Minorities in America

This semester I will be working with a refugee family through the International Rescue Committee. I have not started working with them quite yet because of technical things that need to be worked out. But I volunteered with them last year working with a family from Rwanda. It was a mother and six children that had lived in Salt Lake for two months before I started working with them. I got thinking about them today as we were discussing minorities in America, specifically children in English speaking schools. Back in Africa all six of these children were taught English as a second language in their schools. So they didn't have too difficult of a time adapting to English being spoken in the schools for the most part. However, they did struggle with specific concepts of the English language. For example, I was helping one kid with his science class homework where he had to fill out a crossword puzzle with the words given to match the clues. This homework had words like "precipitation", "evaporation", and even "photosynthesis". He could read the words just fine, but explaining the meanings of these words to him proved to be difficult. I found that I was explaining things in a way that my culture understands these things and not how he would see them in his culture back in Rwanda. The problem was though, I didn't know his culture and how to teach him in a way he would understand. These kids and their mother grew to rely on me a lot when it came to helping with the homework because I was their link between trying to understand culture here in America and Salt Lake and their culture they grew up with. Their mother did not know English and didn't have time to take ESL classes because of her work schedule in order to provide for six kids. This could be a problem for a lot of refugee students. They struggle to completely understand what they are being taught in school because of the language barrier they face. Teachers don't see the underlying problem and tend to just lump them into the "struggling student" category and don't receive extra help and attention. They also can't receive help from their parent's because they are struggling to even learn the language so they can get jobs to support their family. So they get stuck by themselves in their struggles with nobody to help them out. This ties into what we talked about in class when kids have no support system in school and home so they turn to gangs and institutions where they will get the support they are looking for. People complain about those areas that have high crime and gang activities and put the problem on their parent's not raising them right. And in some cases that may be right, but maybe people need to try looking at the bigger picture and realize they may be part of the cause of these gang and crime areas. When we reject other cultures and see things that are different as being wrong, then we are putting ourselves above them and shoving everyone that is seen as "different" into the minority where they will face more struggles in the home and out in society.