John Thompson covers education in Oklahoma. This post is exclusive to NPE.
The Restore OKC’s Breaking Bread panel and group discussions are always excellent. This year’s Breaking Bread with the Hispanic Community was just as insightful, but much more emotional than the previous ones.
I learned about today’s extreme suffering at my high school, which is now more than 60% Hispanic. Due in large part to the current deportation campaign, at times, its absenteeism has surged to 30% to 40%. And many students come to school every day with their birth certificates in the backpack in case they have to face raids by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Then, NPR’s KOSU radio reported on an immigrant who trusted the immigration process.
In 2022, Cesar Reyes, a young Guatemalan immigrant, served on Gov. Kevin Stitt’s ad hoc Hispanic Advisory Council. Two years later, Reyes urged immigrants not to overreact as Stitt implemented his Operation Guardian, which was said to focus on “deporting unauthorized immigrants already in Oklahoma’s corrections system.”
The more I learn about the cruelty that drives today’s deportations, the more I remember the suffering of my students, before and after they came to the United States.
During the 2003-2004 school year, I met my first immigrant who had discipline problems in some classes. In my class, a Liberian student who I will call K.D., was wonderful. From day one, he loved the intellectual stimulation of Socratic questioning, and he thrived on lessons covering colonialism.
I asked who settled the only American colony in Africa. The students found a capitol named after an American president. K.D. co-taught as they sounded out the root of the nation named for “liberty.” K.D., like most students, loved to punch holes in pretensions, like those of the colonialists, and he dove deeply into those lessons.
Back then, World History teachers were encouraged to show the movie Hotel Rwanda. We received a poster, supplemental materials, and an invitation for me to a free screening of the movie. As usual with this sort of lesson, I had to wrestle with the movie’s emotional impact, and discuss with the students how we would handle its tragic parts. I was especially concerned about a deeply disturbed student, who I will call Matt.
Because he was such a great class leader, I never worried about how K.D. would deal with a movie about genocide in central Africa.
We agreed that anyone could walk out without permission if the video became too emotional. I volunteered that I had cried early in the film, watching the daughters of Paul Rusesabagina, the character played by Don Cheadle. The Rwandan girls looked just like us Americans. I sat in the back of the room in case I spilled more tears.
Sure enough, during the scene where Europeans and their pets were rescued, leaving Africans to their fate, Matt exclaimed, “D.T., you’re crying! D.T. is crying!”
The movie’s most harrowing scene showed Paul Rusesabagina lost in a fog only to discover he was driving over dead bodies. K.D. stormed from the room and I followed him.
“I’ve seen worse,” K.D. declared, “I’ve seen worse. When Charles Taylor massacred my village, I saw worse.”
I also struggled with showing a controversial video to a troubled freshman class pointedly divided over race. I was glad, however, that I risked showing them John Sayles’ movie, Men With Guns, about a quixotic journey by a retired professor in an unnamed war-torn Central American country to locate students who he had trained for the Agency for International Development. One student may or may not have survived the genocide. He might find her in a mountaintop village that may or may not exist.
As they began their final push towards a village; “Cerca de Cielo,” a Puerto Rican student cried out, “No! No! It can’t end that way!” While she poured out her anguish to never know how the story ended, this Catholic girl fondled a cross worn by a Black Baptist next to her. For the movie’s last fifteen minutes, Hispanics, Blacks, and whites exchanged religious icons.
I passed out Kleenex to weeping students, while watching them and worrying whether the movie was hitting too close to home. The movie ended. A student strode to the front with a now-empty box of tissues. I handed her a roll of toilet paper to distribute. Then the students took charge.
For the rest of the class, they shared and absorbed each other’s intimate and tragic stories. The students bonded. Class discussions grew deeper and more meaningful. Motivation increased, and these freshmen started mastering college prep material. As seniors, several of this class’ leaders would teach powerful lessons to some of Oklahoma’s top legislative leaders.
After I retired from full-time teaching in neighborhood schools, I returned to the classroom in an alternative school where almost every student had a felony rap, but where I saw the same compassion. Gang connections were usually tied to racial divisions, so extra care had to be taken when engaging in sensitive conversations. An Hispanic girl would come early to class so we could discretely discuss such issues. One morning I was in the process of saying, “The best thing I’ve seen in my adult life is …” But the rest of the class entered the room, so she abruptly left the discussion mid-sentence and rushed over to her friends.
The next day, she returned early, and asked me to finish: “What is the best thing you’ve seen?”
“It’s this wonderful immigration!,” I replied.
Smiling broadly, she ran to the Hispanic females who were entering the room, and whispered that I had said that immigration is the best thing I had seen as an adult in Oklahoma City. Rejoicing in that affirmation, they whispered to Hispanic males and Black females. Smiles were shared, and then the words were whispered to white girls and, then, to white and Black males. As the entire class celebrated inclusion, they showed, once again, that education should be grounded in the moral core of students.
Lately, I’ve been reliving so many more experiences with immigrants who survived extreme traumas but became school leaders. Many of them went on to be leaders of nonprofits and/or other social service agencies.
While many other students (who were disproportionately in middle school or 9th grade, wrestling with their traumas) were slow to bond with immigrants, almost all grew to respect and connect with them. And an awesome sense of community was built.
If we hope to save public education, as well as our democracy, we must nurture and build on young peoples’ common decency.