Teaching Your Children Well

Paula Palmer, an elementary school teacher for twenty-four years and now coordinator of the IB Programme for the Minneapolis public schools, recalls a couple of shy Hmong girls she taught at Hamilton Elementary in North Minneapolis more than ten years ago. They were “shining stars,” she says, yet faced “huge language and cultural challenges” and struggled to read even at less than grade level. Last year, Palmer happened to bump into the girls while observing an IB high school senior classroom. Mai Yer Xiong and Ellina Xiong have become young women—“eloquent, mature, and articulate.” Watching them interpreting a passionate piece of poetry, Palmer had goose bumps, she says, and then shed joyful tears when Mai recognized her and proudly reported that she had received a full, four-year scholarship to the University of St. Thomas.

Armando Camacho is the dynamic principal of Whittier School for the Arts in South Minneapolis, responsible for 350 prekindergarten through fifth-grade students, more than half of whom speak one or more languages other than, or in addition to, English. (Last year, one Whittier student spoke seven different languages.) At Whittier, the two largest language groups in addition to English are Spanish and Somali. But, in a school known for its arts program, Camacho says immigrants have an opportunity to show their talents in various ways besides speaking and writing. His school and Elizabeth Hall in North Minneapolis are the first in the city to implement an IB Primary Years Programme. (St. Paul already has one.) He says the program’s international flavor will enhance the student experience even more.

Camacho, who’s thirty-one, is a risk-taker and an optimist. He sent his staff to IB training even before he was assured of funding (which the school later received). Now parents and students seeking a prekindergarten-through-fifth-grade academic education equal to that offered by the most prestigious—and expensive—private prep schools can find that curriculum at Whittier.

Camacho has a special feeling for immigrant students because he is an immigrant himself, having arrived in 1980 with his grandparents on St. Paul’s West Side from Puerto Rico. Family members were not able to speak English, and, at the time, he recalls, it was “not cool” to be from another country. He went back to Puerto Rico with his homesick grandparents when he finished eighth grade, then returned to St. Paul at fifteen and connected with teachers and football coaches at Humboldt High, who later urged him to go to college. Camacho eventually graduated summa cum laude from St. Cloud State University, where he played football, and became a teacher. Then, in short order, he earned a master’s degree from St. Mary’s University and, at twenty-six, became a school administrator. By twenty-nine, he was a principal with a school—Whittier—of his own.

“I love the immigrant experience,” he says. “I know some of the challenges these kids face. It’s dear to my heart to create a school welcoming for all children. With arts and now IB, Whittier provides a doorway to education not available anywhere else in the state.”

Special Kids, Special Ed
Last June, the Star Tribune reported that the Academy of Holy Angels in Richfield had rescinded admission to a qualified applicant with muscular dystrophy while accepting his “normal” twin brother. The student’s rejection was unusual only in that it was publicized. Such decisions are made by private schools all the time. 

Private schools have every right to make difficult choices about educational capabilities. What’s remarkable is how the public schools must by law not only accept special-needs children, but do so with open arms and a mind-bending array of services to ensure that the children learn and are treated fairly. And as the numbers of these children increase, the public schools continue to take them in. For example, from 2000 through 2005, while the total enrollment in St. Paul public schools declined from 45,128 to 41,051, the number of special education students increased from 6,067 to 7,339 and is now 18 percent of the total.