The Portland State University students were from an Honor's College seminar class, and most of them volunteered as tutors with immigrant students at Reynolds High School under the direction of Debra Tavares. Two worked with middle school students taking an enrichment course on interviewing and research at St. Andrew Nativity School. One worked as a tutor at Africa House, part of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization.
The PSU students were delightful to work with. Some were immigrants themselves, most had been born in the U.S. Some were on the shy side, others very outgoing. Some had loved high school, some had hated it, and one had dropped out.
What they all shared in common was a passion for helping others and adapting to what students needed. And the younger students loved them.
I remember that about twenty years ago, when my life partner and I contemplated adoption across racial lines, I had a sense that having a son of color would entail leaving my cocoon of privilege, that I'd start to see the world at times from my dark-skinned child's perspective.
For me--and I think for the PSU students who had grown up in comfortable circumstances--tutoring vulnerable youth is a bit like that. You start to learn what sort of trauma refugees have witnessed, what sort of difficulties and prejudices that so many youth and their parents face. Like parenting a child of color, it becomes more difficult to assume and to assert that life is always good and easy and fair.
There is a lot of discussion these days among progressive-minded Americans about how to be in solidarity with refugees and other immigrants. I think what we found is that providing some concrete assistance (help in learning English) and a willingness to sit and listen to people's stories can be very powerful. Deep listening can provide youth with permission to start thinking about and sharing their remarkable, often painful, stories. And once you've heard those stories and witnessed the courage of the people telling them--well, your perspective on life is deepened and changed.
I'll give Joel, one of our courageous young students from Reynolds who lost her parents and siblings a day after her birth, the last word on this: ""I will not sit and fold my arms."
