Culture Shocks

Community groups take divided action to protect Asian kids from school violence.

by Helen i-lin Hwang

A 12-year-old Vietnamese girl was beaten so badly in the Southwark School cafeteria in October that officials at Methodist Hospital were compelled to call the police. This, after principal Anna Jenkins already decided not to.

In other student-on-student violence, children at Southwark have been bitten in the face and on the forearm and sent to the hospital for MRIs. Still, school district spokesman Fernando Gallard said Southwark School is a very safe place. According to school district figures, four reported incidents of assault took place at Southwark last school year. Gallard added that the figure was low compared with other elementary schools in the area.

But what's unique about Southwark, located at Ninth and Mifflin streets, is that its student population, ranging from kindergarten through eighth-grade, is 37 percent Asian, compared with 5 percent across the school system. For many of these children, unfamiliarity with the language and culture makes assimilation difficult.

To help give Asian-American students and staff members a voice, the Asian Community Education Coalition was formed in 2002 in partnership with the school district, says co-founder Margaret Chin, an administrator with the district who runs the office of language, culture and the arts.

The coalition, which includes representatives from several Asian community groups, has since started Asian language classes and reinforced the need for translation for Asian parents, whether translating letters sent home to parents or providing interpreters on school grounds. (Latino and African-American groups also have formed similar advisory committees, says Gallard.)

Asked about Southwark, Chin says she doesn't think Asian kids are being targeted for beatings, but she says that it's still a concern.

"African-American kids beat up on their own kids, Caucasian kids do the same," she says. "It's an education piece we have to address. … It's learned behavior, and kids have to learn to respect each other."

However, John Pham, a community activist, and Vietnamese United National Association of Greater Philadelphia (VUNA) think Asian kids aren't being adequately protected by the principal at Southwark. On June 6, coalition members, who are also school district officials, held an emergency meeting at VUNA offices at Eighth and Washington in an attempt to stave off a protest scheduled for the next day. Pham complained that while Asian students were getting beaten up, Jenkins was neither calling the police when she should have nor providing translators for the parents when they came to pick up their injured children.

Early the next morning, a march was still held in front of Southwark. Later that day, Pham and a representative from the nonprofit advocacy group Asian-Americans United demanded another meeting, saying it was dissatisfied with the results of the previous day's get-together. Though school district officials scrambled to meet with them, some community members had been told it was canceled and didn't show up.

District officials acknowledge that Jenkins had made mistakes but maintain that she's made corrective action. After two investigations into the assault of the 12-year-old, Jenkins apologized to the parents and was told by the school district that she should've called the police immediately. She was not reprimanded. (The district's investigation concluded that Jenkins had offered to call the police three times, a version that that parents didn't agree with.)

Jenkins, who has been principal for a year, had been reprimanded once; In another incident when a Vietnamese girl was jumped at Southwark, a Cambodian translator was brought in to translate for parents who spoke Vietnamese. As a result, more than 150 parents signed a petition and Jenkins was notified that bilingual counselor assistants "will be used in all cases involved non-English speaking parents."

Today, Southwark has staff members who speak Vietnamese and Cambodian to interpret when their services are needed.

David Seng, a member of both United Communities Southeast Philadelphia and the Asian Community Education Coalition, says that although Jenkins erred by not calling the police, "she's made tremendous improvement since that time. … [She's] very committed to bridging the gaps with diversity." He says he's confident Jenkins would call the police the next time she sees a student beaten up that badly.

Still, Seng recognizes other issues facing Asian-American students. For example, his 9-year-old son Derrick is stuck in an English as a Second Language program though he was born in the United States. The reason is, he says, is that the school registration form asks "Is the primary language spoken at home other than English?" If the student checks "yes" he's automatically placed in an ESL track — even if fluent in English. (Seng says he hopes the coalition can address that issue next year.)

As for the future, United Communities Southeast Philadelphia is partnering with Pennsylvania Parent Information Resource Center — a state agency funded by the Department of Education — to create a new group with Asian parents and teachers to assist Asian parents with their children in school. The group, formed as a result of issues at Southwark, plans on working with the existing Asian Community Education Coalition in the fall.

When the school year starts up again, the coalition will be readying itself for a "more constructive" agenda, such as encouraging more kids to get involved in sports, music and advanced placement programs in high school, and to see more Asian teaching staff and administrators.

"We don't have one Asian principal in our district and that's a disgrace," says Chin. "Dealing with issues shouldn't be the primary focus. It's like putting out a fire. We want to be building on strengths."