Unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America are still arriving to live with family members or guardians in communities across California, while they wait for their court dates to find out if they can stay in this country. In fact, the numbers of children being detained at the U.S.-Mexico border has more than doubled in October and November compared with a year ago.
In California, Los Angeles County has the largest number of these kids, and Alameda County is next. A steady stream of newcomers in Oakland has now filled all four of the school district’s high school newcomer programs to capacity.
In her first-period ethnic studies class for newcomers, Castlemont High School teacher Carrie Haslanger goes over how to communicate feelings in English.
“Scared. Repítelo: scared,” she says. The class repeats the word. “Very good. ¿Y cómo se dice poderoso en ingles? Powerful.”
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“I stopped going to school for a year in Honduras because the gangs would wait outside and kidnap people,” says one teenage girl, in Spanish, at her attorney’s office at Centro Legal de la Raza. Her attorney asked not to disclose her name or school because her asylum case is ongoing.
She says she was afraid in Honduras because girls with light-brown hair were being targeted by gangs. “They say only the women in the gangs can have light hair,” she says, “so they rape girls and kill them. They put rocks in their intimate parts.”
Teachers are having to learn fast how to teach kids English and subject content at the same time, and how to support children with extremely high levels of trauma.
To continue reading (or listen to) this story by Zaidee Stavely, go to: ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/12/21/o...ids-fleeing-violence
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