‘Welcoming these children robustly is so important’
Refugee kids speak multiple languages, but struggle in school — Chicago volunteers help through tutoring
The room was bright and airy, colorful bins decorated with spaceship stickers and walls stacked with filled bookshelves. Masked tutors and students paged through books like “Hidden Figures.” Robots and drones created by the kids filled tables.
But this wasn’t a school classroom. It was a tutoring session from Forging Opportunities for Refugees in America, a group started by spouses Michael and Kathleen O’Connor to help refugee children arriving in Chicago.
Their work has only gained urgency as the pandemic shifted how children learn, in some ways making it harder for some. This month, as the world watches families trying to flee Afghanistan, the Hyde Park couple says the headlines only highlight the need to support refugees.
“Welcoming these children robustly is so important,” Michael O’Connor said.
The O’Connors started FORA after noticing a need among refugee families they were volunteering to help resettle. They noticed children were often fluent in multiple languages (very bright) but struggling in school (very behind). Meanwhile, trying to find ways to help, they found tutoring programs tended to be inaccessible and costly. Parents wanted children to succeed but were overwhelmed, and unsure how to help.
So the couple began tutoring kids, often Rohingya refugees, helping them with reading and math in cramped living rooms, on front stoops and in local parks. In 2019, they opened a building space in West Ridge, wanting a location close to refugee communities.
People feel powerless while seeing suffering abroad, said Kathleen O’Connor. But their work shows Chicagoans can assist refugees right here, right now.
“We can help people, and not just help them to survive, but also to thrive,” she said.
They have a waitlist of students who want tutoring; if more people volunteered, committing to tutor on a daily basis, they would be able to help more students.
The kids they help arrive from countries including Myanmar, Pakistan, Syria and Afghanistan. Many children fled their homes and spent years in refugee camps, where they were unable to learn; most were barred from school in home countries. Arriving in the U.S. can be a relief but also the beginning of a challenging new chapter as families work to build new lives. Many of the kids learn English and serve as translators for their families.
Despite the hardships they have endured, the children remain hopeful and eager, said family school partnership program coordinator Simran Arora, speaking outside the group’s building as bubbly children buzzed back and forth on the sidewalk.
“Resilience is so strong in this community,” she said. Still, healing and adjusting is a continual process. Watching the news remains hard for many, especially those with family in Afghanistan.
“The recent events this past week have been devastating,” she said. “That’s something we keep in mind when we select the books they read.”
On a recent morning, multiple students sat one-on-one with volunteer tutors, paging through books and reading words as tutors tapped on a page. One boy showed off a drone he had put together as part of a robotics program; a group of girls told an adult they were walking home and promised to text when they arrived.
Shoaib Syed, a volunteer tutor and Northwestern student studying neuroscience, pointed to
lines in a book as he sat beside a young girl in a fuzzy sweater. He found FORA after tutoring for a company but feeling a pull instead to help kids whose parents could not afford expensive help. Immediately, he fell in love with the program.
“I just loved seeing kids grow,” he said.
Their approach to tutoring has been thoughtful and honed. Kathleen O’Connor, a former professor and teacher with a doctorate
in child development psychology, noticed that although many kids spoke multiple languages, they lacked basic literacy and numeracy skills. In what is called high-dosage tutoring, kids get anywhere from two to four hours a day of tutoring in math and reading, five days a week, with at least one tutor for every two students.
Amid the pandemic, this type of tutoring might also translate to kids who need to catch up after a year of remote learning, she noted.
When everything went virtual, it allowed them to move children off the wait list and open tutoring to virtual volunteers across the country, “which has been a total joy and transformative,” said Michael O’Connor.
Continuing tutoring felt vital. For some of the kids, he said, the social isolation returned them to a space they were in while in camps and awaiting clearance to come to the U.S. “It’s doubly difficult for
them.”
Now, they hope to prioritize in-person tutoring where possible. That’s the heart of the program.
“It’s a lot of one-on-one time, which is so valuable, because they’re building strong relationships in addition to learning the skills that they need,” Kathleen O’Connor said.
Outside the office, as pupils left, they gave highfives. For Syed, the reason he returns to the bookfilled walls of this building is simple: the joy of sharing in learning.
“I get my daily dose of serotonin,” he said. “They need someone to remind them, you can do this.”