children become successful, productive people: Mo Chang.

If you have any comments about this article or questions for for the author, please send them to: alex@coursecrafters.com.