Bartello 1

Nico Bartello

Prof. Anyango

Seminar in Composition: Diversity

10 April 2023

I’m going to start off by describing the rocky path I had to get an informant.

Unfortunately, I just ran into a few issues with communication and not knowing whether or not a

company’s contact form was still in operation. It all began with the organization Hello Neighbor

which I originally had planned on interviewing and basing everything on, I started with using

their built-in “Contact Form” to email them requesting an interview that ended in no response. I

then tried emailing them through one of their contacts which was also just a dead-end. I thought

the third time was the charm when trying to contact the third informant through her number but

she must have been busy or not seen my text and also didn’t respond. Luckily the final person I

contacted, Amina, responded to my texts and we got an all-in-one-day interview set up. She is an

assistant teacher and a refugee herself so she was a prime candidate for getting her perspective. I

did have to quickly alter my questions a bit because it wasn’t on my original topic of housing.

Fortunately, it happened to be on another topic I am interested in which is education.

After securing an informant and altering my questions I can actually perform the

interview. Now with my laptop to take notes and record the conversation by my side, I pressed

the call button and started the interview. We went through the questions one by one while I took

some notes on her experiences and her perspective. I do feel that if I repeated this interview I

would have made my questions a little more in-depth and given them more to build on. This is

mainly because she incidentally answered two of my questions later on when giving me the

background to answer the earlier one. There were a few moments that I had trouble hearing her I
 Bartello 2

think because of her kid in the background. Besides that, I really enjoyed hearing the questions I

had answered by someone who isn’t only a refugee but also a teacher, she really gave me things

to think about that I hadn’t even considered before. She talked about how her own brother went

through the process of getting assistance to go through college and how some of her students

could get assistance which was a nice touch of personal experience. After I finished the

interview, I refined my notes/transcription of what happened so I would have something to easily

look back on rather than listening to the audio each time.

The first piece of knowledge I gained from talking with Amina was related to my first

question about the major challenges refugee children face when it comes to education. She

stated, “The number one problem they face is that they don’t have a support person at home”.

What she means by this is that there was nobody at home to enforce anything related to

education and schooling. In some families, there isn’t somebody there to keep them on track

when it comes to things like homework and studying so the student would just forget about it or

be more confused in class. She also addressed how the parent doesn’t always fully understand

their responsibilities to the child in relation to school. This primarily came up in the example she

gave of school punishment. She explained that some refugee parents believe that when they send

their child or children to school it is on the school to completely take care of them, and if they

get in trouble there they believe it is up to the school to decide how to punish them. Amina, the

teacher, or another school representative might then have to try to explain to parents that it

doesn’t work that way and the school only reports the bad behavior, and it's up to the parents to

punish them for it. It shows one of the many possible cultural barriers when it comes to

education and refugees, some cultures handle it differently than the U.S. making the transition a

bit harder. Luckily there are programs out there to help refugee parents assimilate easier and
 Bartello 3

have a better understanding of how education works in the U.S. The next most important topic I

brought up was in relation to making sure that all students got an equal and fair education across

the board whether they be refugees or not. She stated that it was mostly handled by the school to

ensure they get a proper education, they do this by watching their grades and assignments to

make sure no students fall behind. If they notice something like this happening, one of the

possible routes they may look at is the Individualized Education Program(IEP) which will

provide some students with the extra help they might need to keep up. I can say this program is

very helpful because I myself was in it for a few years in elementary school. Once I caught up to

the other students they took me out and monitored me just in case I needed it for the rest of my

school career. This opened my eyes to how widely used this program is. I never knew it had so

many applications besides kids who had just slightly fallen behind in school. We then moved on

to the topic of the challenges that came from online schooling and covid. She started off by

talking about how there are always challenges here and there and that this was just another one

they were forced to deal with. She then stated, “Some kids are so quiet that you don’t know if

they are just quiet or don’t know the assignment”. This is one of the many challenges that a

teacher has to deal with, reading children is already difficult enough and then you throw in

online school which makes it even harder. It's a difficult situation that everyone involved just

needs to be patient with. This became pretty clear to me through the online schooling I went

through in high school also. I watched as teachers expressed their difficulties gauging where a

class was in comparison to the usual curriculum, along with them begging students to turn their

cameras on just so they could get some engagement. That's only speaking of high school teachers

also, everything would only get more challenging when it comes to little kids with other possible

barriers like language.

 Bartello 4

Eventually, I moved on to the next major topic I was interested in which was if there was

a system in place for kids who got relocated or moved. She first described how it would be easier

to transfer a kid if they stayed within the district. This is because usually, they can just send

someone to work with them in the other district. There is also a much better line of

communication within the district than there would be outside of it, primarily because they have

quicker access to their previous progress and teachers. Otherwise, she said they would usually

send someone to help them one on one to a new district that would assure they are making

progress and continuing their education. The next major topic that broadened my knowledge of

what's offered to refugees was older kids seeking to go to college. She instantly started off with

how her own brother went through these programs to go to college, the program specifically was

with the Bidwell Training Center. It has a year-long program that gives these young adults some

experience and expectancy of what college will be like. After they are done with this program

they are then provided assistance with tuition and transportation to the university. They also offer

programs that can help them once they are in college such as tutoring. This was something that I

was relieved to hear and didn’t have any understanding of before our meeting. While hearing all

of this I do wish the programs could be expanded a bit to be more widespread but I’m also glad

that they exist at all. It just made me aware that there are programs out there to give young adults

the same/similar opportunities when it comes to college.

Next, I would introduce a question about the laws and policies relating to refugees in

school. She immediately brought up a program I was aware of just by name which is the No

Child Left Behind policy. This was a law that would watch the schools and make sure that

students were improving. This law made a lot of sense to me because it ensures that schools can’t

just slack off and not have students learn anything. The only issue that I realized in my post-
 Bartello 5

interview was that it relies on the students putting in even amounts of work which I know from

my experience in school isn't always the case. The next topic I questioned was what kind of other

barriers there are that have to be addressed in the classroom. She brought up a few of the things

we addressed previously such as teachers needing immense patience. Another one that caught

my attention was the language barrier. I had a basic understanding before the interview but she

made it clearer. She explained how students have trouble catching certain phrases and words in

English. She went into more detail by explaining how some kids will say “Shoes Blue” instead

of how it's said in English “Blue Shoes”. Unlike most other languages English comes with a lot

of confusion around it because of how sentences are grammatically structured. This will cause

issues with refugee students whose native tongue isn't English, but once the teacher understands

they can help better explain it to the students.

I didn’t fully realize how much this interview and paper would clear up the questions I

had regarding refugees and education. I would still like to do some of my own research in the

future on other topics that I didn’t talk about with Amina such as my original topic of housing or

employment. Amina was calm and extremely good at explaining some of these concepts I hadn’t

considered before, which makes sense with her background. Now that I have done this interview

I could easily recommend other people to either take their own interview and ask some questions

or do their own research to broaden their inner diversity and inclusion.