Providing a welcoming classroom for students from Afghanistan |
Assisting in international evacuations is beyond the usual scope of school district employees’ work. As education officials across the nation prepare for new arrivals from Afghanistan - with funding requested to resettle 65,000 people from the nation by the end of September - experts say having systems in place to welcome refugee students and continuously support them will be key. While newly arrived families are often first helped by resettlement agencies, schools then quickly pick up the work of helping families adjust to their new homes and feel supported going forward, said Cristina Burkhart, an English-learner program specialist at San Juan USD in California. That means tending to students’ academic needs, but also doing things like providing donated food, clothing, and wheelchairs for students. The work also extends to helping parents gain agency, including teaching them things like how to schedule doctors’ appointments and how the school grading system works. Fostering a welcoming environment for refugee students is something teachers can do in the classroom as well. At Travis Heights elementary school in Austin, Texas, Shayna Bright, a 2nd grade English-as-a-second-language teacher, keeps a journal where she jots down Pashto and Dari words her Afghan students teach her. So while they learn English, she learns more of their home languages. “That buy-in with the children has really made a big impact,” Bright said. “They see that I care not just about their education, but about them and their culture.”