Jordan Ott

Vang, C.T. (2005). Hmong-American Students Still Face Multiple Challenges in Public Schools.
Multicultural Education 13(1), 27-35. Retrieved from http://www.caddogap.com/

Vue, K & Rodriguez, M.C. (2018) The Role of Social and Emotional Skills and Supports For
Hmong Students Achievement. Hmong Studies Journal 19(1). Retrieved from
hmongstudiesjournal.org

Rationale: I would like to look into the Hmong ethnic group because it is a cultural group that
was not represented in my school, and the Hmong people I have interacted with have had fairly
low English speaking skills. My high school was comprised of 91% white and 9% minority
students. The only time that I have interacted with Hmong people was when I worked at Minnesota
Youth Elks Camp this past summer as well as when I worked at Kids First last year. The Hmong
people that I have interacted with were much more comfortable speaking Hmong than English,
and they would make frequent mistakes while speaking English. The article shows that large
portions of Hmong students are being labelled as Limited English Proficient (LEP) which
causes these students to be separated from the rest of the school both academically and
socially due to their placement in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. Also, Hmong
students are the third largest LEP group in California schools, meaning that even though I did not
have the opportunity to interact with Hmong students in my high school, I will likely have Hmong
students in my classroom in the future and it will be important for me to know what challenges
they are facing in Public Schools.

Author Credibility: The article “Hmong-American Students Still Face Multiple Challenges in
Public Schools” was written by Christopher T. Vang. He is an assistant professor for education at
California State University Stanislaus in Turlock California. He has three published books that
focus on Hmong students and Multicultural Education titled “Story About a Hmong Student”,
“An Educational Psychology of Methods in Multicultural Education” and “Hmong Refugees
in the New World: Culture, Community, and Opportunity”. Along with these books he wrote
his dissertation for his doctorate on Hmong populations in schools and has published many articles
relating to the education of Hmong populations. Over the course of his life Vang has done many
forms of research on Hmong people from different regions, of different ages, and of different
abilities. He is a very qualified person on the education of Hmong people due to his extensive
knowledge of the topic from his own research that he has done for his books, articles, and doctoral
dissertation.

Motive for Writing the Article: Teachers and other school personnel need to provide more
assistance to meet the need of the all the students in their classes, especially the Hmong students.
Hmong students are still being overlooked in schools leaving them without support and teachers
without an accurate understanding of the students’ needs. This is shown by the extensive research
that has been done on bilingual students that come from many different environments, however
this research did not study the needs of Hmong students between kindergarten and 12th grade as
much as it did the other groups being observed. (Vang, 2005). Also, students are still having many
issues with their public schools and lack of support because they are being overlooked by those
schools, leaving them to struggle on their own. Vang wrote this article in order to provide insight
into the factors that are affecting Hmong students in public school so educators will not overlook
them and can better provide support for these students.

Central Argument: Hmong students have many factors that are affecting their likelihood of
success or failure in public schools. These factors include how people view them academically,
sociocultural factors, their family’s structure, social barriers, gender roles, parental education
levels, parent’s socioeconomic status, birthplace, age, and year of emigration from Laos (Vang
2005). Educators can change the way Hmong students are perceived academically in order to help
them perform better. Also, extra support can be provided to these students to assist with their
success, even if the factors are leading towards probable failure educators are still responsible for
pushing the students towards success by making adaptations and providing assistance where it is
needed. Educators need to be prepared to provide support for students in all types of different
situations and learn how to make changes to their classroom in order to accommodate the variety
of students in the classroom.

Section I: Cultural Characteristics of Ethnic or Racial Group

Some of the Hmong cultural aspects that are stated specifically in the article are the values of

family and following gender roles, as well as the attitude and beliefs towards the American K-12

and college educational systems. Hmong students have strict obligations to their families that

they have to accomplish. Before they have children and are married, they have specific tasks

to fulfill in their families that come before school responsibilities. Then, after they get

married and have children there is a system in place where men are the head of the household

and the women are mothers. The men are in charge of finding full time employment that can

support their family. The females are not economically responsible for their family, they are

assisting by caring for the children and supporting their husbands endeavors. Hmong families

usually have more children than the average American family would have, and they start having

children earlier as well (Vang, 2005). These gender roles cause the female to have a large job

caring for the children in their family and can cause them to not be able to pursue other things that

are common for American women to obtain, such as completing high school, acquiring a college

degree, or obtaining a full-time job. Men are required to provide financially for the family, which
can also cause them to have a large job of quickly finding a job that offers stability for their family

even if this means that they have to abandon a high school or college degree.

These gender roles can cause students to do things in relation to school that do not necessary

represent their attitude towards education. Many parents and students believe that education causes

a rise socioeconomic status in America. Students want to finish high school because they believe

that it is important to receive an education in order to have a better American life. Parents want

their students to finish high school so they will learn skills for jobs and college application,

however Hmong culture and values related to family and gender roles usually interfere with the

process of getting a high school diploma. For the cases that Hmong culture does not interfere, and

they do get their diploma, schools do not teach the skills necessary and Hmong students have

difficulty finding employment or getting accepted into college. This happens because the success

of the student depends on the support from the family, however the parents of most Hmong

students are unable to assist with school topics because they themselves never received an

education (Vang, 2005). Hmong families and students think that an education is important and can

lead to more opportunities, however their education is impeded by the need to follow their families

gender roles and structure. Also, this belief of the importance of education only applied to K-12

education, the beliefs for college education are quite different.

Many Hmong students dream of going to college, and parents have started to encourage their

daughters to go to college more than they have in the past, however, there still are stipulations on

this encouragement. Hmong parents want their children to remain close to home if they do go

to college so they can still fulfill their family obligations. They also want them to still be

focused on getting married while they are going to college because they think that they might

be too old to marry if they wait until after getting their degree to get married. Another thing
that might cause tension is that parents do not understand the difference in challenges that are faced

by foreign born children compared to their native-born children. This means that their native-born

children are more likely to go to college and have less issues while they are in college, while

foreign born children are prone to lower acceptance rates and more difficulty if they do get

accepted to college (Vang, 2005). College is a difficult task for anyone to complete with many

challenges and hardships along the way, however it is even harder being from a different country,

having different values than others, and having parents that do not fully support the decision to

focus on obtaining a college degree. Commented [WNP1]: Great discussion in this section!!

Section II: Important Societal Factors

There are many societal factors that affect the educational ability of the Hmong students.

Some of these include lack of education, illiteracy, and level of family adjustment. Hmong

immigrants do not have much access to English prior to coming to America, which causes a

language barrier between the parents and school personnel. This roadblock causes Hmong

parents to be less involved in schools and affects their students capacity for understanding school

material. The parent’s educational ability is a big societal factor in relation to the student’s ability

to learn. Since many Hmong parents did not have any education prior to their immigration to

America they are unable to assist their children with school, and unable to prepare students for

what the school will be like. Also, their lack of schooling in their native country causes them to be

more likely to be illiterate. This means that they are unable to help teach their children how to read,

causing many Hmong students to also be illiterate. This provides difficulty in schools because

students who are not literate in their native language are attempting to speak, read, write, and

comprehend a new language without even having this type of understanding of their first language

(Vang, 2005). The lack of education in older Hmong generations causes the school age Hmong
population to struggle with connecting to the school, the school structure, and being able to read

and comprehend English in their schools.

The lack of literacy in both their native language and in English provides many problems

for Hmong students throughout their education. Usually, the result is the Hmong students are

categorized as Low English Proficient (LEP) and are in special classes for LEP students which

causes them to be separated from their peers. This separation can make these students have a

negative self-view which further decreases their educational ability. Another factor that affects

their learning potential is minimal comprehension due to low literacy rates. This lack of

understanding causes them to fall behind in their classes, decreases their academic ability,

and negatively affects their likelihood to go to college. This is why foreign-born students are

struggling more and differently than native born students. Hmong students born in America have

a better grasp of the English language and the American culture causing them to have to adapt less

and perform better in the school system (Vang, 2005). Students that are literate in their native

language and students who begin learning English at a young age are more likely to understand

English than those who are illiterate in their native language and try to learn English when they

are older. Those who have to adapt to a new environment after many years of their native

environment will encounter more obstacles than those who are born or are introduced early in that

environment.

Based off of that, another factor that can impact the success of Hmong students is how well

their family adapts to their new environment. One way that parents struggle to adapt is it is difficult

for them to find a job causing their family to be more likely to be in poverty. Also, Hmong families

are usually very large, however it is hard to support a large family in America, especially if

you do not have a well-paying job. This causes families to live in crowded homes, have
minimal access to health care services, and carry their stress from home with them to school.

The parents must also adapt to the new expectations for their child in America, even though they

may be different than their own expectations. Some of the things that are different that they will

need to adjust to is that most people get a high school degree, go to college, and wait until after

they go to college to get married and have children. The largest way that they must adapt to this is

that an education is necessary to get a job, and if they are uneducated a job is unlikely. Encouraging

their children to get married and have children at the traditional age will highly affect their

education and how people in America view them (Vang, 2005). These differences in Hmong

culture and American culture will cause students to have to choose which culture to follow and

can cause intergenerational issues within the family if they choose American culture instead. If the

family does not adjust well to the new culture and reality of life in America, it will be harder for

their children to be comfortable adapting to this new culture causing further distance from the

people in school and the academic process as a whole. Commented [WNP2]: Great discussion of the Important
Societal Factors in this section!!

Section III: Educational Strategies and Interventions

Providing strategies to help each child in a classroom be successful is very important as an

educator. For Hmong students it is important to use culturally relevant material in the classroom,

to provide these students with positive role models, and to increase the interaction with their

parents. Using materials that are familiar to them from their native culture will allow the students

to better connect to the material that they are trying to understand increasing their comprehension

and learning ability. Educators can also help students transfer things that they already know and

use these familiar ideas in their instruction to increase comprehension of the ideas that they do not

quite understand yet. Explaining things more in class will also help these students understand the

concepts better. If an educator explains things more and uses concrete examples in their classroom
the Hmong students are likely to perform better because these are strategies to help break down

the language and culture barrier between the students and their teachers. Educators can also help

these students create their own definition of academic success based on American beliefs and

Hmong beliefs and help them reach these goals (Vang, 2005). Introducing new concepts to

students by using things that they already understand is key to increasing their comprehension.

Showing that they are cared about and providing assistance for them is also an important part of

their success. Commented [WNP3]: Take a look at my Activities to

The best way to show the students that are cared about in the school system is to introduce
them to positive in school role models. This can be a teacher, another student or another
professional in the building. These role models can assist them in understanding the American
culture, share academic advice, and can help them do better in school. If the Hmong students sees
Investigate Funds of Knowledge list in the D2L - Cultural
Study Module as well as the discussion of this concept in
Chapter Two. You can see ways that teachers might
investigate existing Funds of Knowledge that exist in the
lives, homes and communities of Hmong students. Then,
the teacher can work with said students to make
connections to desired dispositions and specific academic
standards and content being discussed in a unit, lesson plan,
or classroom management strategy.

their role model asking questions, coming early to get help, studying after school, and other

positive educational things they will be more comfortable doing these things as well. These

positive role models can also make them feel more connected to the school. Students who do not

connect with people at their school are less likely to care, so giving these Hmong students someone

to connect to and learn from can change their academic ability, as well as their feelings towards

school (Vang, 2005). Showing students positive role models can give them the opportunity to

connect more to the school and to American culture. This can increase their understanding and

academic ability allowing them to achieve more in their classroom.

Another way to help Hmong students achieve in the classroom is to increase the school’s

communication with the parents. Communication between the school personnel and the parents

can help the parents better understand what school is like for their children. Helping these parents

better understand the educational structure and encouraging them to increase their support of their
child’s education will help the students academically. This communication will allow students to

talk with their parents about stories from school, how they are doing academically, and any

struggles that they may be having. These conversations can create a stronger relationship between

the parents and their children through better understanding and communication. Having

conversations about school can also help students and families make a plan together for the

student’s life after school (Vang, 2005). These conversations are essential for student growth

because they will make them feel connected to their parents and school and provide them with an

at home support system. This allows students to be more comfortable in their school environment

which leads to asking questions, participating in class, and other things that will improve academic

achievement. Commented [WNP4]: Good, thorough discussion in this

Research Report - Rubric Score: 3/3/3