ESOL Student Shares Challenges Of Poverty, Learning English

By Ines Alicea, ELL Outlook™ Staff Writer

Mebrhit Hagos is your typical teen in many ways. She is energetic and talkative one moment and later reserved and quiet. She worries about her relationships with her peers. She sees English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes as a necessary evil of being in her newly adopted country. Yet she shares how she pushes herself to excel in those classes. The classes make her stand out in the crowd, and all Mebrhit wants is to be accepted. "I didn't make any friends in my regular classes," said the 16-year-old native of Eritrea of what her life at school has been like so far. "I stayed very quiet."

All teens struggle for acceptance. But young people such as Mebrhit have a heightened sense that they don't fit in. At first she rarely spoke to native English speakers for fear of making mistakes in front of them. She cringed when teachers assigned group projects because she could tell that the native English speakers did not want to be paired with her, fearing they would carry most of the workload or that their grade would suffer for working with her. "They didn't say bad words to me because the teacher was there, but they did show a bad face," she said. "It made me feel bad. I would do the work."

Mebrhit's struggles seem more profound than those of the average teen. Her parents attended English classes, but the financial, medical, educational, and other demands of having 11 children naturally slowed their progress, leaving Mebrhit and some of her siblings to serve as translators for business transactions, school meetings, and daily life.

"I want the people from here to know that learning other languages is very hard," she said. "I did a good job of learning English fast. If they went to my country, it would be hard for them too."

That role as translator propelled Mebrhit into adulthood, putting her on the front lines of the stress her parents endure as they try to understand all of the complexities of living in a new country. She sees them struggle to stretch pennies to cover rent, food, clothing, water, electricity, phone, car, medical expenses, and other incidentals for the family of 13. Mebrhit is fully aware that every month since the family arrived nearly 17 months ago, her parents have wondered how they would pay the next month's rent and have worried about coming up short and ending up in a homeless shelter.

One recent day the family saw a "For Sale" sign in their own front yard. The landlord had decided to sell the property that the refugees were renting on a month-to-month basis. Upon arriving in the United States, they had faced numerous barriers in trying to find a home because no one had wanted to rent to such a large family. Her parents had not disclosed the size of their family to the landlord and anxiously wondered if the landlord would discover their secret and throw them out.

The selling of their rental home is just the latest setback for Mebrhit and her family. They have spent the past year waiting patiently, hoping the government would come through with rent subsidies, and only finding out recently that their hopes were dashed; social workers told them it would take at least three years to receive this type of help.

The housing situation Mebrhit and her family face is just one part of the equation. The other part is money, or the lack of it. Although community social services have helped, the family is stuck in a vicious cycle. They want to work, but they haven't secured all of the necessary legal documentation and work permits to work in the United States. They can't afford them because they can't work. People seeking U.S. citizenship must pay a host of fees to the U.S. government to secure the needed documents. The few family members legally allowed to work find that the only jobs offered to them pay low wages, so it is difficult to get ahead or make a dent in buying all of the family's work permits and green cards, documentation needed to legally stay in the United States that all foreign residents must pay fees to receive.

The family's situation is not unusual. According to the U.S. census, 21.7 percent of foreign-born residents who are not yet full U.S. citizens live in poverty. That compares to 12.5 percent of the native-born population. The statistics improve dramatically once foreign-born residents secure citizenship; 10 percent of foreign-born U.S. citizens live in poverty.

Mebrhit's family is under pressure to secure enough money to cover the large expenses for the lengthy road to citizenship. They face government-mandated deadlines that are approaching quickly. The thought of financing work permits for all of the working-age children and adults and green cards for all 11 children is overwhelming. They estimate they will spend $3,000 for green cards for their children. That figure doesn't include any legal fees or fees for the next steps in the process.

Mebrhit realizes that education is the key out of poverty and the key to her goals of becoming a nurse and contributing financially to her family, who are struggling for acceptance in a land sometimes suspicious of people with darker skin, foreign accents, many children, and living in poverty. She is a driven young woman who works hard to get ahead, both for herself and for her parents, who have high expectations of her. "My parents don't let us watch much television," said Mebrhit. "They have us read to our younger brothers and sisters."

But even getting her hands on books to read with her siblings seems to be a challenge these days. Mebrhit loves to go to the public library and admits she learned much of her English from devouring any book she could get her hands on. However, the nearest library is not within walking distance, and the use of the family car for library visits competes with medical appointments, errands, and jobs for her siblings and her parents.

Though her family's struggles and concerns are ever present, she tries to focus on her goals. Mebrhit said she is happy to be in a country where she can go to school without having to pay tuition or buy school uniforms, and she is determined to speak, read, write, and understand English well enough to graduate at the same time as her peers. The family fled Eritrea because of political persecution, and they spent four years in Kenya before the U.S. government granted them political refugee status and allowed them to enter the United States in February 2004. "Learning in our country was hard for girls," said Mebrhit. "Then we didn't get to go to school in Kenya. School was too expensive there. We had to pay for rent and food. I worked at home. I tried to learn English and U.S. history."

She expresses frustration at not being taught more grammar and spelling in her ESOL classes, skills that she knows are necessary to move ahead. Mebrhit rails against what she considers a very rigid schedule of content classes. For example, because she was in a B1 (Intermediate ESOL) level last year, she was relegated to taking a social studies class with other ESOL students, even though she knew the content and wanted to tackle a world history class with classmates who are native speakers. "If you are put with other students who don't speak English, you don't learn more," she said. "If you are put with people who speak at a higher level, you learn at a higher level. If you fail the class, then you retake it. I think it's better to at least try."

Mebrhit recognizes that some ESOL students would be intimidated by her approach and would be just as happy to take the ESOL classes at the slower pace the school sets out for them, but she bristles at the thought of being held back. She is, after all, making up for lost time. "I get mad when I'm behind other people," Mebrhit said. "I think the people who want to graduate on time should be allowed to take difficult classes. I want to graduate with my friends."

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