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He had been especially reluctant that week to participate in the creative-arts classes, she said. But one day, while the others were taking a dance class, he approached Ms. Cvenic with a book “and gestured for us to read together,” she recalled. This was a boy, she pointed out, who had avoided eye contact with her for the first three weeks.
“I was floored,” she said.
The two sat outside the classroom, and Ms. Cvenic read aloud with him. These sessions became a regular feature of their remaining afternoons.
Sailesh Naidu, the academy’s principal, said these seemingly small steps were “big victories” for the students.
“What they’ve had to battle in order to raise their hand in class, in order to sing a song with their classmates, in order to get up and dance on stage, in order to take an exam, these are huge things that they have to face, and they’re by no means small battles,” Mr. Naidu said. “Every day these victories are meaningful to them in ways that are immeasurable.”
THE academy drew to a close on Aug. 17 with a graduation ceremony. “There will be some tears,” Eleanor Oxholm, the academy’s program coordinator, had predicted several days earlier. Indeed, as the students braced for their transition into other schools, it was also a time of reflection for the teachers.
“Look, they’re going to have a very tough time, but at least they had a soft landing,” said Livia Rurarz-Huygens, an assistant teacher in the upper school, quickly adding: “And it’s not even a soft landing.” The children have had to contend with a new country and with classmates from different cultures speaking different languages, she pointed out. “But at least it’s a more gentle entry,” she said.
All of the academy’s students were planning to attend schools in the city next month. High school students who spoke limited English would probably attend specialized schools for English-language learners. And the International Rescue Committee would work to place primary and junior high school students with limited English in schools with strong programs in English as a second language, Mr. Naidu said.
The organization would also assign academic coaches to more than 70 students and help serve as intermediaries between the students, their schools and their parents.
With “Pomp and Circumstance” playing, and with parents and donors to the program in attendance, the students, hopped up on excitement and graduation-day candy, filed in.
“Coming to a new country, learning a new language, making new friends: That’s really scary,” Mr. Naidu said in a speech to the students. “But you did it.”
Student dance, music and drama performances followed, each punctuated by wild clapping and euphoric hooting by classmates.
The eldest of the Diallos, Thierno, 22, read a poem in French that he had written and presented to Ms. Oxholm. (“He just came up to me one day and said, ‘Miss Eleanor, I wrote this,’ ” she recalled.) Called “Prayer Poem,” it was a paean to the International Rescue Committee and to the enduring hope of the refugee.“The sun is calling its children/To work! To work! To work!” he wrote. “Tomorrow’s rainbow is not unwell./Bless you!”
As the ceremony ended, the students and faculty members clustered in the aisles in a knot of embraces and tears. Even Mamadou shed his usual stoicism and broke down. “When I leave here,” he murmured sadly in French, “I’ll no longer be able to see my friends.” The friends he named were teachers. He tried to hide behind a pair of sunglasses, but he could not stop weeping, digging his fingers behind the frames to drag away the tears.
(The New York Times, August 25, 2012)