Pao Lor learned English like a foreign language.
As a 7-year-old at Green Bay’s Tank Elementary School, he was shown pictures of objects and told their names.
“More than anything else, it was about basic things that we would see on a daily basis,” said Lor, 32. “I remember one specific lesson was about lamps, bed, coffee table.”
At that time, educators were just learning how to teach children who came to school without English and, sometimes, without much formal education of any kind. Twenty-five years later, the classes, the programs and the ideas have come a long way.
“When I first started out, we did a lot of naming objects. … We really initially neglected the academics,” said Fay Boerschinger, who began teaching English as a Second Language in 1985 and retired in 2003 as ESL/bilingual coordinator for the Green Bay School District. “We’ve learned a great deal. Now those things seem so archaic, but it wasn’t that long ago.”
With hundreds more Hmong refugees on their way to the area, educators will use the lessons of the past as they continue to help Hmong students — whether born here or a half a world away — excel.
“I think the system is much better now than it was back then,” said Lor, now an assistant principal at Neenah High School.
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay professor Ray Hutchison, chair of the urban and regional studies program, has studied Hmong immigration for 20 years.
His research has found that Hmong students are graduating from high school at levels comparable to or greater than white students. And within the UW System, retention rates for Hmong students are close to those for white students and better than those for other minority groups.
“All of which bodes well, obviously,” Hutchison said. “I think it speaks to sort of a strong emphasis on education within the community, a good number of community supports for education and … an optimistic future.”
As with most immigrant groups, Hutchison said, Hmong parents typically place a high priority on their children’s education, which the parents see as a pathway to greater opportunities.
“They want for their children the very same thing that we want for our own children, and that’s a brighter future,” Green Bay School District Superintendent Daniel Nerad said. “They understand that education is the currency to make that happen.”
While Asian students are not reaching proficiency on state standardized tests at the same level as white students, Nerad thinks limited English skills are a primary explanation.
“These are issues of culture and language. They’re not issues of ability,” he said.
Growth
In the 1973-74 school year, the Green Bay School District had 22 Asian students, representing 0.1 percent of the student body.
But there were 43 Asian students the following year, 61 the year after that, then 85, then 135.
In 1988, the Asian population passed the Native American population to become the district’s largest minority group. By 1993-94, it was up to 1,390 students — 7.3 percent of the student body.
Asian student enrollment peaked in 1997-98 at 1,879 — almost 9.5 percent of the student body. In 2003-04, it was 1,695, or 8.4 percent of the student body.
The growth has been eclipsed only recently by the increase in Hispanic students. In 2000, that population passed the Asian population to become the district’s second-largest racial/ethnic group, after white students.
“The school districts have confronted the questions in the past of how to deal with the Hmong immigrants, which clearly 20 years ago was something completely new,” Hutchison said.
Boerschinger said educators know much more now about the Hmong culture and recognize the importance of maintaining the first language while adding a second language.
“There was a lot that we didn’t know” when the first Hmong students enrolled in Green Bay, Nerad said.
At the same time, the refugee children arriving in 2004 won’t be just like those who arrived in the ’70s.
“The kids who are coming now, they’re going to be much more aware of the popular culture here than when I was growing up,” Lor said. “When we came, we had no idea. It was like jumping in a black hole and hoping you land on something.”
Old methods
When Lor moved out of English as a Second Language classes 25 years ago, the only assessment he remembers was an informal consensus among teachers that he could handle regular classes.
“I don’t remember taking any test exiting out of the program,” said Lor, who’s since earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.
Today, teachers use a more specific and sophisticated system to assess whether Hmong students and other English-language learners are ready to handle English-only classes.
Education 20 years ago also was much more focused on memorization.
“I had a good memory, and I didn’t have any problems with math, spelling,” Lor said.
He didn’t have to speak much and could spend most of the day absorbing both the language and the lessons. Today’s students face a more challenging classroom environment.
“There’s a lot more group work. There’s a lot more collaborative projects … I think I would have had more difficulties” in an environment like students are in now, Lor said.
Boerschinger said teachers had to develop ways to help students learn English and also learn subject-specific material. New methods build on the literacy skills children have in their first languages and also keep them moving forward in core subjects as they build their English skills.
Unchanged
What remains the same, Nerad said, is the district’s welcome for students from other cultures and “not settling for low expectations for these children.”
Doing that doesn’t just require appropriate academic programs, he said. A major element of education is creating a comfortable school climate.
“When it’s good,” Nerad said, “all kids and staff have their place and families have their place with us.”
When students don’t feel connected, “then our ability to provide the best education becomes complicated,” he said.
How to do that is something the district — and the community, Nerad thinks — still hasn’t mastered.
While educational programs have moved steadily forward over the last decades, social integration has been slower to occur.
“There’s a long way to go … there is still too much separateness,” Nerad said.
He isn’t interested in forcing interaction simply for the sake of it. Still, he said the district needs to do more to build respect and appreciation of differences in the classroom.
Lor said relationships between students of different backgrounds are important but often can depend on personalities. As a child, he made friends easily, including with non-Hmong children.
“I was learning English not only in the classroom but outside the classroom,” Lor said.
