16. CONFESSIONS OF A TEACHER

SADIA sat restlessly through four years of high school. She did not even know some of her teachers’ names.

She would have been surprised to glimpse things from the other side of the teacher’s desk.

Danielle Brain, a charismatic pro, has been teaching English at Proctor High School for roughly 30 years. She knows exactly how many days till her retirement: “Three hundred and sixty-two school days and 730 calendar days,” she said on a clear June day in 2019, her last class before summer vacation.

She kept an eye on her students as they gathered backpacks and headed toward the door.

“ ‘Bye, Brain,” a tall, thin girl in a hijab said, affectionately.

Ms. Brain had a rough month: A fierce storm hurled a tree onto her house in nearby Rome. “It crushed the house and my leg,” she said, rolling up her skirt after her students left, and showing a scar.

There is little that throws Ms. Brain.

Proctor is one of the most diverse schools in the country: Its 2,600 students speak over 40 languages. About 80 percent of the student population is economically disadvantaged.

In Ms. Brain’s classroom, students come and go: A Karen girl, knowing little English, may arrive from a refugee camp in Thailand. A student may vanish into an alternative program, just as Sadia did. A girl may return to the Middle East to get married.

“I don’t get a heads-up,” Ms. Brain, 52, said about the changes on her roster. And she gets little information about her new students. Records are often incomplete or have been lost, she said, since her students have come from so many different countries. Classes are large—between 25 and 30 students—so she does not have time to go through background material.

Sometimes, she will do her own quick evaluation of a new student by saying, “Hello. We’re doing ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ ”

The student may look at her blankly. Or they may say, “I love Shakespeare.”

Whatever their response, Ms. Brain says, “Come on in, and let’s get going.”

Her years at Proctor have been draining: “You’ll never teach harder,” she said. “If you can teach in Utica, you can teach anywhere.”

“But you wouldn’t want to! You’re getting a different lens from these kids. You can’t get that teaching in New Hartford.”

Years ago, her friend Krista Pembroke, an art teacher at Proctor, told her about a student from a refugee camp in Thailand. She was determined to use a particular shade of green.

The girl was painting the Adirondack mountains.

“There’s no such green in the world,” Ms. Pembroke said, looking at the girl’s painting.

The girl insisted there was.

“Then Krista went to Thailand on vacation,” Ms. Brain said, smiling. Standing on a bridge, overlooking a grove of trees, she saw her student’s vibrant, yellow-green.

When Bosnian students started showing up in the mid-1990s, it felt like an explosion of newcomers, Ms. Brain said: “What can you do with a population that changes by the hour?”

Proctor’s teachers had no special training to deal with non–English-speaking children. Most refugee students were placed into one of three different levels of ESL classes.

Those who arrive as children, generally have caught up by high school, Ms. Brain said: “If a kid comes in at elementary age, by the time I get them, they’re good to go.”

But some—like Sadia, Mana, and Ralya—never completely catch up. Sadia’s younger siblings, born in the United States, were put into regular classes from the start.

There are programs that offer help along the way: The Young Scholars Liberty Partnerships Program, a collaboration between the Utica school district and Utica College, identifies talented minority students in the sixth grade and provides academic and social support until graduation. AIS—Academic Intervention Services—is a program designed to help students pass the New York State Regents Exams.

When refugees arrive as teenagers, there are tremendous hurdles.

“You’ve got a 14-year-old who’s never held a pencil,” Ms. Brain said. “A 19-year-old—who drives and has a job—is put in the ninth grade.”

Yet, some teenage refugees have soared.

When Pri Paw, 15, arrived from a refugee camp on the Burmese/Thai border in 2009, she was 4’ 10”, extremely shy, and could not speak English.

“I’d never seen a computer. I didn’t have an American friend,” she said about her first day at Proctor. “The person next to me showed me where to go.”

Yet, she graduated in the top 10 of her class, and received a BA from SUNY Polytechnic Institute, majoring in biology.

Around 2007, Proctor instituted a new unwritten policy: Refugees over 16 were not allowed to enroll.

Young people between the ages of 17 and 21 who appeared at Proctor, wanting to register, were told they were too old—and were directed toward alternative academic programs. These programs, like the newcomer program run by the refugee center, focused on teaching students English, but did not offer credit toward a high school degree or help prepare students for the high school equivalency exam.

And they did not provide many of the other things available to Proctor students: free transportation and lunch, art, music, gym, and after-school activities.

In 2015, the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, filed a lawsuit against the Utica school district, charging that turning away teenage refugees was part of an effort to keep immigrants out of the city’s only public high school.

It cited 19-year-old twin sisters, refugees from Burma, who had tried to enroll at Proctor in the summer of 2013.

They were told the law prevented them from attending, because they would not have enough time to pass state exams and graduate before turning 21.

This was a violation of state and federal law, the suit stated: All New Yorkers under the age of 21 are entitled to attend public school, regardless of their national origin or English proficiency.

Proctor was hardly the only high school barring older students: Mamaroneck High School in Westchester County, New York, initially refused to enroll a 16-year-old Guatemalan student who had moved from New Rochelle, New York. It sent him back to his old high school.

McCaskey High School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, barred six refugees, 17 to 21 years old, sending them instead to an alternative school run by a private company.

In 2016, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Lancaster district; that same year the New York Civil Liberties Union battled Mamaroneck. In 2015, the NYCLU had filed a class action lawsuit against Utica, on behalf of six refugee students.

But Schneiderman’s lawsuit against the Utica district went farther than the others. It described a coordinated effort to cover up what it was doing: Multiple levels of administrators were told to keep out older immigrant students—but to leave no record of their refusals.

By doing so, “the District could claim that these individuals were unknown to it—effectively strangers to the District, who never sought to enroll,” the lawsuit said.

Deborah L. Wilson-Allam, who headed Utica’s districtwide ESL program from 2011 to 2014, saw up close the effect of turning students away.

“I was supposed to inform older students they couldn’t go to Proctor,” said Ms. Wilson-Allam, currently executive director of international education at Utica College. But when a 17-year-old Sudanese girl came in with her mother and an advocate in 2013, determined to enroll, Ms. Wilson-Allam hoped the administration would make an exception.

“She was not an uneducated person,” said Ms. Wilson-Allam, who has worked with refugees in Egypt. “She completed eighth grade.”

But the administration refused to enroll her. “A month later, she came back with an advocate, crying, saying ‘I want to be a doctor.’ ” Disheartened, Ms. Wilson-Allam had to turn the girl away again, steering her to an alternative program.

Ms. Wilson-Allam said that in 2014, she complained to the New York Civil Liberties Union about the district’s treatment of refugees, and later gave a deposition to the NYCLU in the federal class action lawsuit against Utica, which was settled in 2016.

The district also settled the state lawsuit in 2016. The school system had to comply with federal and state laws and offer compensatory schooling for those hurt by its practices.

Notices are now posted around Utica—at the refugee center and at ethnic markets—stating that all students 17–21 have the right to attend Proctor.

The court case divided the city: Many still feel bruised.

It was not a black-and-white matter, said Dr. Randall J. VanWagoner, president of Mohawk Valley Community College. “On one hand, you have refugee students denied access to a full educational experience. They were segregated.”

“But it was a very challenging dynamic for the school district,” Dr. VanWagoner added. “You have 16- and 17-year-olds showing up: Within six months to two years, they have to take the statewide Regents exams. The state wasn’t giving the financial support that can mitigate things.”

Utica is one of the most poorly funded districts in the state, he added.

The city spends $17,128 per student, according to its proposed 2020–2021 budget; well-off New Hartford spends $21,286.

It is left to the teachers to deal with the wide range of students’ ages, abilities, and backgrounds. “You’re just under pressure all the time,” said Ms. Pembroke, who retired in 2017.

There were cultural clashes in her classroom: Two boys—a Bosnian and a Serb—got into a fistfight. Parents got involved; the principal was able to smooth things over.

“They stopped fighting,” Ms. Pembroke said. “But I don’t think the boys became friends.”

She was faced with deep wounds she could not address: One winter, as it started to snow, she saw one of her Bosnian students standing outside. He was distraught.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” she asked.

He had been struck by a memory: Skiing outside his village in Bosnia, he stumbled over a pile of dead bodies.

Later, when he returned to the classroom, she overheard another student, a troublemaker, ask him if he had ever carried a gun.

“Yes,” he said, matter-of-factly, “and a knife in my boot.”

“Then there was respect!” Ms. Pembroke said.

A group of boys—who had been in Thai refugee camps—showed her a clip from an old Rambo movie: Enemy soldiers surrounded a village as people slept, then they attacked. “That’s what it was like,” the boys said, referring to the Burmese military’s raids.

“You’ve got generations who’ve faced trauma,” Ms. Pembroke said. “You’ve got to have support in place.”

To cope with students’ needs, the school offers the support of guidance counselors, psychologists, in-house translators, social workers, and community liaisons.

There is a tight connection between teachers and support personnel, Ms. Brain said. But it’s impossible to keep up with students’ needs. “If you’re a psychologist, you’re on all the time. Running all the time. You’re bombarded.”

When students are in distress, a counselor is the first to be contacted. “They’re great people,” Ms. Pembroke said. “Their hearts break for kids—that’s why they chose this career.” But they are overwhelmed by caseloads.

At a suburban school, if a minor clash starts with another student—as happened with Sadia—she might run to a counselor.

“That couldn’t happen here,” Ms. Pembroke said.

Yet, despite their struggles, most refugee students appreciate being at Proctor. “There’s a good chance they know their life was crap before they came here,” Ms. Brain said, bluntly. “They know what school can do for them.”

In 2019, Proctor’s total graduation rate was 75 percent, about 8 percent lower than the state’s graduation rates. Fifty-two percent of Proctor students graduated with a Regents’ diploma. The graduation rate of those enrolled in ESL classes was 21 percent, with 13 percent receiving Regents’ diplomas.

Kevin Marken, the Utica director of On Point for College, a program that helps refugees and nontraditional students from low-income backgrounds apply to schools, estimated that in Proctor’s class of 2019, about 60 young refugees went on to college through his program.

Most attend MVCC. “We call it the 13th year of Proctor,” Ms. Brain said, smiling. Almost 10 percent of MVCC’s student body are refugees. The college also offers a one-year certificate program, for college credit, in ESL.

But over the years, Proctor’s refugee students have also graduated from Mount Holyoke College, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, and Yale University.

“They didn’t come in with any cultural capital,” Ms. Brain said about her refugee students.

But when they leave Proctor, she wants them to be able to read the social cues around them—so they can successfully navigate the world.

That’s why she teaches them American idioms and sayings. And she answers questions, like: What are your nursery rhymes? Why is it that no one here lives like they do on Dallas?

“I’m trying to explain away their misconceptions of American culture,” she said.

Her refugee students are dealing with so much, she added: They are trying to find a place for themselves at school—and at home, they are translating for parents who cannot speak English.

Yet, once they start to feel comfortable, they discover something unexpected: They have a good deal in common with the other students, despite the differences in their socioeconomic backgrounds.

“A lot of my students are dealing with upheavals. Everybody’s got stuff going on.”

She sighed. “I’m so drained.”

“To be honest, I just don’t have the energy anymore. A teacher knows when it’s time to leave.”

“I’m tapped—and I’m tapping out.”