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For
Sanel Halilovic, a seventh-grader at Westlake Junior High in Oakland, the
guidance of a tutor couldn't have come at a better time. With Sanel failing
his math and science classes, his mother -- who speaks little English --
contacted Refugee Transitions, a San Francisco nonprofit organization, to
see if the group could help. |
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"My grades were low, and then my mom wanted me to get a tutor," recalls
Sanel, whose father was killed in the "ethnic cleansing" of European Muslims
in Bosnia in the mid-1990s. Sanel, 13, his mother and three brothers came to
Oakland six years ago as refugees.
Now, he meets with Ajit De Silva, 40, a computer programmer at Kaiser
Permanente, every Friday afternoon for two hours, to go over his math and
science homework at the Jahva House in Oakland near Sanel's Lake Merritt
apartment. His brothers Muhamed, 10, and Daniel, 18, also meet regularly
with tutors as part of Refugee Transitions' new Bridge to Success Youth
Partnership program for 7- to 17-year-old students. (Brother Salih, 16, is
tutored by a friend of the family.) Their work has already paid dividends.
A high point came when, unannounced, Sanel brought all the materials
needed to make a diorama of a cell for a science class project to one of his
tutoring sessions.
"He had photocopied information about a cell diagram and brought a box
with him to make the cell," De Silva says. "It was touching that he showed
up with all the stuff."
Sanel, De Silva notes proudly, aced the project.
Refugee Transitions started the tutoring program in September to help
Cambodian, Afghan and Bosnian refugees in the East Bay. About 20 students
from each community participate in the program, and there is a waiting list
of applicants.
According to Refugee Transitions Executive Director Laura Vaudreuil, the
organization's clients have experienced some of the atrocities of the 20th
century -- from the horrors of the Balkan war and Khmer Rouge-led genocide
in Cambodia to the Afghan wars. Almost all live with the scars of having
lost a family member. War widows often have no education or literacy skills
and large numbers of their children have never been to school. One Afghan
family being served -- a mother and her three children -- all read at the
first- grade level in English.
One of the problems refugee children face is that they're placed in
grades in U.S. schools based solely on their age. That approach doesn't take
into account that their war-interrupted schooling is often sorely lacking in
the fundamentals.
"They're kids placed in fifth grade who can't read. It's hard for the
Oakland school district to address those needs," Vaudreuil said.
De Silva became a tutor after he was cajoled into attending a Bridge to
Success recruitment meeting by a buddy fresh from a stint in the Peace
Corps. He was "blown away" by Refugee Transition's presentation and signed
up. After a background check, fingerprinting and extensive training, De
Silva, who had never tutored before, was matched up with Sanel two months
ago.
De Silva isn't exactly sure how the relationship between the tutors and
their students works but he has a theory.
"I think maybe school is lost on them," says De Silva who, like other
Bridge to Success tutors, stays in touch with his charge's teachers. "But if
you sit with somebody outside of school, and they're pushing you, well, it's
a different environment. He's smart enough to figure it out. Just sitting
there away from school we take on these tasks. He can do them."
For Sanel, the relationship is more personal than any he's had with any
teacher.
"It's fun, cause we meet and we do my homework and then after homework we
play some games," he says. "I think I'm doing well right now."
Mentoring a child who otherwise couldn't afford to get any assistance
also appeals to De Silva.
"The richest families can afford this elite service, and there might not
be any other. It's like expensive tutoring or no tutoring. It's not like
there's a discount tutor," says De Silva, who like all Bridge to Success
tutors volunteers his time to the program.
Without the intervention of someone like De Silva, refugee children can
easily slip through the cracks and drop out of school. That can make --
especially in Oakland's Fruitvale district where most of the Bosnian and
Cambodian refugees live -- the temptation to join a gang pretty hard to
resist.
"Living in the eastern part of Oakland for teenagers is kind of hard. The
entire setting is images of gangs and stuff like that. Sometimes they will
get in conflicts with the law," says Refugee Transition's Volunteer
Coordinator Muhamed Tokmic.
"What's going on in public school is not really taking care of them,
taking them off the street," says Tokmic, 35, a Bosnian refugee who fled his
homeland for the United States six years ago. "School is probably not the
greatest in East Oakland. At the same time, parents are not capable in many
cases to really supervise kids all the time for different reasons."
Tokmic cites the example of one of his clients, a Bosnia war widow with
four children who works a swing shift and doesn't get home until well after
midnight. "If she doesn't push them to do school work, and the school
doesn't do that as well, then those kids will use the opportunity to slack
in school," he says.
Aside from getting mixed up in a gang, young refugees often work instead
of going to school. At 16, they can legally do that, but Lucy Dul, director
of Oakland's Cambodian Community Development, an Oakland Cambodian resource
center, wonders if these students realize what they're setting themselves up
for. Tokmic agrees.
"They have this dollar in the pocket. They can go out. They can buy
something," he said. "They don't think of the long-term benefits of school."
The high cost of living in the Bay Area also drives many young refugees
to get jobs. With many refugee households headed by single mothers working
at low-paying jobs, the extra money is very helpful.
Dul, whose organization has 20 students meeting with Bridge to Success
tutors, estimates that about 60 percent of Cambodian refugees leave school
when they come of age - the highest dropout rate of any Southeast Asian
children.
Vaudreuil says that Bay Area Cambodian refugee youth are also highly at-
risk for drug abuse, early sexual activity and gang activity. She notes that
many don't attend school regularly and that all the students currently in
Bridge to Success have had legal problems, dropped out of school, or been
involved in prostitution.
To address the dropout rate in the Cambodian refugee community, Dul's
group and Refugee Transitions, set up a drop-in tutoring center at the New
Hope Community Church in Oakland.
"A lot of these kids have been through really tough experiences. They
have PTSD and have been through traumatic events in their lives," says Logan
Roth, 24, a graduate student at JFK University in Pleasant Hill who tutors
at the church once a week. Students suspected of suffering from the disorder
or otherwise in need of mental-health treatment are referred to counselors
at Oakland's Jewish Family and Children's Services.
To help motivate those who attend the drop-in sessions at the church, an
incentive program has been established. Students who finish their homework
and meet preset goals each time they come earn 10 points for the day. After
a certain number of points are accumulated, they can go on a field trip to
the zoo and, with enough points, even a "snow trip."
For Afghan children, another hurdle to overcome is prejudice against
them, especially since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Even though the refugees
from Afghanistan living in the Fremont area suffered at the hands of the
fundamentalist Taliban regime, many of their children don't want to be
identified as Afghans.
Rona Popal, executive director of the Afghan Coalition, a Fremont group
that helps Afghans relocate in the area, recalls being at a recent program
designed to promote multicultural awareness for students where the speaker
asked if any of them were Afghan. None of the Afghans raised their hands.
"They don't feel comfortable to put their hands up," says Popal, who
works with Refugee Transitions to provide tutors for Fremont Afghan
students.
What all refugee students in the East Bay have in common is that their
parents are generally less educated and came from more rural, isolated areas
in their home countries.
"You have people who arrived here from really rural areas in Bosnia, and
all of a sudden they are coming in the Bay Area," Tokmic says. "Three, four,
five million people live here, and this is a really metropolitan area. It's
another kind of culture shock."
Despite the problems Bridge to Success' students encounter, Tokmic
believes that they're better off being in the United States than in their
own countries.
"You have more opportunities here. I can understand that certain-age kids
would rather think about basketball or whatever, but that's the moment where
this program jumps in. And it's one-on-one. It's more personalized. It's not
the counselor at the school. This is one particular person you know by name,
and you see him all the time."
