PBS documentary about mental health, trauma and education of Somali children in Minnesota.
https://www.pbs.org/video/whole-people-105-healing-journeys-idwg7g/
How one Minnesota school, beloved by refugee families, has turned itself around while keeping its teachers, students and culture.
What do you do with a school that is beloved by its families but is failing them academically? That is the heart of a community but isn’t teaching its children to read well enough to go to college, get jobs and give back?
you shut the school down, you inflict a gaping wound on those families. If you don’t, you condemn the next generation to the same fate as the last.
Dugsi Academy, located in St. Paul, is one such school. The families of its 300 elementary and middle school students are all refugees displaced by the decades-long war in their native Somalia. When they first enroll, many have never been to a school or had a formal lesson.
Some were born here and some have been here for mere weeks. Many made the trip from refugee camps where food and other resources are scarce and the future uncertain. The majority arrive at the school speaking little to no English.
Families seeking permanent homes come and go midyear. All struggle to adjust to a new country where their religion, Islam, is often demonized.
Somali culture exalts education; indeed, the Somali word for school, dugsi, means a place where children are educated, sheltered and nurtured by teachers who play a parental role. To its community, Dugsi Academy lived up to this definition.
Academically, however, 11 years after it opened in 2005, Dugsi Academy was one of the lowest-performing schools in the state. In 2016, just 7 percent of students passed state reading tests and fewer than 6 percent passed math. Still, abysmal as those numbers were, they didn’t mean much to Dugsi’s families, many of whom didn’t understand that children this far behind wouldn’t succeed in high school and beyond.
As a public charter school, Dugsi is accountable to its authorizer, which grants it permission to operate and is responsible for ensuring that it meets performance goals. After the 2016 test scores came in, the school’s nonprofit authorizer, Pillsbury United Communities, staged an intervention.
The school had 12 months to turn itself around, or Pillsbury would revoke its permission to operate. And there was one condition: Dugsi’s board of directors had to accept outside help.
Read more how they are trying to turn around this school.
https://www.minnpost.com/other-nonp...le-keeping-its-teachers-students-and-culture/
https://www.pbs.org/video/whole-people-105-healing-journeys-idwg7g/
How one Minnesota school, beloved by refugee families, has turned itself around while keeping its teachers, students and culture.
What do you do with a school that is beloved by its families but is failing them academically? That is the heart of a community but isn’t teaching its children to read well enough to go to college, get jobs and give back?
you shut the school down, you inflict a gaping wound on those families. If you don’t, you condemn the next generation to the same fate as the last.
Dugsi Academy, located in St. Paul, is one such school. The families of its 300 elementary and middle school students are all refugees displaced by the decades-long war in their native Somalia. When they first enroll, many have never been to a school or had a formal lesson.
Some were born here and some have been here for mere weeks. Many made the trip from refugee camps where food and other resources are scarce and the future uncertain. The majority arrive at the school speaking little to no English.
Families seeking permanent homes come and go midyear. All struggle to adjust to a new country where their religion, Islam, is often demonized.
Somali culture exalts education; indeed, the Somali word for school, dugsi, means a place where children are educated, sheltered and nurtured by teachers who play a parental role. To its community, Dugsi Academy lived up to this definition.
Academically, however, 11 years after it opened in 2005, Dugsi Academy was one of the lowest-performing schools in the state. In 2016, just 7 percent of students passed state reading tests and fewer than 6 percent passed math. Still, abysmal as those numbers were, they didn’t mean much to Dugsi’s families, many of whom didn’t understand that children this far behind wouldn’t succeed in high school and beyond.
As a public charter school, Dugsi is accountable to its authorizer, which grants it permission to operate and is responsible for ensuring that it meets performance goals. After the 2016 test scores came in, the school’s nonprofit authorizer, Pillsbury United Communities, staged an intervention.
The school had 12 months to turn itself around, or Pillsbury would revoke its permission to operate. And there was one condition: Dugsi’s board of directors had to accept outside help.
Read more how they are trying to turn around this school.
https://www.minnpost.com/other-nonp...le-keeping-its-teachers-students-and-culture/
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