The Newcomers

by Helen Thorpe

  Oula, who was presiding over the student debate, was the older sister of Sam and Sana, the twins who had been asked to mentor Jakleen and Mariam. Oula, Sam, and Sana had arrived in the United States back in 2008, before they were old enough for high school. Their parents were doctors, but it had been hard for them to find American institutions willing to hire medical personnel who had trained elsewhere. To earn qualifications that would allow them to work, they had to repeat parts of their education. Oula’s father secured a residency in Corpus Christi, Texas, while her mother was admitted to a medical technician postgraduate program at Denver Health. The couple was not able to find jobs in the same state, but both were able to continue their careers. Meanwhile, their three daughters excelled at school.

  After going through an English Language Acquisition program in middle school, Oula had arrived at South ready to take Advanced Placement classes. She quickly emerged as one of the school’s leaders. At the moment, she was working closely with the two American-born students who served as the school’s head boy and head girl, helping to run the Student Senate. I was delighted to see Oula in action because I had been hearing about her for months; the school’s community liaison had mentioned her, the parents who ran the food bank had talked about her, and the head of the PTA had sung her praises. The entire school took pride in Oula’s accomplishments because they thought she exemplified what was possible at South: You could arrive here from halfway around the world without any English, and the school would help you realize your dreams.

  That day, Oula was wearing a purple South High T-shirt and had braided her dark hair into a thick rope. She was sitting behind a desk at the front of the room with her bottom on the back of a chair and her feet on its seat, which made her seem taller than anybody else. Spread out on the desk before her were a red backpack, a notebook opened to a page of notes about the public-speaking exercise, and a bottle of Diet Coke. She spoke with authority as she explained the rules of the contest: Speakers could use only positive statements in favor of their position. They were not allowed to say anything negative. The speeches would be timed and the contestants would speak without preparation. Oula would announce who was speaking and then the contest would begin.

  “All right, our first topic is Donald Trump,” she declared. “Emma will be pro, and Kate will be con.”

  Emma was an American-born, white student—the Senate skewed more native-born than the school’s hallways. Emma was tall and she had pulled her brown hair into a messy bun. She seemed to relish the chance to argue in favor of Trump. “All right, so a lot of people want to know, why Donald Trump, what’s up with this guy?” Emma began. “So I want to tell you first off, he looks like a delicious stick of butter.”

  That line got so much laughter that Emma decided to riff on it.

  “Or like mayonnaise. Or like pudding.” More laughter. “So there’s that.”

  “Second off, he hasn’t offended the gays yet.”

  Emma observed that Trump owned a lot of real estate, and perhaps it could be put to good use.

  “Like, he owns four hotels, maybe more. You know, we could put people in those hotels. We could put homeless people in those hotels, or we could put not-homeless people in those hotels. There are a lot of options, just with the hotels. And, he has a really hot wife. He has a really hot wife. A lot of people are, like, Michelle Obama, her arms are too ripped, she’s too buff, we don’t like it. His wife—nobody says that about her. That’s why you should vote for Donald Trump, guys.”

  Emma’s close friend Kate, also white and American-born, argued against Trump. She was petite and earnest.

  “I would just like to point out that while he hasn’t offended gays yet, he’s offended a lot of other people,” said Kate. “He’s a pretty offensive guy. And while he may look like a stick of butter, I don’t want anybody to be in power that doesn’t have real hair. His hair is just not good.”

  Kate suggested that Trump did not seem to understand that Hawaii, while admittedly far away, was actually a state, based on statements he had made about the birthplace of President Barack Obama.

  “I mean, if you want someone blatantly racist and sexist as your president, like, be my guest,” she concluded.

  Emma won—the stick of butter line had been irresistible to her peers. I was old enough to be saddened by the level to which American political discourse had sunk, but the candidates themselves were not modeling behavior that was any better.

  Oula said, “Next: Coke or Pepsi?”

  * * *

  As the students in the room grew raucous, my gaze drifted to a poster taped to the wall beside where Oula was sitting. On an oversized piece of paper, members of the Student Senate had compiled a lengthy list of the qualities they thought leaders at the school should possess:

  ebullient

  no profanity

  communicative

  respectful

  can laugh at yourself

  solve problems

  spirited

  culturally sensitive

  humility

  focus

  good listening skills

  speak in turn

  prepared

  empathy/sympathy

  unafraid

  punctual

  open-minded

  responsible

  creative

  take initiative

  speak up

  honest

  NO CELL PHONES

  It could have been a description of Oula herself. The busy juniors and seniors who ran the Senate, no matter where they had been born, possessed a self-assurance that made a striking contrast with the uncertainty of the newcomers. After the lack of exchanges that took place in Room 142, the abundance of humor and the way everything happened at a faster clip was refreshing. But I had learned enough to know that the dampened level of interchange that took place among Mr. Williams’s students was not a reflection of their potential; it was a reflection of their struggle. One could take any of the well-rounded, assured students who served on the Senate and put them into a similar predicament—bomb their home city until it became unlivable, separate some of them from their parents, force them to witness atrocities, starve them for a while, transport them to a foreign country where they understood nothing, give them a teacher who spoke a language they could not comprehend—and most of them, too, would have fallen quiet.

  Would any of the newcomers that Eddie Williams was teaching make it all the way to the Student Senate before they left South? I was not sure it would be possible to travel that far. At first, I thought Oula might serve as an example of what some of the newcomer students could become in a few years, but then I reflected on the advantages she possessed. Her parents were highly educated; she had walked into South ready for AP classes. I wondered if it would really be possible for any of the newcomers to join an elite body like the Senate, or to go to college. Then I met more of the kids who were serving in the Student Senate alongside Oula.

  On the day of the debate about Trump, the head boy and head girl observed that there were many visitors in the room. About a dozen eighth graders were “shadowing,” or visiting to see if they might choose South as their high school. A greater number of private school students were shadowing this year; when South first began focusing on ELA students, the high school had earned a bad reputation in the surrounding neighborhood, particularly in wealthier, white households, where overachieving parents feared their children would be held back by going to school with students of color who did not speak English as their first language. “ ‘Okay, it’s great that you’re helping these people who are in need with all this emotional and physical support, but my kid who knows English could get lost in the shuffle,’ ” was how the school’s community liaison, Karen Duell, summarized the sentiment. “That was the idea.” By this point, however, things had shifted to the point that parents who could send their children to private schools sometimes opted for South. Among them was Carolyn Chafe Howard, the head of the PTA. She had
sent her children to Graland Country Day through eighth grade but saw the neighborhood high school as a place where her children could step outside of the almost all-white scene they had been part of and learn more about everybody else on the planet.

  Ethan, the head boy, sat at the front of the room on a gray metal stool, wearing a purple South hoodie and jeans. He had curly blond hair and a hipster’s cool demeanor. The head girl sat beside him on another stool. The rest of the Student Senate was distributed across a series of round tables, and scattered among them were the scared-looking eighth graders. Ethan described the Student Senate to the visitors by saying that its members organized major events at the school, such as the recent homecoming dance, and did fund-raising to pay for them. The Senate also tried to introduce its members to leadership skills that would serve them well later in life, such as public speaking.

  Then Ethan asked a student named Keegan to take over. Keegan was a junior who would serve as head boy the following year and, coincidentally, looked almost exactly like Ethan—another good-looking, athletic white guy with a mop of blond curls. Ethan and Keegan looked so much alike and were together so often that I had a hard time telling them apart, and when I apologized about this one day, in a crowd by the front door, Ethan or Keegan (I honestly don’t know which one it was) told me not to worry—everybody at the school had the same problem.

  Keegan asked the eighth graders to introduce themselves and give the name of their school. Then he called on various members of the Student Senate to ask each visitor one question. The questions were “Dodgeball or kickball?” (Eighth grader: “Kickball.”) “Thin Mints or Samoas?” (Eighth grader: “Thin Mints.”) “Favorite cereal?” (Eighth grader: “Froot Loops.”) “Do you have a joke?” (Eighth grader: “What do you call a bee that comes back to life?” Keegan: “A zombie!”) “Favorite football team?” (Eighth grader: “Broncos.”) “Favorite breakfast food?” (Eighth grader: “Pancakes.” Keegan, with kind admonishment: “You could also answer bacon. Maybe next time.”) “Favorite Will Ferrell movie?” (Eighth grader: “Elf.” Keegan: “Elf is, like, timeless. I literally watch that movie, like, three times a season.”)

  Then a few students from South introduced themselves and explained why they had chosen that high school. Oula’s younger sister, Sama, volunteered to go first.

  “Hi, my name is Sam, and I’m a sophomore here,” she began. “I came to South—well, I have an older sister who goes here, and whenever I came to events here, the size of South was just perfect. You can have a lot of friends and there are a lot of different kinds of activities and all of the programs here mesh well together, like, you can have a sport and still be an honors student.”

  The next student to speak was a slight, boyish Asian American wearing a blue hoodie. He was originally from Cambodia.

  “Hi, I’m Kimleng, and I’m a senior,” he said. “I like the environment here at South. I think the teachers here—they’re really nice, and I’m thankful to them for helping with my transition, coming from another country, and learning a new language. Yeah, you guys should come here—you will like South.”

  While Sam and Oula had immigrated before their high school years, Kimleng had entered the United States at age seventeen. Three years prior, when he first enrolled at South, he had been ranked as a freshman and placed in Mr. Williams’s newcomer classroom. Like Hsar Htoo, he had struggled tremendously with the pronunciation of English words at first. Kimleng had learned fast, however, and after spending one full year as a newcomer, he had placed out of the next level of English Language Acquisition classes, and as a sophomore he had gone straight into ELA level 2. By his junior year, Kimleng was taking mainstream classes. Now he was a senior, enrolled in two honors courses, and had applied to six colleges. He was an example of what some of the students in Mr. Williams’s class might prove capable of achieving—if they had ambition.

  The next student to speak was the son of PTA president Carolyn Howard. George had unruly brown hair and a surfer dude’s bumbling cool. The other kids loved to rib him.

  “I came to, uh—” George began.

  “You’re at South High School, George!” advised Keegan.

  “And I’m a senior,” said George, without missing a beat. “What I really like about South is there are just a lot of people who do a lot of different things. Like, I have friends who like to skateboard and friends who like to go to football games—I know a lot of different people, and I’m friends with different groups of people. I think it’s really nice that you can do that, that you can be friends with people from all different areas of the school. I don’t feel that I have to hang out with certain people all of the time.”

  George was dating a young woman whose family had immigrated to the United States from West Africa. Like Oula, she spoke English perfectly and took mainstream classes, but she also celebrated her family’s West African culture, and later that year she would give George a green dashiki, which he proudly wore on Senior Ditch Day. Their union represented the type of cross-cultural romance that was possible at South. Friendships and romances between foreign-born and native-born students were common, and immigrants were included in all types of activities at the school. They did not remain stuck in outer orbit, socially. That fall, the school had selected as its Homecoming Queen a Vietnamese-American student named Teresa, the daughter of refugees. Teresa had been born in California, but both of her parents had arrived in this country during the refugee crisis that followed the Vietnam War.

  * * *

  After the eighth-grade shadows left to take a tour of the building, Keegan asked me to introduce myself to the remaining students. I mentioned that I was a writer who lived in Denver and had written several other books, including one called Just Like Us, which was set in a different high school and told the story of four girls who emigrated from Mexico, two with documents and two without. I explained why I was now at South and asked if the students had questions for me.

  “Would you rather be an egg roll or a spring roll?” Keegan asked.

  “Oh!” I said. “A spring roll.”

  “What do you like to do for fun?”

  “I like to snowshoe.”

  “Are you a John Cena fan?”

  “I have to confess I have no idea who that is, but I’m excited that I’m about to learn.”

  “George!” bellowed Keegan.

  George dug his cell phone out of his pants pocket and obligingly played a song by the professional wrestler and rap star. I think it might have been “The Time Is Now.” (I am not a John Cena fan but admit a grudging admiration for certain rhymes, such as, “I got my soul straight, I brush your mouth like Colgate.”)

  “Do you have a spirit animal?” Keegan asked.

  “Yes, I actually went through an official exercise to figure that out, and I discovered it’s a red fox,” I said.

  Keegan wanted to know if other students in the room had questions. This was the most entertaining interview that I’d been on the receiving end of in recent memory, so I didn’t mind.

  “If you could speak any foreign language you wanted, or you could speak to animals, which would you choose?” asked one girl.

  “I was a shy kid growing up, and I was always the one reading a book on the school bus, so I spent many years secretly convinced that I could speak to animals, because I had read the Narnia books so many times.”

  “I actually read Just Like Us,” said another student. “And I wanted to know, are you still in contact with those girls? How are they doing?”

  “I am still in touch with them. We get together maybe twice a year. Several of them are married now, and they are all about to turn thirty, which is incredible to me. All of them have some form of legal status or ability to work—in one case, through President Obama’s executive order known as DACA. So their lives have really evolved. They are all doing professional work now, the kind that requires a college degree.”

  “Why did you decide to write a book about newcomers?” another student asked
.

  “I get a lot of my ideas by paying attention to the news, and I’ve been watching stories about the refugee crisis for many months. I was wondering how that international story intersected with my hometown, and when I talked to people who work with refugees, they told me that South had expertise in welcoming people from around the world, and that there was a critical mass of foreign-born people here, which made this such an interesting environment. I think what’s happening with refugees is one of the biggest and most important stories in the world right now, and I think that story about people having to find a new home takes place every day here at South in ways that are really fascinating.”

  A girl with masses of dark curly hair, sitting at the back of the room next to Kimleng, raised her hand. This was Sara.

  “I was a newcomer, like, three years ago,” Sara said. “And if there’s anything you want to know, you can ask me. I would be more than happy to talk to you.”

  Sara was originally from Morocco, and she spoke both Arabic and French. She and Kimleng had been newcomers with Mr. Williams at the same time. Many of their peers had moved more slowly through the additional levels of English Language Acquisition instruction, but like Kimleng, Sara had learned English at such a quick pace that she was able to skip ahead and enter mainstream classes before other newcomers from her year. There were additional students in the room who had been born elsewhere—including a star member of the school’s basketball team—but Kimleng and Sara were the only two newcomers from their cohort who had made it all the way into this room, arguably the social epicenter of the school.