Helping ABQ’s young refugees
Newcomer Academy boosts skills of middle and high school students
Faraja Yasipi, an 11-year-old boy who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Tanzania in December, is already picking up English.
He’s got a firm enough grasp of it to even tell a joke.
“This is my cat,” he said, showing a photograph of a squirrel during a presentation at Highlands High School on Friday morning.
His classmates — and fellow refugees — roared with laughter.
Faraja and more than 40 students from around the world gave brief presentations about themselves to mark the end of Newcomer Academy, a summer school program run by Lutheran Family Services for newly arrived refugees attending middle and high schools in Albuquerque.
Albuquerque Public Schools enrolled nearly 250 new refugee students in the last school year.
The four-week program focuses on math and English, as those are two subjects the students typically struggle with the most, LFS education and vocational program supervisor Melanie Mullen said.
The presentations were meant to challenge the students to use their skills in written and spoken English, and computers.
Most of the children who presented on Friday said they were from Tanzania, but Mullen said many may have been born elsewhere and settled in refugee camps there.
“There are a handful of people here who have never been to school before, ever, so this is their orientation to academic behavior in the classroom in the U.S.,” Mullen said.
There were also presentations given by students from Afghanistan, Syria, Rwanda, Chad, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi.
Despite sometimes speaking in their native tongues amongst themselves, it was clear they were beginning to feel more at home in the U.S.: a few chose Takis corn chips and pizza as their favorite foods.
One high school student said she loves this country’s shoe selection.
Khadija Al Alwan, mother of 15-yearold Mohamad Abdulatif, fled Syria with her family in fall 2016, just a few months before President Donald Trump sought to ban those from Syria and a few other Middle Eastern countries from entering the U.S.
She said it’s been difficult to adjust to life in a new country.
“Maybe the kids will adjust easier,” she said through a translator.
Mohamad appeared to be doing just that.
“There’s nothing in America I don’t like,” he said during his presentation, though he mentioned he misses his friends back in Syria.
Mullen said Trump’s executive order has changed the tone of refugee relations in the U.S., but Albuquerque remains a positive place for them to resettle.
“Although the general atmosphere is one of negativity, the local level and the response of the community is fantastic,” Mullen said.