Teachers Learn to Reach Over Cultural Lines

Theresa Pro’s Southeast Asian students spoke so softly that she could barely hear them. Vivienne Bocarsly had to tell her Latino students, “Look me in the eye.” Juliet Beacham didn’t know why Asian kids smiled when they bumped into someone in the hallway.

Margarita Castaneda said her first-graders from Central America were unnaturally spooked at loud noises, such as a whistle blown on the playground or a book dropped on the floor.

Such behavior, which may seem strange to Americans, is popping up more and more as students from other cultures enroll in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In response, the district has instituted cross-cultural training seminars at 14 elementary and junior-high schools in the San Fernando Valley and has scheduled more in other areas.

Showing Respect

At a session at Lanai Road School in Encino, teachers learned that looking down and speaking softly are signs of respect in Southeast Asian and Latino cultures and that a smile can be an apology in some Asian cultures.

Erica Hagen, a former television actress who conducts the workshops for the school district, said remnants of students’ days in war-torn countries may crop up at school. Teachers have told her, she said, of times when an airplane would fly over or a car would backfire, and Salvadoran and Vietnamese students would dive for the floor.

Hagen, from the Immaculate Heart College Center in Los Angeles, demonstrated common gestures that are offensive to students from other cultures.

A curled index finger, she noted, beckons another person in the United States but is reserved for beckoning animals or for challenging someone to fight in several Asian countries. In Iran, a thumb-up gesture is “extremely obscene,” she said.

Halloween, she said, can be a horrifying holiday for Southeast Asian children, who are raised to believe in good and evil spirits. Their parents “use ghosts to control kids; if you’re not good, ghosts will get you,” she said.

Children often get contradictory messages at home and at school. Smiling is undignified for Korean men, so while teachers might instruct a Korean boy to smile for his class photo, his parents demand a stoic countenance, Hagen said.

What parents may demand as respectful conduct, teachers may regard as rude, she said in the seminars. Children are to speak softly and lower their eyes before elders in some Asian and Latino cultures, but U.S. teachers often believe such behavior means that children are not paying attention, she said.

“We need to value diversity,” Hagen said, suggesting that teachers say: “I understand it’s rude to look in adults’ eyes in your culture, and it’s important to continue doing that in your culture. But with American adults, you may want to practice looking into their eyes.”

This year, about 61,600 students, or 10.4% of the district’s total, are immigrants who have attended U.S. schools less than three years, up from 51,000 or 8.7% last year, said Lila Silvern, coordinator of the district’s programs for immigrant and refugee children. The nation’s second-largest school district has a fourth of the nation’s immigrant students and a third of the state’s, she said.

Few Years in U.S.

Region E of the district, which covers the Valley south of Roscoe Boulevard and includes students bused into the area, has 7,434 immigrants in kindergarten through eighth grade. These students--12% of the region’s total--have been in U.S. schools three years or less, Silvern said.

The district tries to help immigrant students adapt, with six-week crash courses in American culture and English, and with bilingual classes. But the six-week courses will accommodate only about 13,000 students this year--one-fifth of those who need them, Silvern said.

Another tactic is to help the teachers adapt through the cross-cultural workshops. The sessions are funded in the Valley by Immaculate Heart center--an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes education of immigrant students--the school district and Pacific Bell, district officials said.

Telling Differences

“Many teachers can’t distinguish between a Mexican immigrant from a little town and a Salvadoran from a war-torn country,” said Maria Casillas, operations administrator for Region E. “But the conditions they came from are different, so the way they respond in the classroom is different.”

Hagen, who taught in refugee camps in Thailand for a year and a half, noted in the workshops that education is stressed in Asian cultures and that a student’s poor performance can bring shame on an entire family.

Pro, a third-grade teacher at Hazeltine Avenue Elementary School in Van Nuys, said such values might explain why some Southeast Asian parents cried when she criticized their children for such minor infractions as talking loudly in class or skipping homework.

Bocarsly, also a Hazeltine teacher, said that her Latino students called her “teacher” or “ maestra ,” and she told them, “I would like to be called Mrs. Bocarsly.” She later learned at a workshop at her school that the students believed it would have been a sign of disrespect to address her by name--students can only address peers by name.

Many children of war bring survivor guilt with them, Hagen said in one seminar. “They ask, ‘Why did I survive when my family died?’ They can’t talk about this at home, so ask them about it,” she urged teachers.

Some teachers said they do not have to ask. Pro said her Laotian and Cambodian third-graders will suddenly raise their hands and blurt out tales of witnessing their fathers, sisters or other family members die.

Castaneda, a bilingual teacher at Encino School, said one of her pupils will start sobbing quietly in a corner of the classroom. “The children tell me so-and-so is crying. I console them, and then the story comes out.”

“It’s as if they just had to get it out,” Pro said. “Maybe they’re searching for answers.”

At Hazeltine, where the student body is about 55% Latino and 23% Southeast Asian, some of the experiences emerged in an assignment to write a story, complete with dedication and author’s notes. An 11-year-old Cambodian boy wrote an adaptation of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” in which, instead of porridge, the bears eat rice soup.

Brothers, Sisters Dead

His autobiographical note read: “I have five sisters, but three of them died. One more of my big sisters is in Thailand with my grandmother. I also have four big brothers. Three died, and one is in Thailand with my grandmother. That made me sad and angry.”

Mary Douglas, who mainly teaches Cambodian children at Hazeltine, recalled that when the 1987 Whittier earthquake hit, “within an hour, all the Cambodians came to get their children--because they’d been through so much, they wanted to get their family together as quickly as possible.”

In her seminars, Hagen called for understanding--and for patience. The average time a teacher gives a student to answer a question is two seconds, she said.

“Even for American kids, it’s not enough time,” she said, noting that immigrants have to “translate the question into their native language, think of the answer, then translate the answer back to spit it out in English.

“If the child thinks the teacher is going to move on to another kid, he’s not even going to bother to think of the answer,” she said.

But some teachers are reluctant to embrace Hagen’s message: “I feel that we do the best we can and that we are in the U.S. and have our own customs that all should assimilate to. Other countries would not do it for us,” a Sherman Oaks Elementary School teacher wrote on a critique form.

Mickey Mandell, a Lanai Road School teacher, said that since the Valley’s student population is no longer “lily-white” and fluent in English, “I’ve got to become a psychologist, interpeter and remember all the different ways to talk to people.”

Regina Sahani, a teacher at Sherman Oaks ELementary School, said misunderstandings between cultures have hit home. Sahani and her family immigrated from India in 1985. Two years ago, she said, a Valley magnet school director said her son, who wears a turban for religious reasons, could not attend the school because “we don’t accept funny hats.” The conflict was eventually resolved, and the boy attended the school.

But students, as well as teachers, are adapting, school administrators said.

Feeling More Secure

A few years ago, Southeast Asians at Hazeltine would cry at the sound of sirens screeching, which to them was a sound of war, Principal Nathan Glickman said.

Now, he said, the crying has stopped. The Asian population at school and in the neighborhood has increased, and many of the children have older siblings who have gone to Hazeltine. “There seems to be a much more secure feeling.”

Six years ago, Glickman said, he discovered a Cambodian boy with red stripes on his back and abdomen. The marks were reported to authorities as child abuse, but after consulting with Southeast Asians, Glickman discovered that the stripes resulted from a home remedy called “coining.” (To treat such ills as chest congestion, balm is applied to the skin and a coin is rubbed in a pattern, which breaks capillaries.)

Glickman said such unusual practices are a thing of the past at his school nowadays. “Parents are assimilating. They probably give a couple of aspirin now.

“It’s all part of the growing process--on our part as well as theirs,” he said.