For the 720 Burmese refugees who resettled in Indianapolis in 2011 and the hundreds who arrived each year before that (Exodus Refugee Immigration, 2010), learning English ranks among many critical needs. But in light of the pressures to gain access to healthcare, secure a job, and adjust to a culture much different from their own, English classes—even free ones—are often perceived as a luxury, not priority. Language teachers must find creative ways to teach English in a way that addresses immigrants’ and refugees’ needs. The staff at Esperanza Ministries, a non-profit which serves the healthcare, legal, and educational needs of Johnson County’s Hispanic and Burmese populations, confronts the needs of the Burmese community head-on with a project-based curriculum for advanced Burmese learners of English.

The class was conceived by Margarita Hart, Executive Director of Esperanza, and Sun Meng, a native of Burma and voice for Burmese ethnic minorities. Both agreed from their experiences teaching and mentoring immigrants and refugees that seeds of transformation had to be planted from within the community in order to flourish. When they began developing the course, Hart and Sun Meng did not yet know what all of the needs of the Burmese refugees were. Through extensive discussions with other Burmese community members, they learned of the high suicide rate of elderly refugees, children accidentally consuming poison or running into the busy roads by their apartments, and gang violence between different ethnic tribes of refugees. A traditional English class on how to fill out forms would not be enough. Part of the curriculum would have to involve the refugees themselves identifying problems in their community and proposing solutions.

Sun Meng recruited fifteen Burmese adults (including Chin and Karen refugees), all advanced learners of English, for the course, which met for the first time in Fall 2011. Each semester, students are offered a free place in the 50-hour grant-funded program if they agree to attend regularly and bring the information they learned back to their spheres of influence within the community. Each five-hour classroom session consists of two hours of ethics, two hours of health education, and an hour of community resource training and partnership development. Though the leadership program is not a language course, English vocabulary and grammar lessons are presented to supplement the course content.

Outside of class, student leaders are required to teach the health and ethics lessons they learn in the classroom to at least three of their friends, neighbors, and family members in their native language for a total of twelve hours. The leaders discuss access to healthcare, transportation, libraries, employment agencies, and share English that they will need to navigate these situations. They document barriers and concerns and bring them back to the classroom for discussion.

Student leaders then collaborate to address some of these identified needs. In Fall 2011, students organized a dental clinic, an idea which directly responded to the Burmese community’s high prevalence of oral cancers, largely due to the addictive betel leaf, which many Burmese chew without knowledge of its adverse health effects. Hart and Sun Meng invited dentists and dental students from IUPUI, and student leaders arranged for interpreters and transportation and invited all of the community. Over one hundred Burmese adults and children attended the clinic. The student leaders shared information on dental hygiene while their community members were waiting to have their teeth cleaned. Student leaders have identified health screenings and a legal help clinic as future projects that will address the needs of their people.

The Burmese leadership training now has a waitlist of 75 students in Indianapolis, and beginning in August, some of the current students will help accommodate these students by co-teaching a leadership class. The curriculum will continue to stem from community needs and develop leaders that will protect and advocate for the dignity and integrity of others through their help.

Reference

Exodus Refugee Immigration. (2010). Refugees in Indianapolis. Retrieved from http://www.exodusrefugee.org/aboutus_whoweserve.html

Amanda Snell teaches and develops curriculum for community-based ESL programs for adult immigrants and refugees in Greenwood, Indiana. She is a graduate of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis MA/TESOL Program.