Three years ago, Cho Zin Thet arrived for the first time in New York City as a 14-year-old, knowing virtually no English, and very little about America. She and her mother had traveled from Myanmar (also known as Burma) to reunite with her father, after a nine-year separation.
“I felt scared,” recalled Thet, now a 17-year-old sophomore at Bronx International Community High School, the only Burmese student in a school of 440 students from 15 different countries. “I didn’t know anybody. Everything new.”
Today, Thet is adjusting to the social life in a New York high school, learning probability along with English and the full high school curriculum. She is well on her way to graduating from high school and planning for college, with hopes for a career in engineering.
“Her English has vastly improved,” said Patrick Doyle, Cho’s tenth grade math teacher. Cho is the one who solves problems first and feels confident to ask questions, he added.
Her goals for the moment conflict with her those of her father, who prefers a Navy training program for his daughter, not an uncommon dilemma for new immigrant families.
“He wants me to work in the government,” said Thet. “But I don’t know what will happen after joining the army. ”
Her South Bronx high school specializes in this population, enrolling only students who have been in the United States for less than four years. They come from countries that include the Dominican Republic, Yemen and Egypt. Special language transition Bridge programs taught by multilingual instructors help boost the students’ English facility.
Even so, Thet’s challenges are unusual. No one else speaks Burmese in the school, and English to Burmese dictionaries are extremely difficult to find.
“Cho is the only Burmese student, so she has no choice,” said Doyle, the tenth-grade math teacher. “Those are the students who accelerate. They usually pick up English fast.”
Thet had to spend loads of time studying alone after school. The hard work paid off. “I love it,” she said from the school’s computer lab.
Cho Zin Thet was raised in Yangon (meaning “End of Strife,” formerly known as Rangoon) It’s the largest city and the former capital of Myanmar, a diverse land both ethnically and religiously. At first, she lived with her mother, father, and grandparents.
“In my country, there are lots of pagodas around my home,” she said. “I have my auntie. She is really good to me, like my best friend or my sister.”
When she was five years old, influenced by the student-led protests in Myanmar known as “the 8888 Uprising” of 1988, her father fled to neighboring Malaysia seeking political asylum. He then was able to apply to enter the U.S. as a refugee.
After a prolonged wait, he finally received a visa in 2015. He found a job in a Japanese restaurant and then settled in the Bronx.
In New York City, most Myanmar immigrants cluster in neighborhoods in Queens, including Jackson Heights, Sunnyside, and Woodside. In 2015, there were nearly 170,000 Burmese living in the U.S., a huge increase from 17,000 in 2010, according to the 2015 Census.
“My dad called my mom and me. And we came through an agency,” she said, referring to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a non-governmental organization which offers long-term assistance to refugees. Over the past decade, Burmese refugees have been the largest group resettled to the U.S., representing 23 percent of the nearly 71,000 refugees admitted since 2007.
Her mother now works in a hair salon and her father opened a sushi bar in upper Manhattan last year.
Thet enrolled in ICHS, which was tough for her at the beginning. “I came with my father,” Thet recalled, speaking about her first day at ICHS. “They put me in a high-level class. I really didn’t know anything.”
She barely spoke English when started ninth grade, so she had trouble catching up with the coursework.
Nearly 90 percent of the students at ICHS are English learners, and dozens of languages are spoken, such as Spanish, French, Arabic, also Wolof and Fulani (both are mainly used in West Africa). The challenge is the school’s specialty — how to teach these students of diverse backgrounds?
She was transferred to the school’s “Bridge Program,” a yearlong program designed to prepare English learners for the ninth grade. It used to be separate, but is now integrated into the regular class to avoid students becoming isolated. She and her peers in the program began by reading easier materials to increase their vocabulary, such as children’s books, until they fit into the new learning environment.
Thet reentered the ninth grade the following year. Teachers guided her to write essays and do presentations. “That time was hard for me to be in class,” she said. When she needed to translate words, she found Spanish-English dictionaries, French-English dictionaries, Chinese-English dictionaries but nothing for Burmese speakers.
Nationwide, it’s known that Myanmar refugees struggle more than other immigrant groups with mastering English, according to the Migration Policy Institute in 2017.
The school runs a two-year curriculum that mixes the ninth and tenth graders in a class so that students who speak the same languages can help one another. Many teachers at ICHS are also multilingual and some of them come with immigration background. None speak Burmese.
Despite the language differences, Thet has managed to make friends. Her closest ally so far is the only girl in the school from Nicaragua. Alexandra Castillo, 18, arrived in the U.S. three years ago, and felt like “a fish out of water,” in her junior year. However, she got high grades and skipped the tenth grade.
“I met her in a yoga class in 2016,” said Castillo, a senior, who is determined to be a psychologist. “I don’t know how we started talking when we both didn’t know English. We spoke by songs.”
That exposure and creative language acquisition in this school’s environment is not surprising to language experts. “Languages are amazing,” said Jennifer Leeman, a professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Language at George Mason University. “The more exposure people have to languages, the better it is for them. They are able to share their experiences and learn from each other.” Leeman believes that multilingual classrooms are valuable learning experiences.
Castillo’s college application results will arrive in the following couple of months, like many of her cohorts. Last year, the graduation in four-year graduation rate at ICHS was 81 percent, higher than the city average of 76 percent and the Bronx average of 69 percent. The rate was exceptional given that 98 percent of the students are low-income. Sixty out of 80 students also managed to go to college, according to JoAnne DiLauro, a senior guidance counselor at the school.
“Teaching is all about relationships,” DiLauro said. “About how you form relationships that then allow you to push kids and to see themselves as being capable of doing something excellent.” The veteran said that there’re lots of things that we’re trying to deal with in this country. She still believes that education is the one thing that can actually change it.
Thet is trying to figure out what she is going to do with her life. She expects to go to college and study engineering. A Burmese-American Community Institute (BACI) study shows that the college-going rate among Burmese-Americans increased from 43 percent in 2012 to 85 percent in 2017.
However, her father has vetoed her choice. He put pressure on her to apply for the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC), a federal program in which young trainees will have the chance to join the Army. He heard from his Burmese acquaintances that it would guarantee a decent job. Thet is afraid that if she follows her college dream, she might lose her parents’ support in college.
“Go to the military? Or go to college?” Thet asked herself. She has to make the decision after taking the SAT in her 11th grade.
