Postcards from the Rogue Valley

In these days of heartbreaking if not enraging stories about the “plight” (which often seems an understatement) of immigrant children in today’s America, I found myself pulling up a story from my days running the nonprofit What Kids Can Do (WKCD).

In 2014, WKCD received a generous grant from the Novo Foundation to document social and emotional learning in five urban high schools across the country. Oakland International High School in Oakland, California — a small school that did everything in its power to support and uplift immigrant newcomers to the U.S. — topped our list. What follows are some small snippets from our larger documentation, including videos we made with the students we met there, dreamers from more than 33 countries.

Though this story was developed twelve years ago, Oakland International High School remains an example of how bold thinking, deep engagement, and a commitment to unheard voices can help our country’s youngest newcomers become partners in our fragile democracy. Despite the threat of ICE, supported with trenchant anti-immigrant sentiments, the students, faculty and families that make up Oakland International are not standing down.

Kathleen Cushman, WKCD’s co-founder, did the yeoman’s work researching, assembling, and writing this story. You can read her full account at A Place to Make My Own.

The Oakland International website includes a four-minute video that provides a compelling overview of the school.

The student banners above the walkway into Oakland International High Schoo (OIHS)l lend a ceremonial air of welcome to this school for new immigrants in the United States. Fluttering in a light breeze, their words and symbols evoke the lives, hopes, and beliefs of the youth who painted them. “We are immigrants.” “We dream of a United States without racism.” “We are a community.” 

Since its 2007 founding, in both design and daily life, Oakland International has forged that sense of community with its students, who come from 33 countries and speak at least that many languages. As part of the Internationals Network of Public Schools (conceived in New York City in 1985 and now numbering 17 schools and academies in three states), the school brings very heterogeneous groups of project-based academic, arts, and technology classrooms, integrating English language development into each content area. 

Every student is a newcomer to the United States. (Newcomers comprise approximately three percent of all California public school students in any given year.) More than a third of the 330 students are refugees from war-torn countries, 25 percent come with little or no formal education, and an increasing number are unaccompanied minors. The district allows them to choose Oakland International if they are under eighteen, have arrived in the preceding three months, and score below a certain level on the state’s English language development test. Once enrolled, they may stay on as long as they are working productively toward graduation. The exi­gencies of immigrant life make this student population especially transient, but this school keeps its doors open when they return.

All students here are learning English. Yet Oakland International aims for much more in the academic challenges it sets. Teacher-created courses emphasize conceptual mastery, grounded in rich projects that go deeper into fewer areas of inquiry. Students must assemble and present portfolios of their work before a panel at each year’s end. The staff calls on every possible medium — computer technology, video, hand-worked art forms, music, sports — to help learners express their ideas fully despite the frustrations of working in a new language.

The social and emotional aspects fundamental to all learning have particular salience. Entering students join a mixed cohort of 100 ninth and tenth graders with wide variations in English proficiency; for two years they stay with the same five teachers, forming bonds of trust and support. In collegial groups, teachers tailor the curriculum to their needs and collaborate in supporting students through the trials of transition. Students regularly access mental health services in many languages on school premises, provided by community partners. And their families come in freely to attend special classes in skills like English, technology and health or nutrition. 

From “My Odyssey” by Maria — about her journey with her brother from El Salvador to Oakland, and the coyotes that helped them. (We Are Oakland International, Oakland International High School with Thi Bui, 2012). See Maria’s entire cartoon. See also “A Big New Life,” by Boa.

Using cartoons to tell their stories

Every student at Oakland International has a story to tell about the journey, typically laced with trauma, that brought them to the United States. One of the first things they unpack at OIHS is that journey.

“Imagine you are 14 years old. Hormonal changes, pimples, self consciousness — the works,” award-winning cartoonist Thi Bui, one of Oakland International’s founders, writes in the introduction to We Are Oakland International, a 112-page collection of cartoons she created with students to capture their journeys to the U.S.

“Now imagine that all that is the easy part of being you. For you are an immigrant; you have left your home and friends, you don’t know anybody at school, your family is split between two countries, you don’t know your way around your new city, and you don’t speak English.”

Bui continues:

When I began teaching at Oakland International High School, I had lofty ideas about the world events and issues I would be able to discuss with such an international mix of students. I too am an immigrant; I left Vietnam as a refugee when I was a child. But what I quickly realized stood between us was a language gap wider than any ocean. My pseudo-command of three other languages didn’t even begin to cover the multitude of languages that my students spoke. 

The comics project began as a way for me to better understand my students. I found that if I taught everyone a new language, governed by a few simple conventions like panels and speech balloons, then we would have a common way of communicating that allowed students to surprise me. Over the years, as I learned to ask them better questions, my students have surprised, informed, inspired, and moved me to tears with their stories. And these stories are just the tip of the iceberg.

Remember that these stories are the first attempt by a person still forming his or her identity in an environment and language that is not native. Look deeper to imagine what more surely lies beneath. Look forward to picture the future of these teenagers who have already experienced so much. Recognize in them their great potential.”

Soccer as unifier

If asked to name one object that they recognized with relief and pleasure as soon as they started at their new school, most students at Oakland International would probably point to a soccer ball. As the world’s most popular sport — played in over 200 countries by anyone with access to a ball, a patch of land, and a few sticks for goalposts — soccer has cross-cultural appeal.  (Think FIFA World Cup….) At this school, it also provides an ideal way for students to forge social and emotional bonds even without a common language. Indeed, it is essential.

Early in the school’s history, a partnership with the nonprofit Soccer Without Borders sprang from the teach­ing of soccer in physical education class. Led by Ben Gucciardi, it grew like wildfire. Today, roughly a third of all stu­dents take part, playing on various teams that compete in Oakland and its surrounds. However, the program goes far beyond athletic competition. It encompasses youth development and leadership as well as academic monitoring, intervention, and support. “My soccer program, they always support me, everywhere,” said Ravis, a student from Democratic Republic of the Congo. “My personal life, on the field, academically— they’re always there for me.”

First priority goes to establishing an open-door culture of inclusion and accept­ance.“Regardless of language, culture, ethnic identity, gender, sexual orientation, skill level, whatever— in this space everybody can get out there and just be themselves, and get encouragement and positive reinforce-ment,” Gucciardi says.“It’s okay to be competitive,” he adds, cheerfully acknowledging the rivalries of older adoles­cent boys in particular.

Unlike the boys who take part in the program, for cultural reasons almost none of the girls at Oakland Inter­national have played soccer before. Leya, an older student from Eritrea who had recently enrolled at the school, stepped onto the field in boots one afternoon at the invitation of some other girls. Before long, she was happily lacing on some athletic shoes from the storage locker and encouraging a younger girl from her country to join the fun despite her father’s disapproval. (“It’s just exercises,” others coaxed, to no avail.) Girls, now, have become as soccer-centered as the boys.

Looking to the future

“We are all dreamers here,” Fadhleyah tells us as she looks toward becoming a doctor.

In his native Guatemala, Abednego said, he saw a lot of racism. “They used to call me ‘monkey’ because I’m Mayan; they said I didn’t belong to their civilization.” Bat at Oakland International “they taught me that it’s different,” he said. “We have to live together, we have to bring unity between everyone.” After earning his law degree, he wants to return to his country and help Mayan people fight for their rights. “If I could, I would do something good for this country, too … maybe come back to Oakland and work in this school to help others kids like people helped me.”

“In the future I want to be a software engineer,” said Ravis, who found his sense of belonging on the soccer fields here. “That’s why I’m training in computer class to understand what computer is the best, so whenI go to college I’ll be ready.” Patience, who hopes to become a midwife, is trying to arrange her senior intern­ship in that field. Jeanni wants to go to “the best four-year college that would have me” and to have a career in accounting. Carlos, who acted out his fears in his first year at the school, now plans to go into business or perhaps become a chef.

On the wall of Jennifer Kelly-DeWitt’s classroom, her advisory students have posted their aspirations in large letters on bright paper. Beneath Aye’s name it says: “I will go to college. I will be a doctor. I will help my people. I will take care my family.” Zahraa wrote: “I will be a mom. I will be an engineer. I will read 100 books.” Small mistakes may show up here and there, but the conviction in their words carries a momentum that seems unstoppable.

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