‘Positive culture shock’ spells challenges and triumphs for Afghan teen students

Attending school in America has been a “positive culture shock” to Marzia Mohammadi, a 17-year-old senior at Mt. Lebanon High School.

Mohammadi’s life changed overnight when she was forced to flee Afghanistan, her home country, following the Taliban’s ascension and the withdrawal of American troops from the region in August 2021. Her mother had worked with the U.S. embassy. Living in Kabul was no longer safe for them.

When their refugee case was processed, Mohammadi and her family were sent to Pittsburgh. Nearly three years later, Mohammadi is preparing to enroll in an American university, something she had never planned.

At Mt. Lebanon High School, apart from her regular classes, she chose electives like global studies, business and political science — three of her favorite subjects. The educational structure was a stark contrast to what she experienced back in Kabul.

“We have more classes, we have more opportunities,” she said. “In Afghanistan, we have subjects that everyone must learn but in here, you can choose your classes, take whatever you want.”

Mohammadi is one of the 76,000 people who were evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021. Pittsburgh was one of the cities recommended by the State Department for their resettlement.

The sudden influx of refugee families created an urgency to figure out a system that could cater to the needs of school-going children and youth. This task fell upon various resettlement agencies and organizations that worked with refugee populations.

Meg Booth, Afghan youth support program manager at after-school provider ARYSE, said the influx of young refugees presented unique challenges for many organizations.

“The nature of the situation and the fastness in which it all happened is a bit of an unprecedented thing or a context in which our organization hadn’t worked with a lot in the past,” Booth said.

As Afghan refugee students navigate the complexities of new school systems, many face challenges in communication, discrimination and helping their families resettle in a new country.

Errors in translation

In Mohammadi’s first year at Mt. Lebanon High School, she struggled to keep good grades. As an English as a Second Language [ESL] student, she received additional support to help her with English skills, but language barriers created challenges in other subjects.

Outside of her ESL classes, the school attempted to bridge those gaps using various translation tools, but the technology — including popular tools like Google Translate  — provided inaccurate translations in Iranian Farsi that she couldn’t understand well.

“So [teachers] used to simplify the words and give us our test to take it in our ESL classes,” she said.

Such problems are prevalent in other school districts as well. Mohammadi’s friend N.W., whose full name has been withheld for privacy reasons, attends Carlynton High School, which serves the communities of Carnegie, Crafton and Rosslyn Farms. When she was six years old, N.W.’s family moved to Indonesia, where she did not receive any formal education in English. At Carlynton, N.W.’s teachers translated documents in Dari before administering tests, but she could not read them since she did not attend school in Afghanistan.

Sara Hoffman, director of pupil services and special education at Carlynton, acknowledged the limitations of many popular translation tools and said the district is now using the ILA translation service, deemed more reliable than Google Translate.

Booth of ARYSE said she believes the gap in translation services is a result of a broader systemic issue: A lack of policies around communication with parents and policies for integrating ESL students. State law requires that schools communicate with ESL families in their preferred language and ensure parent participation by providing translation and interpretation services.

Shouldering family responsibilities

When Muzhda Ayubi arrived in Pittsburgh as a refugee in October 2022, she was the only person in her family who spoke English.

At 15, Ayubi was thrust into a challenging role in which she had to navigate studying at West Mifflin High School and support her family with everyday tasks. Her responsibilities ranged from assisting her brother with schoolwork to helping her parents with emails, medical support and buying groceries. The weight of these responsibilities overwhelmed Ayubi, who wished her parents received more support.

“I used to go everywhere and I used to do everything. And it was feeling like too much. It was too much pressure on me,” said Ayubi, now 17.

Upon arrival, Afghan families are connected to a resettlement agency that will aid them in the initial resettlement process. Voluntary agencies such as the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants are contracted by the federal government to coordinate and determine the number of refugees that a resettlement agency will receive.

Once a resettlement agency is notified of a family’s arrival, they acquire furniture and food and start searching for affordable housing options. The assistance continues for 90 days post-arrival, with help to find jobs, enroll kids in schools and enroll in eligible benefits.

Simone Vecchio, family services director at Hello Neighbor, said as a resettlement agency, they are focusing on empowering students in postsecondary pathways to become self-sufficient.

“The reality is that a lot of students are responsible for so many things at home,” she said, that it “…probably even feels like a burden to them to even think about pursuing something for themselves.”

School districts around the area are trying to adapt to the growing influx of immigrant students in different ways.

Stacee Rutherford, an ESL teacher at West Mifflin Area High School, said while the district does not have interpreters at events, all calls and messages are translated for students whose first language isn’t English. The district also uses a family engagement service called TalkingPoints. The service is a multilingual platform to cater to the needs of immigrant families.

Challenges remain, though, with translating for parents and carers, and students sometimes carry the burden.

The Global Switchboard and its All for All Education Subcommittee, which includes organizations such as Jewish Family and Community Services [JFCS], developed the Know Your Education Rights Training to empower immigrant and refugee families to understand and navigate Pittsburgh’s education systems.

Families can receive training in six areas: parent engagement, language access, ESL support, discipline and behavior support, special education and gifted education.

“Those are the areas, probably except for language access, where American families struggle in and that’s on top of immigrant and refugee parents trying to understand the labyrinth of that whole system,” said Funmi Haastrup, an education equity consultant, who worked on developing the training.

A deficit mentality and barriers to assess disabilities

Despite finding a supportive environment in high school, Mohammadi said she feels that many schools could better support Afghan students by helping them plan for college after graduation.

Because she is an ESL student, Mohammadi said she felt some teachers offered her less encouragement to take advanced classes or apply to four-year universities.

Vecchio of Hello Neighbor called it a “deficit mentality.”

And that attitude toward refugees and immigrants, she said, “really puts them at a disadvantage because it doesn’t allow them to fully use their skills, their experience, their education, their knowledge, and really feel like they can be successful.”

Outside of school, many of these students found community through programs, like Empowered Afghan Youth run by ARYSE and JFCS’ Bridge Builders, that help high school students with mentorship, social-emotional support and postsecondary pathways.

N.W. said the Empowered Afghan Youth program has helped her with college applications, getting a driver’s permit, English practice and career guidance.

Erin Barr, director of youth services at JFCS, said other disparities exist in assessing a refugee student’s need for ESL services or determining a learning disability. Furthermore, when a refugee or immigrant student is not literate in their first language, it can complicate finding appropriate special education supports.

“It’s very hard to know if the student is not reading at grade level because they can’t read English or because they have some type of deficit in their ability to learn,” she said.

Haastrup said many immigrant families think it is taboo for a child to have a disability and schools should consider those cultural nuances before communicating with them.

“Schools shouldn’t be waiting for the parents to come to them because it’s much harder for immigrant and refugee families for a host of different reasons,” she said. “And so I think schools need to be proactive, they have to take the initiative in reaching out to families.”

The need for cultural understanding

As Afghan refugees, S. Ahmadzai’s family was sent to Houston, Texas, when they first came to the United States in August 2021. Two years later, Ahmadzai, whose full name has been withheld for privacy reasons, moved to Pittsburgh and enrolled in the suburban Keystone Oaks School District.

Ahmadzai, then 15, struggled to fit in at first. “They saw a new student being from a different culture and having a hijab. It was new for them. Some of them are talking to you, some of them are not,” she said.

Her first few days in school were completely different from what she experienced in Texas, where her school was more diverse and her teachers spoke in Persian and Spanish. Many of her fellow students there were Afghans.

At Keystone Oaks, where 78% of high school students are white, Ahmadzai felt out of place.

Districts like Carlynton and Mt. Lebanon celebrate days on which students learn about different cultures and regions. Students get a prayer room during the holy month of Ramadan and separate spaces during lunchtime.

“Everyone is really respectful. … No one’s coming to our room. The students are not eating in front of us as we celebrate anything important from our culture,” Mohammadi said.

And yet, other students like N.W. and Ahmadzai maintain that school staff could have a better cultural understanding of ESL and refugee students.

“You can feel the difference,” N.W. said. “You can see, like, how they’re treating American students versus refugee kids.”

Hoffman said the Carlynton School District regularly sends teachers and staff for professional training as the district is recognizing a cultural shift. The district is incorporating multicultural books at elementary grade levels to give students more exposure to different cultures.

“We’re trying to work on getting the staff to be more culturally responsive to the students and that is an area that we definitely need to improve upon,” Hoffman added.

Advocates and community organizations believe cultural understanding is essential for schools to create a positive experience for refugee students. Zubair Babakarkhail, a refugee and cultural navigator at JFCS, said teachers should learn and teach about different religions and cultures in a way that includes all students.

“When we say America is a country of immigrants,” he said, “I think it’s a bigger need for all the teachers in schools that they should understand at least some about different cultures and religions.”

Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org

This story was fact-checked by Jamie Wiggan.

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