The Wake

Students shuffle into a classroom as the bell rings, slumping into desks and tossing backpacks to the floor. They regard their teacher with mild interest as he begins the lesson. Two boys and a girl trade whispered banter that’s half-teasing and half-flirting. A few seats away, a girl holds a cell phone under her desk and text-messages.

Only the papers hanging on the wall to the students’ left betray this as anything but a typical high school classroom. The words are scratched simply on notebook paper, framed by magazine photos of men with guns and the sorrowful faces of children. “11 years I have not seen Somalia. I want to go to Somalia,” one reads. “My country doesn’t have school and medical…1990 up to now my country civil war,” says another. A third is even more direct: “Many of my family are dead in my homeland… I wish I wish for peaceful country.”

At the Minnesota Internship Center’s English Language Academy, most of the students are from Somalia and Ethiopia, and none speak English as their first language. The internship center, a charter school aimed at helping low-income, at-risk youth graduate from high school, has five sites around Minneapolis. Four are for American youth; the English Language Academy caters to immigrants and refugees.

In the small school’s uncrowded hallways, clusters of students chatter in a mix of English and their native languages, smiling and waving to staff members who call them by name. Many poke their heads in classroom doors, looking for friends. Fliers dot the walls, encouraging students to take advantage of after-school homework help or to explore college and career options.

Most of the students are slightly older than American high-school students, between 17 and 20. They must complete the necessary credits before they turn 21 and can no longer finish high school, according to Heidi Skallet, coordinator for access to college and careers. The school offers classes from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. to help the students accomplish this goal. Students are divided not by grade but by their English skills, taking classes with other students who can speak and read at about the same level.

Besides the language barrier, the recently immigrated students face a cultural divide. Most of the students are Muslim, particularly those who are Somali or Oromo, an ethnic group found in Ethiopia and Kenya. All of the Muslim girls at the academy wear full robes and head coverings with only hands and face exposed, leaving them vulnerable to scrutiny from distrustful Americans. There’s also the fact that most refugees arrive in the United States with nothing. With no independent income and no renting history, Skallet said, many immigrants have trouble even finding places to live.

Some of the students have a hard time adjusting to parts of daily life that Americans take for granted. Student Makia Abbadulla complained about the hot and cold extremes of Minnesota weather, saying, “At home, the weather is perfect. No snow.” She also said she didn’t like the food when she first arrived in the United States. “I didn’t eat American food for a year—no, pizza, no milk,” she said. “Now, I can eat anything.”

Both Skallet and teacher Erica Twietmeyer note a separation between recently arrived immigrants and those who have been here longer and become more Americanized. Skallet said that new arrivals are very serious about their studies, while the kids who have been here longer might joke around with their teachers or skip class.

Twietmeyer added that students tend to lose some interest in school once they have become reasonably skilled in English. “They’re surviving socially,” she said. “They might have a car, a job. They feel like they don’t need to learn anymore.”

Those who had jobs in the United States before coming to the school, though, do take school seriously. Many of the students at the school worked at a Tyson chicken factory that didn’t require them to speak English, Skallet said. Their experience with meatpacking has taught them the value of an education in America.

After improving their English and earning high school credits, the center’s students are able to consider higher education. Through a program called The Power of YOU, graduates of Twin Cities high schools can attend Minneapolis Community and Technical College, St. Paul College or Metropolitan State University tuition-free. The program gives many of the academy’s students a chance to get a college degree and work towards a profession. These immigrants can look beyond their menial jobs to careers in computer science, journalism and engineering—dreams made possible by the English Language Academy.