Haitian families’ ambivalent relationship to U.S. schools also is not unique, and in particular, these families’ expectation that schools should provide an éducation, and not merely instruction, echoes the findings of […] research with Latino families […] revealed that parents believed the purpose of schooling was for the educación of children. (Doucet 2011)

As a 2nd generation Haitian-American, I can say that the notion that Haitian parents expect their children to get an éducation, as opposed to an “education”, was corroborated by my childhood experience. Growing up in a family of éducateurs Continue reading I accidentally didn’t title this post and I forgot what I had planned to title it →

“Knoshnoor came to New York from Pakistan when she was in the eighth grade. She was bullied from the moment she got to her school, her hijab was continually pulled off by peers who called her ‘stinky’, ‘ugly’ and ‘terrorist’. Students threw things at her, such as balled up pieces of paper with explicit or lewd comments written on them. some even threw basketballs forcefully at her. She reported these incidents to teachers multiple times, but no one did anything to help. She never told her mother because she felt it was pointless (Paracha,2008)

bullying is a big social issue at school, especially because of racism and xenophobic. I accepted my elementary and middle school education in China. The racism is definitely not the main issue compared to how it is treated and seen in the United States. when I was at 7 grade, I went to an international school, there were many different students who came from diverse backgrounds and languages. I did not see the racism or the xenophobic issues happened there.
However, when I came to New York, I started heard people talking about racism and it is a big issue in society and life, especially in school. Color Students are bullied by some “dominated color students” or white students. However, New York is like a melting pot, there are over 100 different nations and background people. According to data, there are over 1 million Chinese people in New York. Bullying is really an important issue and it should be aware of. There is no better nation or worst nation in the world. The human being is all the same. And we should develop a better study environment for all students and parents to live and study. I think the teacher also should encourage all students working together, knowing each other more. I think why the bullying is happening could because students do not know their classmates then they would have misunderstood those color students. Once they get know each other better, their prejudice against color students would decrease. Developing a good learning community is our goal.

“When my brother and my mom came here, they didn’t know anything. That my brother could go to school, That my brother could get insurance until a certain age….” (Goodman, p75)

This passage saddens me. However, the worse thing is that those families do not want to connect to schools or other information to know better about their rights. I totally understand them and I exactly know their feeling. As an international student in America and an Immigrant in Canada, I spend so many years to adapt to the culture that people need to stand out for themselves to get their rights. This is not only a matter of language barrier. As educators, I don’t think it is a perfect idea to call families to the school and tell their rights. From my experience, I believe sending newsletters or brochures in their native language that tell what can they do might be a better way.

I also noticed that in Fabienne’s article, she mentioned that while Mexican families may send their children back to their Country as long as they are very unsatisfied about their school, Hetian families usually decide to stay where they are in the States. I am thinking whether or not it is because of the physical distance between the States and Haiti is more far away. Because it is the case of Asian families. It is hard to get here from Asia, and once they arrive, they may never go back. I found it is interesting that what Haitian families worried about is exactly the same as what Chinses families worried about. What a dilemma of those parents! I am willing to know more about how to help with those families.

Bullying in schools based on race and cultural hasn’t been taken seriously as other types of physical and phycological bullying. It’s pretty scary to think that everything can start with bullying and can turn into a hate crime. The issues faced by brown people from South Asian background, pointed out by Bajaj, Ghaffar-Kucher, & Desai, (2016) continue to be salient and are not covered enough by the media or taken seriously by the school system. You can be targeted, as they mentioned, where 19 people were killed, among them latinx, Native Americans, and other South Asians with “Muslim like” features right after 9/11. These types of xenophobic attacks are still relevant in today’s political climate, as more hate crimes happened and are covered in the media without any solutions. How can we as teachers empower our students to question and prevent these types of attacks from happening? The authors present a modified curriculum to address xenophobic and racist bullying at schools and hopefully as teachers we can implement them and take preventive measures.