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Refugee families offer life lessons

DAVID HENCH

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Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer... Elly Teitsworth, second from left, passes the time on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 with Adne Aden, 12, Nimo Aden, 10 and Libaan Aden, 3 in the Portland apartment they share with their mother, Fatuma Hussein. Williams, a junior from Williams College in Massachusetts, has been living with the family as part of her studies.

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Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer... Elly Teitsworth, a junior from Williams College in Massachusetts, helps Nimo Aden with her math homework on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at the Portland apartment of Aden's family. Teitsworth is living with the family as part of her studies for Williams College in Massachusetts.

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Staff Writer

As a Williams College student in the early 1970s, Jeff Thaler spent five months living with a variety of American families: Appalachian coal miners, Iowa farmers, Detroit auto workers, and the black owner of a funeral home in the rural Deep South.

He read extensively, kept a journal and wrote papers on his experience.

''It was the most powerful and long-lasting aspect of my college education, without a doubt,'' Thaler said, ''and I think it made me a far more confident, focused learner and person.''

Now an environmental and energy attorney with the Portland law firm Bernstein Shur, Thaler is promoting the value of ''experiential education'' with a new generation of college students.

Four Williams College students are spending this month living with refugee and immigrant families in Portland, while volunteering at Portland High School, Preble Street, an agency advocating for the poor, and Catholic Charities Maine, which helps resettle refugees.

This is the second year the college has offered the program, which Thaler designed and administers for Williams.

Portland is an ideal learning lab to increase understanding of the refugee experience, said Thaler. The city has been a refugee resettlement community for 30 years, attracting thousands of people from Southeast Asia, the former Soviet Union, the Balkan republics, Sudan and Somalia.

Now, hundreds of Iraqi refugees, who have fled the violence in that country, are moving to Portland.

At the same time, the city is relatively small and safe, and an affordable excursion for students who aren't spending their one-month winter study in Africa or Latin America, Thaler said.

Halfway through the program, the students are gleaning insights into the refugee experience and some of the cultural and systemic challenges faced by their host families.

Christine Chung, a sophomore from Connecticut, is living with an Ethiopian family while she makes home visits with Catholic Charities case workers and administers tests for prospective interpreters.

Chung said her host mother, proud of her Ethiopian heritage, laments the dilution of the cultural traditions in her children. When she injured her ankle, she was disappointed that her son didn't leave his studies at the University of Maine in Fort Kent to tend to her, as is customary in her culture.

In many families, there can be tension as the children assimilate. ''The kids are the ones teaching the grown-ups English and act as a bridge to American culture in general,'' Chung said.

William Lee, a sophomore from Brooklyn, noted that even within a family, children can have different reactions to the transition.

Lee, who is volunteering at Preble Street, is hosted by a family from Central America with a daughter who is 16 and a son who is 14. The daughter makes little effort to connect with her heritage, but the son displays a Salvadoran flag and enjoys speaking Spanish.

''What struck me the most was not what was different but what was similar,'' said Lee, a child of Chinese immigrants. ''These kids are going through a lot of the same stuff I'm going through. Am I American? How do I assert that?''

Ma Khin Pyi Son, a junior, was born in Burma and raised in Singapore. She is living with a Cambodian family with three daughters.

During the day she volunteers at Portland High School, helping students who are still working on their English language skills to learn their academic subjects.

The eldest daughter in her host family serves as interpreter, but the family faces challenges navigating in the community. When one of the girls got interested in gymnastics, she helped them enroll in Boys and Girls Club activities.

Elly Teitsworth, a junior from Connecticut, is living with a Somali family -- a mother, two daughters, ages 12 and 10, and a son, 3.

''Her Somali culture seems like it is very much a part of her,'' she said of her host mother. ''But the kids, if I met them outside the home, they seem like any other American.''

Service learning, in which students volunteer for organizations and study abroad, are increasingly popular at U.S. colleges and universities, but earning college credit for immersing oneself in a living situation is less common, Thaler said.

At Colby College, students enroll in a micro-program for the month of January, called ''Jan Plan,'' but it usually entails faculty-led study abroad or studying a craft or some other focused assignment on campus, said Nancy Downey, director of off-campus study for the college.

She said she is unaware of other colleges that offer experiential learning like the Williams project.

One reason the programs are rare is because they are labor-intensive for the faculty, Thaler said.

As a student, he benefited from the work of a devoted professor who traveled the country arranging host families and volunteer opportunities, which included working on a car assembly line and helping a disabled coal miner.

But the program was controversial, with some educators criticizing its academic value despite the readings and writings that were required, he said.

Thaler believes the approach has educational value that can make students' learning in school more relevant.

''I hope the students get a deeper understanding of issues relating to immigration, refugee resettlement, the role that language plays in our society, literacy, culture, ethnicity and race,'' Thaler said, ''understanding it on a personal level, but at the same time getting a perspective on it.''

Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

dhench@pressherald.com