When the Spirit Catches You: On Finding My Path to Exploring and Teaching Hmong History and Culture at the Middle Level

“The Hmong have a phrase, hais cuaj txub kaum txub, which means 'to speak of all kinds of things.' It is often used at the beginning of an oral narrative as a way of reminding the listeners that the world is full of things that may not seem to be connected but actually are; that no event occurs in isolation; that you can miss a lot by sticking to the point; and that the storyteller is likely to be rather long-winded.” 

Anne Fadiman

My introduction to the narrative of Hmong culture came from reading the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down:  A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, by Anne Fadiman.  It is the emotional tale of how the family of Lia Lee, a gravely ill Hmong child, wrestles with the conflicts that arise when they try to treat their daughter medically according to their own cultural practices while navigating the system of Western medicine and American expectations.  The book was assigned to me in my undergraduate Medical Spanish class as a way to teach us about language translation and cultural sensitivity in the medical field, but what it really made me ponder on a deeper level was the question of how we could all become more culturally proficient in order to enhance our understanding of the human experience and to respectfully navigate the edges of cultural conflict and communication.  More importantly, I began to wonder what I could do, personally, to learn more about this interesting group of people that I had never known existed, even though many lived in my own state.

These questions resurfaced when I found myself interviewing for an ESL (English as a Second Language) teaching position at a diverse middle school where the two largest groups of English Language Learners were Latino and Hmong students.  The movie Gran Torino had just come out, and watching it made me believe that I had established a decent amount of background knowledge about Hmong people.  When the principal asked me to discuss my experience working with Hmong students, including what I understood about their history and culture, I felt rather confident in my textbook answer: 

"The Hmong people are a group of people who helped the American soldiers in the Viet Nam War, and in exchange for their support in fighting the Viet Cong, our government promised them asylum in the United States when the war was over.  We didn't exactly deliver quickly on that promise, however, and  there are many Hmong people who are still waiting in refugee camps in Laos and Thailand to be brought here.  I worked with Hmong students at a different school on this side of town, and learned that their major settlements in the U.S. are in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.  As fairly recent immigrants to our country, Hmong students often deal with cultural, linguistic, and racial conflicts.  They also struggle with the push to become 'Americanized,' yet their families want them to maintain their own cultural and linguistic identity.  As a teacher of Hmong students, it is important to understand how to support their language development as well as their cultural identity, including being sensitive to the great deal of stress that they may be experiencing as a result of culture shock or trauma from being in refugee camps their entire lives." 

I might have answered that question well enough to get into my first teaching job, but I knew it was a far cry from getting me to teach with the kind of cultural responsiveness I knew it would take to do the job well.  At that moment, I made a professional commitment to get to know these students and their families as best I could so that I could teach them in a way that resonated with their lives.

For four years, I read and responded to my Hmong students' essays and stories about their identities and dealing with stereotypes.    I listened to them chat about attending the annual Hmong New Year festivities and asked them to share their experiences with the class.  I learned about the mysterious ancient history of the Plain of Jars in Laos, and made explicit connections to the mysterious Olmec heads from our integrated Latin America unit.  I also taught a unit that involved our class researching their own immigration history and sharing what they felt comfortable telling others, and I continued to build a trusting environment where everybody felt welcomed and appreciated.

By Year Five, I had decided to take a leap of faith and actually teach a quarter-long unit about Hmong history and culture.

I had no real idea how to start or what resources I would use, but I trusted that my students would help guide the way, and they absolutely rose to the occasion!  I wrote a rationale for the unit, typed up some Essential Questions (to guide the instruction), aligned Learning Targets with academic English language development standards, and away I went.  The most important step in this process was when I shared my overview with my eighth grade Hmong students and asked them if they thought this was something they felt comfortable with me teaching.  As soon as I had their blessing to continue with the unit, I asked them for their input about what I should make sure to include in a unit about their history and culture, and what topics I might need to avoid. 

As I tracked down resources, I continued to check in with my Hmong student "advisory council."  I previewed all materials ahead of time and made note of particular conversation topics I wanted to be sure to address and got my students' approval before introducing the materials in class.  I taught the class how to have a circle discussion, and how to ask and answer questions in respectful, productive ways to move our conversations along.  By the end of the unit, I had managed to find a way to blend realistic fiction, non-fiction, video resources, and structured conversation to support students in deepening their understanding of Hmong history and culture as well as finding cross-cultural similarities that they never knew existed.  I watched as our Hmong students eagerly led discussions, answered and asked deep questions, and wrote profound reflections of their learning.  The tone in our classroom, always positive, became almost familial as students shared mutual respect and appreciation for each other, and this led to increased English language development for all students.  Everyone learned how to read and take notes on academic texts, respond to literature by making connections and asking questions, and they became adept at contrastive analysis of fiction versus non-fiction text.  They wrote essays about their interpretations of the "American identity," and when it came time to choose a topic for the documentary I asked them to make about our school, many students chose to investigate diversity in our building.

All in all the Hmong unit was a success!  I believe it was a wonderful learning experience for all students and I am committed to refining it over time.  Moreover, I hope to extend this unit beyond my own classroom and collaborate with other educators to integrate these themes across the disciplines.  It may not be much, but I know it is a step in the right direction towards enhancing multicultural education and cultural proficiency for all.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

Rest in Peace, Lia Lee, 1982-2012.  The world truly is full of things that do not appear to be connected, but really are.  Your story sparked a flame that eventually created this unit, which was brought to fruition in March of this year, 2013.  In honor of your courage and your family, thank you for catching my spirit and inspiring the next generation of Hmong leaders, visionaries, and teachers. [http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/09/08/2523532/subject-of-fadimans-spirit-dies.html]

Resources used in this unit:

Cha, Dia.  Dia's Story Cloth.  Stitched by Chue and Nhia Thao Cha.  New York:  Lee and Low Books, 1996.

Cha, Dia, Mai Zong Vue, and Steve Carmen.  Field Guide to Hmong Culture.  Wisconsin:  Madison Children's Museum, 2004.

Deitz Shea, Pegi.  Tangled Threads:  A Hmong Girl's Story.  Boston, MA:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2003.

Wisconsin Public Television.  Being Hmong Means Being Free [DVD].  United States:  Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  2000.  (Available from http://video.wpt2.org/video/1726513324/) 

On the Plain of Jars:  Various internet travel blogs and videos from the region found through search engines

What's So "Common" About Common Core?

As a bilingual middle school curriculum writer in my district, I have spent the past several months digesting and making sense of the Common Core Language Arts Standards for grades 6-8.  Our charge has been to design model lessons and essentially write canned curriculum that new teachers can use as they begin their careers in our district.  As you might imagine, this work is challenging enough when it's for English Language Arts, but when it's for Spanish Language Arts, it presents an entirely different set of puzzles.  My most recent revelation throughout this work is that as much as the Common Core strives to align schools with a set of common performance expectations, implementing these standards becomes anything but common across districts.  This is mainly due to systems-level inequities, such as disconnected learning environments, unsustainable technology budgets, and inconsistent student access to technology in school and at home, including technical support when students experience a problem.

The system of bilingual education at the middle school level (with the exception of one school) in our district is designed in a disconnected way from regular core instruction.  This is contradictory to best practices for a strong bilingual/biliteracy-focused program which requires thoughtful integration across disciplines in  the core, and a strategic, clearly-defined literacy block in which students systematically learn literacy and language strategies in one language and bridge and apply those understandings to the other language.  Spanish Language Arts and English Language Arts are not supposed to exist independently from one another; they need to be integrated to be effective.

Working with this vision in mind, I have been collaborating with the English Language Arts teachers at both 6th grade and 7th grade in my building so that we can design units that are at least superficially integrated with each other so that my Spanish Language Arts class can seem to bridge and extend what students are doing in their English Language Arts class, rather than be a translation or repetition of what the students did that morning in their English Language Arts class.  This is quite difficult, considering we have to align Spanish Language Arts instruction across two different classrooms at each grade level (for a total of four environments).  

We finally got to a point where we thought we had beaten the systemic challenge of trying to align Spanish Language Arts instruction with English Language Arts instruction, using the same set of standards in the same scope and sequence, without repeating or translating what was practiced and learned earlier in the day in English, but as I was working more on the actual lesson design last night, I came across another singificant roadblock to our students' success:  access to technology. 

Technology across any district or state is horribly inconsistent, and at my school we are nowhere near having a 1:1 student to computer ratio.  So, when the Common Core mandates that all students in grades 6-8 are completing some form of research project during the second three weeks of the second quarter of school, which also happens to coincide with our requirements to administer the standardized computer-based test for reading comprehension (the MAP) and an hour-long Gallup Survey to assess student climate, access to technology just isn't there.  How are these students supposed to do research with technology that the district cannot afford to buy?  

Furthermore, all 440 students in my building are then required to use technology to acquire fluid typing skills, collaborate with the teacher and each other, and create a variety of presentations for their projects using the Internet and different applications.  Without a 1:1 student to computer ratio, this is impossible to complete during the school day; and so the most logical response is that they need to use the technology at home to complete their assignments.  I teach in an urban school where students have very inconsistent access to technology in their homes--and some students don't even have a place to call their home.  Expecting that all students will be able to use technology outside of the school day is not a reality, and even if they could use the technology, often the kinds of projects and collaboration they need to do require a fairly sophisticated understanding of the technology and the Internet, and students might not have access to tech support outside of the school building.  How are these students supposed to get their homework done when there might not be anybody able to help them?

It is not only the urban schools who are experiencing these problems.  Due to recent public school budget gouging across my state, poor, rural districts are finding themselves ill-equipped to deal with the demands of the Common Core.  Forget being able to purchase technology, some of these areas are still trying to get access to reliable broadband Internet, a state project that our governor struck down two years ago.  How are these students supposed to do research and complete their assignments with technology that is not even available to them?

As it turns out, the more I understand about the Common Core State Standards, the more I see that instead of aligning schools across the state and nation, these standards are actually driving wedges between these districts, which negatively affects our student achievement.  The standards themselves are fairly reasonable; however, when they are coupled with severe budget cuts to education, they are impossible to implement with fidelity and will leave large groups of our students behind.  If we truly want alignment in schools and if we truly want equity in education, then we have to get to the root of the issue, which is economic equity.  We have to figure out how to level the playing field so that all students have equal access to a high-quality education.  We need sustainable, healthy budgets in our schools; we need local control to make decisions with our specific students' needs in mind; and we need to retain high-quality teachers who are able to deliver the comprehensive instruction required by these standards.  Above all, we need to fund our public schools adequately and appropriately so that we are able to deliver on our promise of a free and appropriate public education for all...not simply for all "who can afford it."

We Are Family

"We are family...get up everybody and sing!"

-Sister Sledge

It was the last day of school for our 8th graders and everybody was in the cafeteria watching a video montage of pictures and music celebrating our students' activities and growth over the past year.  The 6th and 7th graders were out of the building along with their team teachers and a few support staff, and I chose to stay back to spend some quality time with the 8th graders and to wish them well as they left our building for the last time.  The room was hot and stuffy, and the cafeteria tables weren't exactly the most comfortable (How on Earth did these students deal with eating at these tiny crowded things for the last three years?), but there we were, crowded together, laughing, cheering, and at times randomly jumping up to bust a move to our favorite song.

As the song "We Are Family" started playing, I paused to reflect on what I was seeing:  students of all different races, nationalities, languages, socioeconomic statuses, abilities, social identities and interests, family lives, genders, you name it, we've got it, mixed up together, laughing and supporting each other as the pictures flashed by.  In what normally are the most chaotic and divisive years of an adolescent's life, these students were totally integrated and interested in participating in this whole group activity.  

The pictures sparked little conversations and occasionally elicited cheers, and what I  particularly noticed (as a former middle schooler myself who is sensitive to subtle forms of bullying) was that the students never appeared to laugh in a taunting or negative way.  If they didn't have anything nice to add to the environment, they just kept it to themselves.  That was an especially nice moment for me.

I also noticed how much these people had grown and changed in just one year of their lives, which led me to realize that they had actually grown and changed even more amazingly over the past three years.  The timid 6th grade Latina girls who walked into my class the first day of school afraid to practice their English were now confidently signed up for English 9 Honors in the fall.  The boys with autism who began their middle school careers perfectly happy to do their own thing had found lasting friendships with each other.  The students who presented some of the most challenging 6th grade behaviors had made positive connections with adults in our building, and were nervously lingering around them afraid to leave their safe environment for the intimidating future of high school.  Our goofy intellectuals, socially aware peace soldiers, urban renegades, artists, poets, leaders, entrepreneurs...all were there and all were welcomed.  For the last time at this school, they would all hang out together as one big family.

Now families are not without their problems, but they do come with one amazing benefit:  no matter what you choose to do, no matter where you want to go in life, no matter how many disagreements we may have, you will always belong.  Over the past three years, I've watched these young people make friends, lose friends, and be confused by the actions of people they believe to be their friends.  I've watched them segregate themselves based on language or race or perceived common experience, and also integrate themselves based on self-selected cooperative group learning activities, sports, clubs, and leadership councils.  Students have grown from using stereotypes to challenging stereotypes, from asking for the answer to asking thought-provoking questions and finding their own answers, from righteous indignation to well-constructed arguments and debates.  These young people have grown from timid children to mature young adults, poised and determined to make their own way in life.

This is why I choose to teach in my building:  We Are Family

We are a school based on mutual respect and full-inclusion.  All kids, all abilities, learning together at all times.  There are three teams at each grade level, taught by three teachers who deliver core content (math, language arts, reading, social studies, and science) and intentionally do community-building activities with their students so that they are all able to trust one another and work together cooperatively.  An added bonus is that our 6th grade teams loop with their students to 7th grade, so students have the benefit of being in the same family environment for two years.  This allows teachers the time to really get to know students, for students to get to know teachers and each other, and for families and teachers to build positive, trusting relationships.  

Our school also has built a sense of community, almost familial, among staff in the building.  We often organize social events outside of school to get to know each other personally, and we collaborate professionally, participating in various leadership teams within the building and at the district level, and attending monthly schoolwide leadership meetings to make important decisions about events, partnerships, service delivery, school climate, and professional development needs.  We strive to discourage "teacher shopping" on behalf of our students so they see us as a united front, we use inclusive language in our conversations (these are ALL our students, not mine or yours), we try to find ways to integrate support staff and extended learning staff with core teams, and when substitute teachers cover for us, we try to remember to refer to them as "guest teachers" so students know that they are equally as competent and deserving of respect as any of the regular adults in the building.

I realize I could go on and on writing with rose-colored glasses about how wonderful my school is (trust me, we have room to grow, but overall I really do love where I teach), but I think that the proof of how our environment impacts kids is in their reactions to leaving our school that day.  

It was 2:37 and the bus had pulled up outside waiting to take our students home for the summer.  Staff were clustered along the sidewalk to give the kids one last hug or handshake as they left.  At about 2:38, the tears started to flow, and students showed just how much they love their teachers and friends by lingering around giving last-minute hugs or two, or three, before actually leaving.  And it wasn't just the students, either.  There were some teachers, including myself, who were trying our best to stay cool and be strong for the students so they didn't have any unnecessary added anxiety about leaving.  All around us were words of encouragement, thank-you's, and reminders to come back and see us to tell us all about the wonderful accomplishments they would have in high school and beyond.  We know that most won't come back, but the ones who do are always amazing.

So there it was.  The last day of 8th grade.  The end of a three-year cycle of students we had grown to love--despite annoying behavior, late assignments, personality conflicts, disconnects, and sometimes power struggles--closing a chapter of their lives and anxiously awaiting the next.  I look forward to hearing about their future successes.  Wherever they go in life, they are always welcome as another generation of our school family.

"Living life is fun and we've just begun
To get our share of the world's delights
(High) high hopes we have for the future
And our goal's in sight
(We) no we don't get depressed
Here's what we call our golden rule
Have faith in you and the things you do
You won't go wrong, oh-no
This is our family Jewel"

Best of luck, Class of 2017!  

We hope you always remember your middle school family!

A Letter to My Students

"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."

-Aristotle

As the year comes to a close and as we go our separate ways, I want to take a moment to reflect on the quality of education I hope I have provided you, Dear Students.  And for you I have a few questions:

Did I take the time you needed to get to know you as people, to understand what makes you tick, your interests, your abilities, your learning styles?

Did I respond to your needs, help you feel welcomed and appreciated, show you how special you truly are?

Did I provide the kind of instruction that resonated with you, challenge you, guide you to ask questions about the world around you, and encourage you to become lifelong learners?

Did I instruct you in how to peaceably interact with others, to effectively identify and solve your own problems, to navigate the tumultuous waters of middle school social life?

Did I empower you, teach you about your history, your self-worth, and allow space for you to construct your own identities?

Did I guide you to develop your skills, discover hidden talents, and teach you how to overcome your weaknesses?

Did I interact with you on a personal as well as professional level, using language that resonated with you, and demeanor that made you feel safe and respected?

Did I give you useful feedback, timely and appropriate to help you improve in your learning?

Did I engage you in collaborative and individual tasks, help you establish group norms and expectations, and build scaffolds to help you get to the end of your projects?

Did I laud your accomplishments, consistently and creatively, and inform others about the high-quality work you were completing in my class?

Did I work effectively with other teachers, adults, and community members so that you would see yourself reflected in your work and across disciplines?

Most importantly, was I there enough for you, to answer questions, to lend a helping hand, or to listen when you needed someone?

I hope, Dear Students, that I have accomplished these tasks, because if I have failed in even one of them, I have in some ways failed you as your teacher.  As you know, we are not perfect people, and so it is with great determination that I return to summer with these questions in mind.  I will do my best to take a break, clear my head, and make room to be inspired to plan for your learning in the fall and beyond.  I am committed to learning how to be a better teacher myself and building my repertoire of instructional materials, and I will return in the fall ready to be the best teacher I can be for you.

Thank you for trusting me to build you up and to prepare you for the world around you.  It sure can be a scary place, but I know that you are all capable, bright young people who will rise to the challenge of making it what you want it to be.

Much Love,

Ms.