Mireya Barrera no quería pelear.

Durante años, se sentó en las reuniones con los docentes de educación especial de su hijo, luchando por mantener una sonrisa mientras entendía poco de lo que decían. En las ocasiones poco comunes en que se pedía ayuda a otros docentes que hablaban el idioma de Barrera, el español, las conversaciones seguían siendo vacilantes porque no eran intérpretes calificados.

Pero cuando su hijo Ian entró en la escuela secundaria, Barrera decidió invitar a un voluntario bilingüe de una organización local sin ánimo de lucro para que se sentara con ella y recordara sus derechos al equipo escolar.

“Quería a alguien de mi lado”, dijo Barrera, cuyo hijo tiene autismo, a través de un intérprete. “Durante todo este tiempo, no nos estaban facilitando las cosas. Eso provocó muchas lágrimas”. 

Independientemente del idioma que hablen los padres en casa, tienen el derecho civil de recibir información importante de los educadores de sus hijos en un idioma que entiendan. En el caso de los estudiantes con discapacidad, la ley federal es aún más clara: las escuelas “deben tomar todas las medidas necesarias”, incluidos los servicios de interpretación y traducción, para que los padres puedan participar de forma significativa en la educación de sus hijos.

Pero, a veces, las escuelas de todo el país no prestan esos servicios.

Las familias que no hablan inglés se ven obligadas a asistir a las reuniones sobre el progreso de sus hijos sin poder opinar ni preguntar a los educadores cómo pueden ayudar. Las diferencias culturales y lingüísticas pueden convencer a algunos padres de no cuestionar lo que ocurre en la escuela, un desequilibrio de poder que, según los defensores, hace que algunos niños se queden sin un apoyo fundamental. En caso de ser necesario, no es infrecuente que las escuelas encarguen a los estudiantes bilingües la interpretación para sus familias, poniéndolos en la posición de describir sus propios defectos a sus padres y tutores.

“Eso es totalmente inapropiado, en todos los sentidos posibles, y poco realista”, dice Diane Smith Howard, abogada principal de la Red Nacional de Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad. “Si al niño no le va especialmente bien en una asignatura académica, ¿por qué confiaría en que su hijo adolescente se lo contara?”.

Los distritos escolares culpan a la falta de recursos. Dicen que no tienen dinero para contratar a más intérpretes o a agencias de servicios lingüísticos y que, aunque lo tuvieran, no hay suficientes intérpretes calificados para hacer el trabajo.

En Washington y en algunos otros estados, la cuestión ha empezado a recibir más atención. Los legisladores estatales de Olympia presentaron este año una ley bipartidista para reforzar los derechos civiles federales en el código estatal. Los sindicatos de docentes de Seattle y Chicago negociaron recientemente, y consiguieron, servicios de interpretación durante las reuniones de educación especial. Y los distritos escolares se enfrentan a una creciente amenaza de demandas de los padres, o incluso a una investigación federal, si no se toman en serio el acceso lingüístico.

Aun así, los esfuerzos por ampliar el acceso lingüístico en la educación especial se enfrentan a una ardua batalla, debido al escaso número de intérpretes capacitados, la falta de cumplimiento a nivel estatal y el escaso financiamiento del Congreso (a pesar de que en 1974 prometió cubrir casi la mitad del costo adicional que supone para las escuelas proporcionar servicios de educación especial, el gobierno federal nunca lo ha hecho). El proyecto de ley bipartidista de Washington para ofrecer más protecciones a las familias fracasó repentinamente, después de que los legisladores estatales lo despojaran de disposiciones clave y los defensores retiraran su apoyo.

El sistema de educación especial puede ser “increíblemente difícil para todos”, dijo Ramona Hattendorf, directora de defensa de The Arc of King County, que promueve los derechos de las personas con discapacidad. “Luego todo se agrava cuando se introduce el idioma en la mezcla”. En todo el país, aproximadamente 1 de cada 10 estudiantes que califican para recibir servicios de educación especial también se identifican como estudiantes de inglés, según datos federales de educación, y esa proporción está creciendo. Cerca de 791,000 estudiantes de inglés participaron en educación especial en 2020, un aumento de casi el 30 % desde 2012. En más de una docena de estados, incluido Washington, el aumento fue aún mayor.

A medida que crece su número, también aumenta la frustración de sus padres con los servicios lingüísticos.

Durante el año escolar 2021-22, la defensora del pueblo en materia educación del estado de Washington recibió casi 1,200 quejas de los padres sobre las escuelas. Su principal preocupación, en todos los grupos raciales y demográficos, fue el acceso y la inclusión en la educación especial. La defensora del pueblo principal en materia de educación, Jinju Park, calcula que entre el 50 % y el 70 % de las llamadas que recibe la agencia son sobre educación especial, y que el 80 % de ellas son de clientes que necesitan servicios de interpretación.

Mientras que la mayoría de los estados conceden a las escuelas un máximo de 60 días desde que se remite a un estudiante a los servicios de educación especial para determinar si califica, las escuelas de Washington pueden tardar hasta medio año escolar. Y si un padre necesita servicios de interpretación o traducción, la espera puede durar aún más.

“Las leyes actuales no apoyan la participación plena de los padres”, escribió Park a los legisladores estatales en apoyo a la primera versión del proyecto de ley 1305 de la Cámara de Representantes, propuesta que finalmente fracasó. “Los padres para los que el inglés puede que no sea su lengua materna”, añadió, “a menudo, se ven abrumados por la información e incapaces de participar de forma significativa en el proceso”.

Barrera, cuyo hijo asistió al distrito escolar de Auburn, al sur de Seattle, dijo que, a menudo, se sentía excluida de su aprendizaje.

En el kínder, tras el diagnóstico de autismo de Ian, su equipo de educación especial llegó a la conclusión de que necesitaba un paraeducador asignado a tiempo completo, dijo Barrera. Recurrió a Google Translate y a otros padres para que la ayudaran a redactar correos electrónicos preguntando por qué no recibió ese apoyo hasta tercer grado. Sus solicitudes de copias traducidas de documentos legales quedaron en gran parte sin respuesta, mencionó, hasta que un director le dijo que la traducción era demasiado costosa.

Cuando Ian entró en la escuela secundaria, el acoso escolar y su seguridad se convirtieron en la principal preocupación de Barrera. Una vez llegó a casa sin un mechón de pelo, cuenta. A pesar de las repetidas llamadas y correos electrónicos a sus docentes, Barrera dijo que nunca recibió una explicación.

Además, cuando pidió ir a la escuela para observar, un docente le dijo: “Ni siquiera habla inglés. ¿Qué sentido tiene?”. Vicki Alonzo, portavoz del distrito de Auburn, afirma que el auge de la población inmigrante en la región en los últimos años ha llevado al distrito a destinar más recursos a ayudar a las familias cuya lengua materna no es el inglés. Casi un tercio de sus estudiantes son multilingües, dijo, y hablan alrededor de 85 idiomas diferentes en casa.

En el año 2019-20, el distrito gastó alrededor de $175,000 en servicios de interpretación y traducción, dijo; el año escolar pasado, esa cifra fue de más de $450,000.

Alonzo señaló que el distrito no recibió financiamiento adicional para esos servicios, que incluyeron alrededor de 1,500 reuniones con intérpretes y la traducción de más de 3,000 páginas de documentos.

El problema del acceso lingüístico es “un fenómeno nacional”, dijo Smith Howard, de la Red Nacional de Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad. “Es un problema de recursos y también una cuestión de respeto, dignidad y comprensión, que todos los padres deberían recibir”.

Los docentes también están frustrados.

El sindicato de docentes de Seattle protestó y retrasó el inicio de las clases el año pasado por unas demandas que incluían servicios de interpretación y traducción en educación especial. El contrato final, que dura hasta 2025, exige que los miembros del personal tengan acceso a diversos servicios que proporcionen traducción telefónica (un intérprete en directo) o de texto (en el caso de documentos escritos). El objetivo de esta disposición es garantizar que no se pida al personal bilingüe que traduzca si no forma parte de su trabajo.

Los docentes dicen que estas herramientas han sido útiles, pero solo en cierta medida: en ocasiones poco comunes hay intérpretes telefónicos disponibles para los idiomas menos comunes, como el amárico, y son frecuentes los problemas técnicos, como la interrupción de las llamadas.

La disponibilidad de intérpretes “no es tan constante como nos gustaría”, afirma Ibi Holiday, docente de educación especial de la escuela primaria Rising Star de Seattle.

También hay una cuestión de contexto. Es posible que los traductores no tengan experiencia en educación especial, por lo que las familias pueden salir de una reunión sin entender todas las opciones, lo cual puede ralentizar el proceso significativamente.

“Para muchas familias, la escuela de su país funciona de forma completamente diferente”, explica Mari Rico, directora del Centro de Desarrollo Infantil Jose Marti de El Centro de la Raza, un programa bilingüe de educación temprana. “Traducir no bastaba; tenía que enseñarles el sistema”.

Muchas escuelas del distrito de Seattle cuentan con personal multilingüe, pero el número y la diversidad de idiomas hablados no es constante, afirma Rico. Y existe un mayor riesgo de que el caso de un estudiante se pase por alto o se estanque debido a las barreras lingüísticas. Dijo que ha tenido que intervenir cuando las familias han pasado meses sin una reunión del programa de educación individualizada, incluso cuando su hijo estaba recibiendo servicios.

Hattendorf, de The Arc del condado de King, dijo que las soluciones tecnológicas más económicas, como las que utiliza Seattle, ofrecen cierta ayuda, pero su calidad varía mucho. Y los servicios pueden no ofrecer a los padres tiempo suficiente para procesar información complicada y hacer preguntas de seguimiento, explicó.

Al sur de Seattle, los Barrera decidieron cambiar a Ian de escuela secundaria.

Se graduó este año, pero la ley federal garantiza sus servicios de educación especial tres años más. Ian asiste ahora a un programa de transición para estudiantes con discapacidad, donde aprenderá habilidades para la vida, como conseguir un trabajo.

“Sabemos que, con ayuda, puede hacer lo que quiera”, dijo Barrera.

Ya, añadió, “todo es diferente. Los docentes intentan encontrar la mejor manera de comunicarse conmigo”.

Este artículo sobre los servicios de interpretación fue elaborado por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente y sin ánimo de lucro centrada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación, en colaboración con The Seattle Times.

The post Los padres de estudiantes de educación especial que no hablan inglés se enfrentan a otro obstáculo appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

SEATTLE — Mireya Barrera didn’t want a fight.

For years, she sat through meetings with her son’s special education teachers, struggling to maintain a smile as she understood little of what they said. On the rare occasions when other teachers who spoke Barrera’s language, Spanish, were asked to help, the conversations still faltered because they weren’t trained interpreters.

But by the time her son, Ian, entered high school, Barrera decided to invite a bilingual volunteer from a local nonprofit to sit with her and to remind the school team of her rights.

“I wanted someone on my side,” Barrera, whose son has autism, said through an interpreter. “All this time, they weren’t making things easy for us. It’s caused a lot of tears.”

Regardless of what language parents speak at home, they have a civil right to receive important information from their child’s educators in a language they understand. For students with disabilities, federal law is even more clear: Schools “must take whatever action is necessary” — including arranging for interpretation and translation — so parents can meaningfully participate in their kid’s education. 

But schools throughout the country sometimes fail to provide those services.

Families who don’t speak English are forced to muddle through meetings about their children’s progress, unable to weigh in or ask educators how they can help. Cultural and linguistic differences can convince some parents not to question what’s happening at school — a power imbalance that, advocates say, means some children miss out on critical support. In a pinch, it’s not uncommon for schools to task bilingual students with providing interpretation for their families, placing them in the position of describing their own shortcomings to their parents and guardians.

“That’s totally inappropriate, in every possible way — and unrealistic,” said Diane Smith-Howard, senior staff attorney with the National Disability Rights Network. “If the child is not doing particularly well in an academic subject, why would you trust your teenager to tell you?”

“Parents for whom English might not be their primary language are often overwhelmed with information and unable to participate meaningfully in the process.”

Jinju Park, senior education ombuds, Washington State 

School districts blame a lack of resources. They say they don’t have the money to hire more interpreters or contract with language service agencies, and that even if they did, there aren’t enough qualified interpreters to do the job.

In Washington and a handful of other states, the issue has started to gain more attention. State lawmakers in Olympia earlier this year introduced bipartisan legislation to bolster federal civil rights in state code. Teachers unions in Seattle and Chicago recently bargained for — and won — interpretation services during special education meetings. And school districts face an escalating threat of parent lawsuits, or even federal investigation, if they don’t take language access seriously.

Still, efforts to expand language access in special education face an uphill battle, due to the small pool of trained interpreters, lack of enforcement at the state level and scant funding from Congress. (Despite promising in 1974 to cover nearly half the extra cost for schools to provide special education, the federal government has never done so.) Washington’s bipartisan bill to add more protections for families suddenly failed, after state lawmakers stripped it of key provisions and advocates pulled their support.

The special education system can be “incredibly difficult for everybody,” said Ramona Hattendorf, director of advocacy for the Arc of King County, which promotes disability rights. “Then everything is exacerbated when you bring language into the mix.”

Related: Special education’s hidden racial gap

Nationwide, roughly 1 in 10 students who qualify for special education also identify as English learners, according to federal education data, and that share is growing. About 791,000 English learners participated in special education in 2020, a jump of nearly 30 percent since 2012. In more than a dozen states, including Washington, the increase was even higher.

As their numbers grow, their parents’ frustration with language services is rising too.

During the 2021-22 school year, the Washington State education ombudsman received nearly 1,200 complaints from parents about schools. Their number one concern, across all racial and demographic groups, was access and inclusion in special education. Senior education ombuds Jinju Park estimates that between 50 and 70 percent of calls the agency receives are about special education — and 80 percent of those calls are from clients who need interpretation services.

While most states allow schools up to 60 days once a student is referred for special education services to determine if they qualify, Washington schools can take up to half a school year. And if a parent needs interpretation or translation, the wait can last even longer.

“Our current laws do not support full parent participation,” Park wrote to Washington state lawmakers in support of an early version of House Bill 1305, the proposal that ultimately failed. “Parents for whom English might not be their primary language,” she added, “are often overwhelmed with information and unable to participate meaningfully in the process.”

Barrera, whose son attended the Auburn School District, south of Seattle, said she often felt cut out of his learning.

In kindergarten, after his diagnosis for autism, Ian’s special education team concluded he needed a paraeducator assigned to him full time, Barrera said. She relied on Google Translate and other parents to help her compose emails asking why he didn’t receive that support until the third grade. Her requests for translated copies of legal documents largely went unanswered, she said — until a principal told her that the translation was too expensive.

When Ian entered high school, bullying and his safety became Barrera’s top concern. He once came home with a chunk of hair missing, she said. Despite repeated calls and emails to his teachers, Barrera said she never received an explanation.

Barrera said that when she asked to come to the school to observe, a teacher told her, “You don’t even speak English. What’s the point?’ ”

“That’s totally inappropriate, in every possible way – and unrealistic. If the child is not doing particularly well in an academic subject, why would you trust your teenager to tell you?”

Diane Smith-Howard, senior staff attorney with the National Disability Rights Network

Vicki Alonzo, a spokesperson for the Auburn district, said that the region’s booming immigrant population in recent years has prompted the district to commit more resources toward helping families whose first language isn’t English. Nearly a third of its students are multilingual learners, she said, and they speak about 85 different languages at home. 

In the 2019-20 year, the district spent about $175,000 on interpretation and translation services, she said; last school year, that figure was more than $450,000.

Alonzo noted the district received no additional funding for those services, which included about 1,500 meetings with interpreters and translation of more than 3,000 pages of documents.

“Families are our partners,” she said. “We need them to have student success.”

Related: Students with disabilities often left out of popular ‘dual language’ programs

Lawmakers in other states have tried to address language access issues.

Proposed legislation in California would set a 30-day deadline for schools to comply with parents’ requests for a translated copy of their child’s individualized education program, or IEP, which details the services a school will provide for a student with disabilities. Similarly, lawmakers in Texas introduced a bill earlier this year to expand translation of IEPs if English is not the native language of the child’s parent (the bill died in committee).

“It’s a nationwide phenomenon,” said Smith-Howard of the National Disability Rights Network. “It’s a resource problem and also a matter of respect and dignity and understanding — that all parents should receive.”

In New York City, parents turned to the courts in pursuit of a solution.

Four families there filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2019, claiming the nation’s largest school district failed to provide translation services for families that don’t speak English. Like Barrera, one of the New York City parents asked for a Spanish interpreter at an IEP meeting; their school provided one who spoke Italian, according to M’Ral Broodie-Stewart, an attorney representing the families for Staten Island Legal Services.

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into New Bedford Public Schools in Massachusetts after students and families who speak K’iché, an Indigenous Mayan language, complained about discriminatory practices. 

A settlement reached last year commits the Massachusetts district to using professionally trained interpreters — and not students, relatives or Google Translate — to communicate essential information to parents.

Related: Is the pandemic our chance to reimagine special education?

Teachers are frustrated too.

In Washington state’s largest school district, the Seattle teachers union picketed and delayed the start of school last year over demands that included interpretation and translation in special education. The eventual contract, which lasts through 2025, requires that staff have access to various services that provide telephonic (a live interpreter) or text-based translation (for written documents). The provision was to ensure that bilingual staff weren’t being asked to translate if it wasn’t a part of their job description.

Teachers say these tools have been helpful, but only to a degree: There are rarely telephone interpreters available for less common languages, such as Amharic, and technical issues like dropped calls are common. 

The availability of interpreters is “not as consistent as we would like it to be,” said Ibi Holiday, a special-education teacher at Rising Star Elementary School in Seattle.

There’s also an issue of context. Translators may not have a background in special education, so families may come away from a meeting not understanding all the options. This can slow down the process significantly. 

“For a lot of the families, they attended a school in their country that functions completely differently,” said Mari Rico, director of El Centro de la Raza’s Jose Marti Child Development Center, a bilingual early education program. “Translating wasn’t enough; I had to teach them about the system.”  

Many Seattle district schools have multilingual staff, but the number and diversity of languages spoken isn’t consistent, Rico said. And there is a greater risk of a student’s case getting overlooked or stagnating because of language barriers. She said she’s had to step in where families have gone months without an IEP meeting even as their child was receiving services.

Hattendorf, with the Arc of King County, said that cheaper tech solutions like those Seattle is using do offer some assistance, but their quality varies widely. And the services may not offer parents enough time to process complicated information and ask follow-up questions, she said.

South of Seattle, the Barreras decided to move Ian to a different high school.

He graduated earlier this year, but federal law guarantees his special education services for another three years. Ian is now attending a transition program for students with disabilities, where he will learn life skills like getting a job.

“We know, with help, he can do whatever he wants,” Barrera said. 

Already, she added, “it’s all different. The teachers just try to find the best way to communicate with me.”

This story about interpretation services was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in partnership with The Seattle Times.

The post Lost in translation: Parents of special ed students who don’t speak English often left in the dark appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Parents, politicians and activists flooded school board meetings across the country in recent months, desperate to be heard. 

In 60-second soundbites, they exploded over masks, books and so-called critical race theory. Their voices often echoed across social media and fueled viral news segments.

But hours after those tense meetings end, teachers and students walked into schools, feeling the reverberations of the culture wars that have consumed American education.

Many children are trying to be comfortable with who they are even as their identities come up for debate among adults. Educators are left to answer tough questions about history, race and sexuality, hyperaware their responses are under increased scrutiny. 

Some conservative students feel like their political beliefs aren’t welcomed on campuses while their families are set on “taking back” school boards, fueled by a desire to expand parental rights and block students from learning about their interpretation of critical race theory.

Meanwhile, vague laws passed in response to the ongoing culture wars threaten to chill candid conversations about history. And teachers are watching as attempts to foster inclusivity in their classrooms go punished. 

Navigating these conversations takes courage, teachers and students say. But it’s necessary to learn from the conflicts, they stress.

Reporters spoke to teens and educators in Alabama, Texas, Washington and Virginia who are working to build a broader understanding amid the political fights engulfing schools. They are confronting difficult history, pushing for inclusion and searching for their place within their communities. 

Vega Zaman, Decatur, Alabama

Vega Zaman walked into a middle school robotics class last year to find a fellow student playing with a Lego truck.

“It’s a bomb truck,” the student told Zaman, asking them if they were Arabian.

“I was like, ‘Why, do I look Arabian?’” said Zaman, who is Black and South Asian. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, ‘cause Arabians bomb people.’ And it was out of nowhere! He didn’t even know me.”

Zaman is currently an eighth grader at Decatur City Schools, a North Alabama district that recently obtained unitary status from a decades-old desegregation order. The system has become increasingly diverse, but Zaman said that hasn’t stopped the racist comments – especially during the pandemic. Recent state actions against “divisive concepts” and “inappropriate” discussion of LGBTQ issues also have added a level of confusion to schools’ ability to address tough topics, educators and students said.

“COVID made it worse, because you only experience life through a screen, and you don’t really have the capacity to see,” they said. “But when they can actually touch, see, feel, smell, and they can actually see it happening in their community… you never really understand something until you experience it.”

That’s why Zaman created a 13-page anti-racism guide for school leaders and teachers to use last year. Topics included racial trauma, microaggressions, white privilege and systemic racism, and Zaman suggested readings like “Blended” by Sharon M. Draper.

“I’ve read this myself. It’s a book about a mixed girl torn between her two identities,” Zaman wrote next to the entry. “It’s a good read!”

But the effort fell through with new leadership, along with a Black History Month assembly that Zaman tried to organize this year.

“It could have served as an idea,” Zaman said of the guide. “You know, just a base for something that could be. But it got shot down.”

A judge ruled the system had eliminated “vestiges of past discrimination” in 2019, after the district made efforts to diversify its faculty. And in many ways, Decatur has steered clear of controversy, while other majority-white or diversifying districts have made headlines for racist incidents and battles over equity and inclusion efforts in recent years.

But two years later, Zaman says the system has much more work to do, and they fear that racist jokes and whitewashed history lessons will only worsen as schools across the state contend with legislation that could limit discussions on race, gender and religion in the classroom.

“[Equity is] definitely something they don’t have to try to work for anymore,” Zaman said.

Lou Whiting, 17, Granbury, Texas

High school junior Lou Whiting thumbed through a thick book with a rainbow cover, the same one that’s rested in their bedroom since middle school. This copy, though, was all marked up. 

A yellow post-it was stuck next to a cartoon drawing of female anatomy. Another one was alongside a paragraph explaining how condoms help prevent sexually transmitted infections. They were among examples of “overtly sexual content” that trigged calls for banning the text from Granbury schools.

“It’s just sex ed,” Lou, a nonbinary student in the district, muttered while scanning the pages of This Book is Gay. “It’s not porn.”

Granbury ISD recently held a “public inspection” of eight books that are now banned from campus libraries after a small committee met behind closed doors and determined they were inappropriate for schools.

During the inspection, the books laid out across two tables in the administration building’s lobby. Each one was littered with those multicolored sticky notes, appearing to point the reader to a passage someone had found objectionable. 

While the committee deemed This Book is Gay inappropriate, it’s something Lou has turned to five or six times over the years. Lou came out as queer in sixth grade and wants others to have the same opportunity they did to flip through the book’s pages and find answers. 

“There’s queer stories. There’s how different labels work. There’s stuff about queer history,” Lou said. “I can look at that and think, ‘Where am I?’”

Across Texas, schools are under pressure from Republican state leaders to scrutinize libraries for books that explore gender and sexuality. It’s part of a broader conservative crackdown on the ways schools discuss LGBT issues.

Gov. Greg Abbott repeatedly labeled some books on these topics as pornography. A powerful conservative lawmaker circulated a list of more than 800 books — many related to sexuality or about race-related issues — that he told superintendents to review. His list came amid a swell of anti-LGBT rhetoric from Republican leaders with some setting the stage to copy Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law next session.

Granbury – a district of about 7,300 students roughly an hour west of Dallas – acted quickly, and the district superintendent doubled down in support. 

“Let’s not misrepresent things,” Jeremy Glenn said during a school board meeting. “We’re not taking Shakespeare or Hemingway off the shelves.”

Civil rights groups raised the alarm, saying the targeted books represent diverse stories important to both reflect students’ experiences back to them and expose others to realities different than their own. The ACLU of Texas argued that Granbury’s process violated students’ First Amendment rights. 

Lou heard from a friend which books were slated for removal. Still, they wanted to show up at the public inspection event to remind school officials that people like them exist, even in this small town. 

They are continuing to make themselves heard by forming a Gay Straight Alliance, testifying at school board meetings and designing a t-shirt to represent their movement – and then donating the profits to the Freedom to Read Foundation. 

More quietly, Lou is supporting LGBT students by lending out their copy of This Book is Gay to classmates who need it. 

Michal Friesen, Bellevue, Washington

A few years ago, when Michal Friesen began teaching third grade at Woodridge Elementary School in Bellevue, Washington, she learned that she was required to teach a unit called “Bellevue Then and Now.” When she opened a dusty plastic bin of teaching materials for the unit, she saw it included very little history on the dozens of Japanese families who contributed to what was once a thriving farming community. 

Educated as a historian herself, Friesen had previously researched the World War II era, the federal government’s Executive Order 9066, and the subsequent sudden incarceration of thousands of Japanese American residents at isolated camps scattered throughout the U.S.

“So I jumped on that right away,” she said. 

Today, Bellevue – a city of 150,000 just east of Seattle – is a thriving center of commerce. But in 1940, it was an unincorporated area of about 1,000 people, including 300 Japanese-Americans who put in the hard work of clearing the once-heavily timbered land to make it suitable for growing popular crops, like strawberries, and also for building houses. 

In 1942, those families were ordered out of their communities by the U.S. government for the duration of the war. It’s a history that still stings; in 2020, the president and vice-president of Bellevue College left their jobs after they allowed a mural of two Japanese American children in an incarceration camp to be altered by whiting out a reference to anti-Japanese agitation by area businessmen.

Japanese incarceration isn’t the focus of the Bellevue Then and Now unit. The curriculum is meant to cover the history of its development, from its earliest inhabitants to its current incarnation as a growing metropolitan hub in King County’s Eastside. 

But Friesen does ask her third-grade students to research their own backyard, think about why Bellevue developed the way that it did and how different it might be if its Japanese residents hadn’t been imprisoned in the 1940s. 

“You really can’t leave that out of the story. You cannot tell the history of Bellevue without talking about the Japanese immigrants and the community that helped form it,” she said.

She said third-graders are curious about their community’s history, even the parts some people find disturbing.

When we teach these difficult topics, kids respond with a lot of engagement, Friesen said, “because they know that it’s real and they know that it’s important.”

Gloria Zelaya, 18, Richmond, Virginia

By the time she becomes a teacher, Gloria Zelaya hopes, the furor over teaching history will have died down.

Zelaya, a senior at George Wythe High School, in Richmond, Virginia, and an aspiring educator, has spent her 10:40 am elective this spring learning about her city’s sometimes ugly history and how it informs the present. In the class, REAL Richmond, Zelaya has been introduced to places like Shockoe Bottom, once the center of the city’s slave trade, and analyzed maps to help explore questions like why the James River divides Richmond by income.

“It makes you think, when you go to places, I have the instinct to question, to wonder what the history behind it is,” said Zelaya, one of approximately 55 students enrolled in the class in Richmond Public Schools.

Since the district launched the course in 2020, history instruction in the state of Virginia and nationwide has become more fraught. In January, Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s new governor, signed an executive order banning the instruction of “inherently divisive concepts.” Youngkin also set up a tip line enabling parents to report teachers who taught students “divisive” subjects. 

Richmond Superintendent Jason Kamras, who first proposed the idea for the REAL Richmond course – REAL stands for relevant, engaging, active and living – said he worries the order is a “thinly veiled effort to stop the discussion of race and its implications for our community.” He’s heard from parents who are worried their kids won’t learn about the impact of the domestic slave trade on Virginia, or grapple with current events that are affected by that legacy, he said.    

Zelaya said that so far the governor’s moves haven’t had a chilling effect in her classroom. She tends to be reserved, she said, but has raised her hand to discuss topics like the Confederate statues that lined Richmond’s Monument Avenue until they were removed recently by the state and city.

“I felt it was justified,” she said of protestors who toppled statutes there and elsewhere. “It was a constant reminder of what these people put their ancestors through.”

Zelaya is scheduled to graduate from George Wythe in June. She’s planning to study early childhood education at a local community college with the goal of returning to the Richmond public school system.

“If this is going on right now, what happens in four years when I’m a teacher?” said Zelaya of the crackdown on teaching “divisive” topics. “Will I not be able to teach what I was taught? It hits on different levels.”

She added, “Teaching what happened in history is very, very important.”

This story about history was produced by The Dallas Morning News, AL.com, The Seattle Times and The Hechinger Report and is part of a collaborative education reporting effort between those news outlets, as well as the Post and Courier, the Christian Science Monitor and the Fresno Bee.

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