Finding a Sense of Place when Displaced: Using Global Literature and Community Outreach with Refugee Youth
Kim Warren

For the past twelve years, I’ve taught primarily refugee English language learners at Utah International (a secondary school centered in 71% White Salt Lake City, Utah) that espouses the vision of celebrating and honoring students’ identities and cultures while empowering them with language, global literacy, collaboration, leadership, and critical thinking skills. Our students are mainly immigrants and refugees from myriad countries: Sudan, Mexico, Venezuela, Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Malaysia, Honduras, Palestine, Tanzania, Colombia, and the United States who speak multiple languages (Kinyarwanda, Swahili, Rohingya, Spanish, Arabic, Dinka, Dari, Pashto, and more). Our mission at Utah International Charter School is “to give English learners full access to a rigorous secondary curriculum by providing content-based, sheltered English instruction in every class, and to empower refugees, immigrants, and American-born students with collaboration skills, critical-thinking skills, and diverse global perspectives.”

As a white educator aware of her privilege and the limits that imposes on the majority of students and their learning environment, representation has been vital in successful student engagement and learning in its ability to disrupt widespread assimilationist teaching practices. Over the years, I’ve struggled to uphold marginalized voices (past, present, and emerging) against the statistics and stereotypes already spoken for them in our society while delivering quality English Language Arts (ELA) instruction. Most students at Utah International have lived through the damaging effects of violence and trauma in their home villages and countries, and they are now living out their “refuge” in the US amongst daily micro and macro aggressions that target their religions, languages, skin colors, poverty levels, and selves. I focus on the students’ brilliance rather than their single story (as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie eloquently states). Still, I also wished to more skillfully honor and maintain space for students to uphold their values, interests, and experiences through a holistic exploration of storytelling and narratives. I needed more tools, resources, and expertise to do this work effectively, and it was challenging to find a variety of global literature that represented our diverse population, was accessible and age-appropriate to a wide range of language learners and sparked a common interest among many students.

My participation in the NEH Summer Institute: “We The People: Migrant Waves in the Making of America” changed that situation and helped Utah International reach our mission last year, primarily due to its comprehensive curriculum, collaborative learning environment, engaging guest speakers, experiential learning methods, outstanding multicultural literary library, and the incredible talent, effort, and drive of the directors and teachers who tirelessly and enthusiastically produced and led the institute. This experience has empowered me to continue my school’s mission of representing and upholding the voices of our diverse student population, inspiring me and my colleagues to do the same. The institute also contributed to my long-term leadership goal of influencing current educational policies with cross-cultural practices rooted in understanding and appreciation.

“We the People”: Migrant Waves in the Making of America NEH Summer Institute

During the two-week institute, I worked with other educators to explore the theme of erased histories in conjunction with practices of humanities research methods through global literature, interactions with authors and scholars, museum visits, and hands-on inquiry. I was introduced to multiple global and multicultural texts that represent students, are age-appropriate for middle schoolers, and have proven accessible to a classroom of diverse languages and English abilities. I collected these titles in a digital, multimodal text set designed for middle school refugees and immigrants in the ELA classroom and centered around four diachronic themes. “Origins” explores legends, folktales, and myths from students’ home countries. “Displacement” features characters, places, and stories students can relate to, as well as the fantasy genre. “Belonging” centers on stories about finding a sense of place when displaced. Finally, “Activism” features activists from students’ home countries and current communities.

“Finding a Sense of Place When Displaced: Themes of Origins, Displacement, Belonging, and Activism” (for middle school refugee and immigrant youth)” by Kim Warren.

In addition to providing me with many culturally diverse texts that reflected my students’ experiences, cultures, and interests, the institute introduced a variety of teaching methods that centered around collaboration both within the classroom, such as collage reading and graffiti board reading strategies (see Creating Classrooms for Authors and Inquirers, Kathy G. Short & Jerome Harste) and within the community at large through local partnerships such as Borderlands Theatre in Tucson, Arizona which inspired my community collaborations in SLC, Utah and beyond.

Building a Shared Learning Community through Picturebooks and Culturally Representative Novels

I began the 2023 school year by teaching various picturebooks introduced to me during the institute that reflected student identities, cultures, and experiences. When students are given opportunities to explore, share, and weave their own stories and perspectives into the curriculum, they forge trust with one another and invest in their learning communities. For example, Bandoola: The Great Elephant Rescue by William Grill (2021) was of particular interest to Karen, Karenni, Rohingya, and Burmese students, Dreamers by Yuyi Morales (2018) and Still Dreaming by Claudia Guadalupe Martinez and illustrated by Magdalena Mora (2022) appealed to all students, but especially the Latinx population; Muslim students from many different countries enjoyed The Proudest Blue: A Story of Hijab and Family by Ibtihaj Muhammad with S.K. Ali and art by Hatem Aly (2020); and students enthusiastically read, discussed, analyzed, and enjoyed Remember by Joy Harjo and Michaela Goade (2023).

Other popular texts included Lala Salama: A Tanzanian Lullaby by Patricia MacLachlan (2011); If I Go Missing by Brianna Jonnie (2020); La Llorona/The Weeping Woman: An Hispanic Legend by Joe Hayes (2004); and Borders by Thomas King and illustrated by Natasha Donovan (2021).

As a result of teaching picturebooks, middle school ELA students could engage in high-level textual analysis of many different culturally diverse characters and origin and displacement themes (despite their varied English reading limitations and skills) during the first week of school! The corresponding pictures and short texts of the picturebooks filled in gaps of understanding that usually take months to bridge in my classes. In addition, because the texts were also relevant to many of the students’ own lives and experiences, the initial picturebook unit also forged personal connections for students with the texts and a higher level of classroom community through breakout discussions and student sharing of their own stories with both the texts and each other.

We built on this momentum throughout the rest of the school year by choosing novels together that reflected the communities and experiences of students themselves, using books as platforms of discussion through a collective readers’ theater engagement with the novels and routine break-out talking sessions led by student interest and personal connection sharing.

Students responded to the new texts with enthusiasm. Samira Surfs by Rukhsanna Guidroz (2022) proved a class favorite, with one Rohingya student sharing her connections with the story, as did Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga (2021), which was selected and elaborated upon by sixth-grade Syrian twins who enjoyed teaching the class about the different foods and Arabic words featured in the novel and shared their family’s stories of Syria as we read it together. The global texts increased student participation and buy-in to the class and each other in a way that hasn’t happened before in my eleven years of teaching at Utah International!

I strive to celebrate differences and encourage the strength of students to center curriculum and dialogue around their cultural perspectives and emerging adult identities, so I utilized targeted culturally diverse books to engage students in sharing their voices through literary discussions, fostering a stronger classroom community. My pedagogy normalized multilingualism by drawing on students’ linguistic resources to translate and create meaning. Various interdisciplinary lessons utilized scaffolded entry points and project-based learning to explore a decolonized curriculum that centered on often marginalized students, including literature by Malala Yousafzai (I Am Malala, 2014), Trevor Noah (Born a Crime, 2019), Jerry Craft (New Kid, 2019), and Huda Fahmy (Yes, I’m Hot in This! 2018), as well as biographies of Wangari Maathai (Purtill, 2023; Winter, 2018).

Building Community Partnerships in the Classroom

I leveraged my instructional skills with the strength and influence of the local and national community, partnering with leaders who share everyday experiences with students and professionals in the arts and sciences. For example, students in my middle school ELA classes participated in a ZOOM conference with Dr. Mamta Patel Nagaraja, the Chief Scientist for Exploration and Applied Research at NASA (via the national nonprofit DreamWakers), in which they discussed both space exploration and microaggressions against minoritized people. In addition, my ELA classes partnered with social studies students in a virtual reading and discussion with Navajo author Daniel W. Vandever, which created a more robust engagement with the curriculum in both subjects, creating a sense of excitement and self-importance amongst students who demonstrated their honor to engage with a “real-life author” on ZOOM.

My middle school ELA classes and representatives of the Utah International Student Council also worked with SpyHop Productions (a local nonprofit digital media arts center) to create student-produced films and a podcast about issues surrounding the lives of Utah International students, including power dynamics, racism, concepts of peace and peacebuilding, and the challenges of refugee youth in today’s society.

I extended this work in the spring with another community arts collaboration with Plan-B Theatre Company, which centered around representation to enhance arts education through playwriting. The theatre’s talented, diverse professionals further extended student-centered learning with their residency’s focus on representation and its rigorous yet fun curriculum, which ultimately benefited students by providing facilitators who were both role models and educators. The actor/teacher residents offered learning experiences and educational tools that upheld all student voices, especially those often marginalized or unheard in academic settings, and the residency shaped our spring semester into one of active participation and full-class engagement, as evidenced by significantly lower tardy and absentee rates during the program.

The actors led students in collaborative discussion and brainstorming, planning, mapping a story, editing, re-editing, finalizing their scripts, and the apex community performance at Salt Lake City’s Living Traditions Festival on May 17th, 2024. Thanks to our collaboration with Plan-B Theatre, students were the empowered centers of their learning and potential this spring. Plan-B Theatre’s Extended’ Playwriting with Young Adults’ professional outreach program was the highlight of the school year for the student participants and even the entire supportive student body who attended the culminating performance and voiced a strong desire to participate one day.

Final Reflections

The research focus of the institute provided my educational community with the tools it urgently needs to reflect the abundant cultural wealth of Utah International’s students and their families amidst an atmosphere of deficit thinking and assimilationist agendas that threaten to uphold the pernicious tradition of silencing migrant and BIPOC narratives about the nurturing roots that they sow in American soil. This emphasis on celebrating cultural wealth is crucial in making the learning community feel appreciative and respectful of diverse cultures, themselves, and each other. Participating in the institute gave me a network of teachers, authors, scholars, and like-minded others within the educational, historical, and artistic community to share ideas and resources to serve students and their families better. This sense of community and shared learning is a powerful force in our educational journey, making us feel connected and part of a more significant educational movement.

Second, I learned how to conduct better research and teach to uncover the silenced voices that have played a pivotal part in America’s past. Meeting Patricia Preciado Martin, author of Songs My Mother Sang to Me (2016), was especially influential in my learning and instruction of oral history research. Third, I incorporated creative writing, filmmaking, storytelling, and personal narrative instruction to motivate and cultivate young visionaries and leaders to own their agency and see the possibility of peace and belonging in their lives and communities (both old and new). Finally, I collaborated with various community partners to facilitate what only students themselves can accomplish–self-authored narratives that silence reductive stories.

I highly recommend the institute to teachers who value high-quality ELA instruction through diverse literature, collaborative group work, representation in the classroom, and engaging lessons that reach all students, regardless of nationality, age, gender, and refugee status.

References
Craft, J. (2019). New kid. HarperCollins.

Fahmy, H. (2018). Yes, I’m hot in this: The hilarious truth about life in a hijab. Adams Media.

Grill, W. (2021). Bandoola: The great elephant rescue. Flying Eye.

Guidroz, R. & Azim, R. (2022). Samira surfs. Kokila.

Harjo, J. (2023) Remember. Illus. M. Goade, Random House.

Hayes, J. (2004). La llorona/The weeping woman. Illus. V. Hill. Cinco Puntos.

“Home” DreamWakers, (July 6, 2023), www.dreamwakers.org/.

“In the Classroom-Plan B Theatre.” (July 17, 2023), planbtheatre.org/intheclassroom/.

Jonnie, B. (2020). If I go missing. James Lorimer.

King, T. (2021). Borders. Illus. by N. Donovan. Little, Brown.

MacLachlan, P. (2011) Lala Salama: A Tanzanian lullaby. Illus. by E. Zunon. Candlewick.

Martin, P. P. (2016). Songs my mother sang to me: An oral history of Mexican American women. University of Arizona Press.

Martinez, C. G. (2022). Still dreaming/Seguimos soñando. Illus. M. Mora. Children’s Book Press.

Morales, Y. (2018). Dreamers. Holiday House.

Muhammad, I. with S.K. Ali. (2020). The proudest blue: A story of hijab and family. Illus. H. Aly. Findaway.

Noah, T. (2019) It’s Trevor Noah: Born a crime: Stories from a South African childhood (Adapted for Young Readers). Delacorte.

Purtill, C. (2021). Dr. Wangari Maathai plants a forest (Rebel Girls), Simon & Schuster.

Short, K. & Harste, J. with C. Burke (1999). Creating classrooms for authors and inquirers. Heinemann.

Warga, J. (2021). Other words for home. Seedlings Braille Books for Children.

Winter, J. (2018). Wangari’s trees of peace: A true story from Africa. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Yousafzai, M. & McCormick, P. (2014). I Am Malala. Braille Superstore.

Kim Warren is a founding educator at Utah International Charter School in Salt Lake City, Utah where she has taught for twelve years. She lives in SLC with her two young boys and a cat.

Authors retain copyright over the vignettes published in this journal and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under the following Creative Commons License:

WOW Stories, Volume XII, Issue 1 by Worlds of Words is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on by Kim Warren work at https://wowlit.org/on-line-publications/stories/xii-1/6.

WOW stories: connections from the classroom
ISSN 2577-0551