Yeng is among our most recent influx of Hmong immigrants from the refugee camps in Thailand. The supposed last 10,000 or so arrived about two years ago, thirty-plus years after the Hmong, who had been recruited by the CIA to fight the North Vietnamese, fled their mountain homes in Laos when the United States conceded its inability to "win" the Vietnam War. I am not well-versed in the details, but I do know that some Hmong still hide in the hills of Laos, while others face atrocities and death at the hands of the Thai. The "lucky" ones have finally been able to immigrate to the United States, mostly to California's Central Valley, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, where they become part of an immigrant community that has struggled to preserve its history and traditions, while becoming American. I suspect that within that community, there is now a certain snobbery toward the new arrivals, just as there is by Mexican Americans born here toward immigrants, legal or not, born in Mexico.
True to a stereotype that has developed, I have erroneously expected all Asian students, whether Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, or Hmong, to excel academically. I honestly think it is the rare parent who does not wish for their child to excel, but often the wherewithal to motivate the child toward that result lacks. Discipline, consistency, valuing knowledge, realism, meeting basic needs, delusion: they can all play a role. As a teacher, I want to challenge each child to reach and possibly exceed their intellectual potential and to provide them the tools to do so—I honestly think these are the two main ingredients of teaching. The child and the parents or guardians have to take it from there, and if they do not, there is not much any teacher can do, except keep hoping that the parents will come around or, more likely, though still on the order of a miracle, that the child can divorce his goals and potentials from all negative, or absent, influence from home.
But how does the teacher know the child's potential when she can barely communicate with him? These students must both acquire English on a steep learning curve and study the other academic disciplines. In the beginning, they have two English classes daily, with our English language development (ELD) teacher, and often, as in Yeng's case, a third class, because they have not yet been able to pass the English portion of the high school exit exam. Their ELD classes are taught entirely in English, just as we teach French entirely in French from day one, as immersion is the best technique, the one that mimics how we acquire our first language.
Yeng does well in science and math, which is not unusual for second language students, especially if they also happen to like the subject matter. There is also a bilingual aide in those classes. Despite having numerous Hispanic and Hmong students with minimal English skills, I have had no such aides all year, and given the nature of the class, I cannot teach at a level below the skills required to pass the exam. The best I can do is try to dole out ample individual encouragement and feedback. Some students do well, because of internal motivation and, in some cases I think, a natural capacity for language-learning. I smile broadly when a student who has not uttered a word all year says, "Hi, Ms. Harper," or, "May I go to the restroom?" or when a student who could barely write two sentences completes an essay. These are huge first steps.
Yeng, however, shows no intiative, not unlike too many students. They do not like to read, and they do not like to think. I tell them they have not foud the right thing to read yet. I tell them their brain is a muscle that must be exercised to become stronger. I tell them to learn English, they must speak, hear, read, and write English. Occasionally one discovers I am right.
Does Yeng have a learning disability? We do not think so. He is getting reading glasses, which hopefully will help—if he wears them. I comment to the school nurse and psychologist, "If only we could superglue kids' glasses to their noses."
Shong
I am enthralled by Yeng's mother, Shong Lee, her face, her comportment and demeanor. I do not know the Hmong forms of address—often father, mother, and children have different last names—so I shall refer to her as Shong. I listen earnestly to Connie's translations and Shong's responses, thinking surely I should be able to understand a word here and there; I am, after all, a language teacher. But I have to rely on Connie's translations: Shong is grateful that all of Yeng's teachers have come to the meeting: it is living proof that we care about her son.
Yeng's older brother listens intently and occasionally comments, but he seems more a witness. Shong agrees her son needs to take more initiative. She is worried, too, that he is beginning to hang out with the wrong sort of kids—we tell her he has cut class a couple of times, though for the most part he is never a discipline problem. Although 17, he seems immature, as if he could be easily swayed.
Still, it is the mother who fascinates me. Her face does not appear lined or worn, but it displays wisdom and experience. Her hands, the short fingernails with dirt stains under them, are lovelier than the hands of women who spend time and money on fake nails with intricately colored designs. Her dark hair, with a few strands of gray, is pulled back imperfectly, wisps allowed to float. It is not the glistening black hair of some Asians. Rather, it is an earthy black, healthy and thick and experienced. She does not look like some Hmong women, who seem like dolls, costumed by a child and placed in a child's fantasy that mixes time and place. She wears a dark blazer, perhaps put on over a simple cotton shirt and skirt in which she stooped in the field I assume she works in. The Hmong grow the best strawberries. Lately I have seen the Hmong farmers, men, women, families, stooped low over their expanding plants as the ground warms.
Shong knows that her son must acquire the skills to succeed here. She must feel at times a quiet desperation that she is not familiar with the system, that she cannot communicate directly with Yeng's teachers. As I look at her, I think she must have learned long ago to master her fears, when she crossed the Mekong River with her parents and siblings, seeking refuge in Thailand. She must have been born hopeful, or learned it. Perhaps marriage in the refugee camp and giving birth to her children there was no more than fulfilling cultural expectations, regardless of the surroundings. But she brought her children, with her husband, to this agrarian area, where there can be a sense of community among other Hmong and fields.
Still, America is a world apart from the lives she has known.
Shong's eyes do not have the hollow look of one who is overwhelmed. They are the eyes of a woman who lives life, who accepts her deck of cards and plays it for all she is worth. This is what she wants for Yeng, to play his deck well. She is not with us, seated around this conference table, to ask for the moon or a bye. She wants only our honest assessment of her son and our honest suggestions, to help her comprehend what is expected of Yeng in order for him to succeed academically.
I imagine Shong as the daughter, new to America, unfrightened by the feast of options arrayed before her, not longing for the familiarity of the refugee camp, with its squalor, limitations, and threats, but ready to accelerate the metamorphosis of her life. If only the mother's hunger could be transferred to her son. Even a portion would do.
The next day we have a journal entry in class. Yeng appears to be writing.
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