	May/June, 2005
Amazing Returns: The Final Chapter of Stories from the Wat By Kristin Bair, ELL Outlook Staff Writer Imagine this. You're the principal of a small high school in St. Paul, Minnesota. One day in the spring of 2004, you get a call informing you that next fall there will be an influx of students from Wat Tham Krabok, a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand. At first you believe an "influx" means a few new students, but then you realize that the number of students who will be joining your school is far greater than you initially believed. So what do you do when your enrollment jumps from 220 students to over 500 students in just three weeks? What do you do when you learn that not only are the new students great in number, but they also do not speak a word of English? What do you do when you learn that many have never been to school at all? Friends and family who hear of your situation might suggest turning and running in the opposite direction as fast as you can. Others might advise a sudden shift in your career path; perhaps you've always wanted to be a firefighter or an archaeologist. Now might be the time, they say. The ones least confident in your abilities or your sanity might even offer the address of the local mental health facility, pointing out the added stress of over twice as many students in your care. At certain points in the process between the initial phone call and the first day of the 2004 school year, each of these options may seem plausible, even enticing. But when Rose Santos, principal of International Academy-LEAP (IA-LEAP) in St. Paul, Minnesota, learned that over 250 students from Wat Tham Krabok would be joining her school, more than doubling her enrollment, she stood strong. She didn't run. She didn't become a firefighter. She didn't even consider a quick visit to the local mental health facility. Instead, she felt a wave of excitement wash over her. After all, this is what IA-LEAP is all about. Established about ten years ago, the academy was originally designed to provide a high school education for ESL students from 16 to 25 years of age. "Until then," Santos says, "the ESL students were in regular high schools receiving ESL pull-out. The community did not feel this was meeting the needs of the students." But their needs are surely being met now. Here at IA-LEAP, not one student is a native English speaker. Students have come from all around the world--Somalia, Thailand, Mexico, Japan, and many other countries--to learn English and to get the best education they can in order to progress and excel in the world. Once reality sunk in, Santos set to work. She hired 13 new staff members, making sure that as many as possible were native Hmong speakers. She and her team assessed what type of placement testing would work best for the incoming Hmong students. And she designed a schedule of classes--not once, not twice, but a total of seven times. "You know," Santos says, "I have the best teachers in the world. Every day I would come in with a new schedule and every day I would say to my teachers, 'I'm sorry, guys, you're not teaching that any more. Now you're teaching _________.' They were terrific about it." Once all the planning was complete, Santos and her team sat back and waited. Curiously enough, she says that they weren't worried about having the right classes or about being sure to start the kids at the appropriate levels. The teaching and assessment teams at IA-LEAP work with newcomers all the time; this is their area of expertise, and they knew they could accomplish their goals. Instead, she says, they were most worried about the students getting lost on the trip from their new homes to the school. "You know," Santos says, "you get on one school bus and you get to the school. But when you have to go home, it's all different, and you don't know where to get off. So that was my thing, and I told my team, 'We've got to come up with a plan.' So we made ID cards, huge cards, with 'My name is __________. I live at __________. I go to IA-LEAP.' We gave the cards to the students so they wouldn't get lost. I was so worried about them. I made sure there were many of us at the buses to greet them, and on the way home, I made sure the bus drivers knew the kids had these tags. I told them, 'These kids are brand new. They don't speak any English. They're going to look at you blankly. So when they get off the bus, make sure you read their tags.' The kids showed no fear. And nobody got lost." Since every student at IA-LEAP is learning English as a second language, the school is divided not by grades, but by language ability. The program works within a five-level proficiency model (with the fifth level being fluency in English without an accent), but it also goes one step deeper. Within each level, students are divided into three more categories: A, B, and C. So a student can be a 2B, a 1A, a 3C, or any combination of categories. Teachers and administrators communicate regularly about each student's progress throughout the year, and students can move into a new level at any time. They do not have to "finish" a level or a semester in order to progress. Students do not receive course credit towards high school graduation until levels 3 and 4. "Some students move through the levels very quickly," Santos explains. "Some stay in 1C for a whole semester. At the lowest level, 1C, we're trying to teach students how to sit at a desk, how to hold a pencil. We designed the ABC levels so that students have flexibility." May Yang is one of the cultural teachers at IA-LEAP. She primarily teaches reading and writing, but during the fall 2004 semester, she taught a "life skills survival class" to the students who had just arrived from Wat Tham Krabok. A native Hmong speaker, Yang can relate to the students on a number of levels. She, too, was born in Laos and spent time in a refugee camp in Thailand. She came to the United States in 1976 and first lived in Tennessee, where ESL classes were not part of the curriculum. "You had to either sink or swim," Yang says. "But it was easier for me, because I was only eight years old." Yang says that their age is one of the toughest challenges for the high school students from Wat Tham Krabok. The transition is much harder than for elementary or middle school students. The older students know that they're behind; they know that they've missed a lot; and they know that in order to catch up, or even just to come close to catching up, they have to work three, four, five times as hard as native English speaking students. Time is against them. "Most of the kids are very disappointed that their parents did not bring them into the country sooner," Yang says. "I have one student who every time he sees me, says, 'Oh, teacher, I am so disappointed that my parents brought me here too late. I am now too old. I don't think I'm going to be successful, so why even be here?' And so I say, 'Even people who are born here don't always do well. You have to look at the positive side that you're here and do the best that you can. Maybe you'll do better than the kids who were born here.'" But despite worries and concerns about the possibility for success, the students from Wat Tham Krabok love to come to school. They even complained to Santos when they learned they couldn't attend classes during spring break. Classes begin at 10:00 and end at 4:30. Students have 30 minutes for lunch, but other than that, they are in class. Santos explains that another unique aspect of the IA-LEAP program is that the school teaches reading in content areas, such as science and geography. "Those are the classes they're going to need in levels 3 and 4 to get high school credit in order to graduate," she says. "So not only are we teaching them to read, but we're teaching them the background information that they're going to need. We're trying not to waste any of their time." Bronwen Lu, who has been teaching ESL since 1982, now teaches Life Science at IA-LEAP. This semester she is focusing on "water life" in order to prepare the students for biology, environmental science, and health. "I know the Minnesota science standards, and I try to hit on the stuff that I know the students are going to need up ahead," Lu says. She also tries to work on things with which the students are already familiar. "The class is very animal based," she explains, "and I let the students choose. They vote on which animals they want to study. We start with insects and move up to amphibians, and so on. We keep repeating the same concepts. They have to look at habitat, feeding habits, etc. They get to know that this is what is considered to be important, then they learn the vocabulary for it." Lu says that she moves the students into reading after they learn the vocabulary and the concepts of a particular lesson. She also has the students illustrate and make webs of key concepts. She teaches them how to use references and says that even students in level 1 can be taught to use an index. In order to assess the students, Lu gives many small tests. One of her favorites is labeling a diagram, such as different parts of a life cycle. "I like somewhat closed tests," she says, "like fill-in-the-blank tests. But I give the students a list of the key words, too, with a few distractors thrown in. I also always give them a version that's completely blank." She gives students a series of three to four small tests in one 50-minute class period. "They're short," she says, "and they build in difficulty. The students like to hand in the little strips of paper with their answers on them and ask for the next one." Lu has witnessed a great deal of progress in her students since that first day of school last fall. One particular student who had struggled a great deal and whose parents initially thought he might need special instruction has completely caught up with the class. "This week," Lu explains, "he took all four tests. I've just watched him incrementally grow. He has all this confidence. The other thing is that he has changed so much physically. He was tiny when he first came, and now is the same size as everyone else. He was one of the students who had never been to school. He had no hand-to-eye coordination. We have many students like that from the camp." She tells about another student from the camp whom she had in class during the fall semester, a girl who didn't even know how to hold a pencil when she arrived. A few days before our conversation, Lu had seen the girl preparing posters for the hallway. "I just kept looking at the posters," she says, "and remembering how horrible the girl's handwriting and drawing had been. Now you can't even tell. It's amazing. You can't believe it's done by the same person. You wouldn't believe that the students from the camp make this much progress, but that's the rule, not the exception." The commitment to the Hmong students from Wat Tham Krabok and to their potential for success is more than evident in both the words and the actions of those employed at IA-LEAP. But their involvement is not just professional; it is personal. These kids matter to them. "When it snowed for the first time," Santos says, "it was amazing to see the kids out there throwing snowballs and frolicking. We told them, 'Don't lick the flagpole!' Over and over, we told them. Of course, one boy did it just to find out, and his tongue stuck to pole as promised. He learned the hard way." The kids from Wat Tham Krabok have learned a lot in life the hard way, but with International Academy-LEAP on their side, it's a good bet that things will get easier from here. Editor's Note: This is the final of three articles about the students who have come from Wat Tham Krabok and who have settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. The first and second articles in the series are available in past issues of The ELL Outlook: January/February 2005 (http://www.coursecrafters.com/ELL-Outlook/2005/jan_feb/ELLOutlookITIArticle1.htm) and March/April 2005 (http://www.coursecrafters.com/ELL-Outlook/2005/mar_apr/ELLOutlookITIArticle2.htm). 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.

May/June, 2005

Amazing Returns: The Final Chapter of Stories from the Wat

By Kristin Bair, ELL Outlook Staff Writer

Imagine this. You're the principal of a small high school in St. Paul, Minnesota. One day in the spring of 2004, you get a call informing you that next fall there will be an influx of students from Wat Tham Krabok, a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand. At first you believe an "influx" means a few new students, but then you realize that the number of students who will be joining your school is far greater than you initially believed. So what do you do when your enrollment jumps from 220 students to over 500 students in just three weeks? What do you do when you learn that not only are the new students great in number, but they also do not speak a word of English? What do you do when you learn that many have never been to school at all?

Friends and family who hear of your situation might suggest turning and running in the opposite direction as fast as you can. Others might advise a sudden shift in your career path; perhaps you've always wanted to be a firefighter or an archaeologist. Now might be the time, they say. The ones least confident in your abilities or your sanity might even offer the address of the local mental health facility, pointing out the added stress of over twice as many students in your care. At certain points in the process between the initial phone call and the first day of the 2004 school year, each of these options may seem plausible, even enticing.

But when Rose Santos, principal of International Academy-LEAP (IA-LEAP) in St. Paul, Minnesota, learned that over 250 students from Wat Tham Krabok would be joining her school, more than doubling her enrollment, she stood strong. She didn't run. She didn't become a firefighter. She didn't even consider a quick visit to the local mental health facility. Instead, she felt a wave of excitement wash over her. After all, this is what IA-LEAP is all about. Established about ten years ago, the academy was originally designed to provide a high school education for ESL students from 16 to 25 years of age.

"Until then," Santos says, "the ESL students were in regular high schools receiving ESL pull-out. The community did not feel this was meeting the needs of the students."

But their needs are surely being met now. Here at IA-LEAP, not one student is a native English speaker. Students have come from all around the world--Somalia, Thailand, Mexico, Japan, and many other countries--to learn English and to get the best education they can in order to progress and excel in the world.

Once reality sunk in, Santos set to work. She hired 13 new staff members, making sure that as many as possible were native Hmong speakers. She and her team assessed what type of placement testing would work best for the incoming Hmong students. And she designed a schedule of classes--not once, not twice, but a total of seven times.

"You know," Santos says, "I have the best teachers in the world. Every day I would come in with a new schedule and every day I would say to my teachers, 'I'm sorry, guys, you're not teaching that any more. Now you're teaching _________.' They were terrific about it."

Once all the planning was complete, Santos and her team sat back and waited. Curiously enough, she says that they weren't worried about having the right classes or about being sure to start the kids at the appropriate levels. The teaching and assessment teams at IA-LEAP work with newcomers all the time; this is their area of expertise, and they knew they could accomplish their goals. Instead, she says, they were most worried about the students getting lost on the trip from their new homes to the school.

"You know," Santos says, "you get on one school bus and you get to the school. But when you have to go home, it's all different, and you don't know where to get off. So that was my thing, and I told my team, 'We've got to come up with a plan.' So we made ID cards, huge cards, with 'My name is __________. I live at __________. I go to IA-LEAP.' We gave the cards to the students so they wouldn't get lost. I was so worried about them. I made sure there were many of us at the buses to greet them, and on the way home, I made sure the bus drivers knew the kids had these tags. I told them, 'These kids are brand new. They don't speak any English. They're going to look at you blankly. So when they get off the bus, make sure you read their tags.' The kids showed no fear. And nobody got lost."

Since every student at IA-LEAP is learning English as a second language, the school is divided not by grades, but by language ability. The program works within a five-level proficiency model (with the fifth level being fluency in English without an accent), but it also goes one step deeper. Within each level, students are divided into three more categories: A, B, and C. So a student can be a 2B, a 1A, a 3C, or any combination of categories. Teachers and administrators communicate regularly about each student's progress throughout the year, and students can move into a new level at any time. They do not have to "finish" a level or a semester in order to progress. Students do not receive course credit towards high school graduation until levels 3 and 4.

"Some students move through the levels very quickly," Santos explains. "Some stay in 1C for a whole semester. At the lowest level, 1C, we're trying to teach students how to sit at a desk, how to hold a pencil. We designed the ABC levels so that students have flexibility."

May Yang is one of the cultural teachers at IA-LEAP. She primarily teaches reading and writing, but during the fall 2004 semester, she taught a "life skills survival class" to the students who had just arrived from Wat Tham Krabok. A native Hmong speaker, Yang can relate to the students on a number of levels. She, too, was born in Laos and spent time in a refugee camp in Thailand. She came to the United States in 1976 and first lived in Tennessee, where ESL classes were not part of the curriculum. "You had to either sink or swim," Yang says. "But it was easier for me, because I was only eight years old."

Yang says that their age is one of the toughest challenges for the high school students from Wat Tham Krabok. The transition is much harder than for elementary or middle school students. The older students know that they're behind; they know that they've missed a lot; and they know that in order to catch up, or even just to come close to catching up, they have to work three, four, five times as hard as native English speaking students. Time is against them.

"Most of the kids are very disappointed that their parents did not bring them into the country sooner," Yang says. "I have one student who every time he sees me, says, 'Oh, teacher, I am so disappointed that my parents brought me here too late. I am now too old. I don't think I'm going to be successful, so why even be here?' And so I say, 'Even people who are born here don't always do well. You have to look at the positive side that you're here and do the best that you can. Maybe you'll do better than the kids who were born here.'"

But despite worries and concerns about the possibility for success, the students from Wat Tham Krabok love to come to school. They even complained to Santos when they learned they couldn't attend classes during spring break. Classes begin at 10:00 and end at 4:30. Students have 30 minutes for lunch, but other than that, they are in class.

Santos explains that another unique aspect of the IA-LEAP program is that the school teaches reading in content areas, such as science and geography. "Those are the classes they're going to need in levels 3 and 4 to get high school credit in order to graduate," she says. "So not only are we teaching them to read, but we're teaching them the background information that they're going to need. We're trying not to waste any of their time."

Bronwen Lu, who has been teaching ESL since 1982, now teaches Life Science at IA-LEAP. This semester she is focusing on "water life" in order to prepare the students for biology, environmental science, and health. "I know the Minnesota science standards, and I try to hit on the stuff that I know the students are going to need up ahead," Lu says.

She also tries to work on things with which the students are already familiar. "The class is very animal based," she explains, "and I let the students choose. They vote on which animals they want to study. We start with insects and move up to amphibians, and so on. We keep repeating the same concepts. They have to look at habitat, feeding habits, etc. They get to know that this is what is considered to be important, then they learn the vocabulary for it."

Lu says that she moves the students into reading after they learn the vocabulary and the concepts of a particular lesson. She also has the students illustrate and make webs of key concepts. She teaches them how to use references and says that even students in level 1 can be taught to use an index.

In order to assess the students, Lu gives many small tests. One of her favorites is labeling a diagram, such as different parts of a life cycle. "I like somewhat closed tests," she says, "like fill-in-the-blank tests. But I give the students a list of the key words, too, with a few distractors thrown in. I also always give them a version that's completely blank."

She gives students a series of three to four small tests in one 50-minute class period. "They're short," she says, "and they build in difficulty. The students like to hand in the little strips of paper with their answers on them and ask for the next one."

Lu has witnessed a great deal of progress in her students since that first day of school last fall. One particular student who had struggled a great deal and whose parents initially thought he might need special instruction has completely caught up with the class.

"This week," Lu explains, "he took all four tests. I've just watched him incrementally grow. He has all this confidence. The other thing is that he has changed so much physically. He was tiny when he first came, and now is the same size as everyone else. He was one of the students who had never been to school. He had no hand-to-eye coordination. We have many students like that from the camp."

She tells about another student from the camp whom she had in class during the fall semester, a girl who didn't even know how to hold a pencil when she arrived. A few days before our conversation, Lu had seen the girl preparing posters for the hallway.

"I just kept looking at the posters," she says, "and remembering how horrible the girl's handwriting and drawing had been. Now you can't even tell. It's amazing. You can't believe it's done by the same person. You wouldn't believe that the students from the camp make this much progress, but that's the rule, not the exception."

The commitment to the Hmong students from Wat Tham Krabok and to their potential for success is more than evident in both the words and the actions of those employed at IA-LEAP. But their involvement is not just professional; it is personal. These kids matter to them.

"When it snowed for the first time," Santos says, "it was amazing to see the kids out there throwing snowballs and frolicking. We told them, 'Don't lick the flagpole!' Over and over, we told them. Of course, one boy did it just to find out, and his tongue stuck to pole as promised. He learned the hard way."

The kids from Wat Tham Krabok have learned a lot in life the hard way, but with International Academy-LEAP on their side, it's a good bet that things will get easier from here.

Editor's Note: This is the final of three articles about the students who have come from Wat Tham Krabok and who have settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. The first and second articles in the series are available in past issues of The ELL Outlook: January/February 2005 (http://www.coursecrafters.com/ELL-Outlook/2005/jan_feb/ELLOutlookITIArticle1.htm) and March/April 2005 (http://www.coursecrafters.com/ELL-Outlook/2005/mar_apr/ELLOutlookITIArticle2.htm).

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