A day full of firsts for Hmong

By James Walsh, Star Tribune Staff Writer

Published September 8th, 2004 in the Star Tribune

What if the first day of school was really the FIRST day of school anywhere in any place, the first day of waking up early of fumbling with strange, lace-up tennis shoes, of forgetting breakfast, of
walking six blocks past barking dogs and American flags, of ever being asked to sit still, of school lunch with a little paper box that you don't know how to open and then spilling chocolate milk on your new shirt with a cartoon mouse you've never seen before, of hearing English and having absolutely no idea what it means?

What if it all was just too hard? Welcome to the first day of school for Ekkachai Lao, 7, and Thai Song Lao, 6, brothers who just two months ago left a refugee camp in Thailand with their family and moved thousands of miles to a duplex on the East Side of St. Paul. But the trip to their classroom Tuesday at Phalen Lake Elementary School in St. Paul may be the biggest leap of all.
The Lao boys are among a projected 1,000 children making the journey from the Wat Tham Krabok camp to the St. Paul schools this year, part of an expected influx of up to 5,000 refugees to Minnesota as the camp is emptied. Officials in the St. Paul schools, which has educated tens of thousands of Hmong refugees since the late 1970s and early 1980s, have made ready. They have seen test scores and graduation rates among Hmong students rise over the years and say they are confident they will make similar strides with this latest wave.

"We've had the pleasure of learning a lot about English language learners, and we are probably among the best in the country," said St. Paul schools Superintendent Patricia Harvey:
St. Paul has one of the nation's highest Hmong populations and boasts several Hmong political and school leaders. Last year, more than 12,000 Asian students were enrolled in the St. Paul schools, making up 30 percent of the district's total enrolment. The vast majority of them were Hmong.

Unlike 20 years ago, there are bilingual teachers, bilingual aides and even a bilingual school board member.

The new strategy for St. Paul's newest students is to send students to one of three Transitional Language Centers -at Phalen Lake, Hayden Heights and Como Park elementaries -for about a year or until they learn enough to go into regular classrooms. Older kids will attend a language academy at the former Wilson Junior High School.

"It's important for us to jump-start them," Harvey said.

On Tuesday, though, that time seemed far away for two

Ekkachai and Thai Song walked into a classroom Tuesday with two teachers and just six other students. Teachers Xia Lee and Carolyn Cone, who both speak Hmong, said they eventually expect up to 20 children in their kindergarten-first-grade classroom.

They just don't know when. The anticipated wave of refugees, which prompted St; Paul Mayor Randy Kelly and St. Paul school officials to visit Wat Tham Krabok earlier this year, still is just a trickle. As of Friday, 112 children from the camp were officially enrolled in the St. Paul schools.
As of Aug; 31, 1,754 people had been removed from the camp and flown to the United States, according to the Bureau of Refugees, Population and Migration at the U.S. State Department. The office does not maintain a list of destinations for each of the families, but according to one of Minnesota's relief agencies, about 400 Hmong from Wat Tham Krabok have moved here since resettlement began on June 21. About half of those have been assisted by the International Institute of Minnesota, according to director John Horden. He said his agency has registered 203 people so far and expects 276 more for the month of September.

Horden said he still estimates that about 5,000 people, a third of the camp's 15,000 residents, will come to Minnesota. A steep increase in arrivals is expected in coming weeks. The camp's residents should be resettled in the United States by the end of the year.

Such a rapid influx could strain the schools. At Phalen Lake, Principal Jan Hopke-Almer said the school has been told to reserve five classrooms for up to 125 children. They have enough staff members now for 75, she said.

Each Transitional Language Center classroom will have two teachers, with at least one fluent in Hmong. The idea is to teach the children in both Hmong and English, which should help them absorb English better and quicker, officials say.

Tuesday morning, after spending more than an hour just getting the seven boys and one girl settled in and, usually, facing the same direction, Cone and Lee coaxed the children to count from one to 10 in Hmong. Then, they counted in English.

Ekkachai, so rambunctious at home, was subdued all morning, He watched for a minute, then wandered away. Lee repeatedly called, “Ekkachai, Ekkachai,” and had to get up, take his hand and 1ead him back to his spot in line I or at his desk or at the lunch table. C Over the course of the day, she be- came his shadow, taking him by the arm, cajoling him, correcting him, getting him off the floor.

Thai Song was often silent and unsmiling, looking down at the floor, picking at a sandwich at lunch, dribbling his milk on his shirt. Like so many children, he seemed happiest on the playground.

Lee, 30, was a 10-year-oldrefu- gee from a camp in Thailand when she came to St. Paul in 1984. After two years in an isolated language program, Lee moved to regular classrooms, graduated from the St. Paul schools, the University of Minnesota and St Mary's University and became a teacher.

"They can do it It's just the first day, and it's so overwhelming, " Lee said of children who don’\t know to wash their hands after going to the bathroom, don’t know yet how to pick up a lunch tray or open a carton of milk. "But by the end of this week, they'll know their routines. It's just going to take baby steps."

And Ekkachai? "He's going to be a lot of work. But eventually, he'll be fine," she said.

Rise and shine

It was 7:30 in the morning Tuesday when Ma Lor arrived at the house of her brother, Yia Lao, to help get his children ready for school. When she got upstairs, she ironed and shouted into his bedroom. School started at 8:20 a.m.; and no one except their grandmother was awake and dressed.

The next half-hour was a mad scramble. Yia Lao alternated between helping his Wife, Kha Chang, put shoes on Thai Song and Ekkachai and pouring boiling water into the bowls of dry noodles lined up in the kitchen for breakfast. There were new clothes and new shoes -Thai Song wore Spider-Man -and new backpacks bought just a couple weeks before.

The boys were excited, smiling. For their older sister, Youa Lao, who would be starting seventh grade at the old Wilson Junior High, there was a bus to catch. Ekkachai set off for school, followed by his father, holding Thai Song's hand. Breakfast sat uneaten on the table.

As they walked, Ekkachai hummed and sang a song to himself in Hmong. A dog behind a chain-link fence dashed at the boys, barking. All around them, the traffic of a school morning hummed and rumbled. Their pace slowed. The smiles left their faces. They walked into the school. Their father-deaf in one ear and unable to understand English - at first took them to the wrong classroom. Then they found Lee and Cone and room number seven.

On the brightly colored walls were numbers, colors and words that none of the children can yet understand.

To any visitor, to most other children, this first day of school looked like any other. Except, for these children, for Ekkachai and Thai Song, it was the FIRST day. And it was hard,



Staff writer Matt McKinney contributed to this report.

James Walsh is at jwalsh@startribune.com.



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