afternoon and welcome to the 36th annual printers row lit fest. please help me thank our sponsors for putting on this event. [applause] before he began we asked that you silence your cell phones and turn off all camera flashes. the restrooms are off to my right down past the elevator and when we do question and answer at the end of this presentation i will bring a or phone up to the standard we ask that you come up there so the questions are on the videotaping. with no further ado i want to introduce elly the author of "refugee high" coming of age in american and she will be in conversation with -- thank you so much.

[applause] >> thanks everyone for coming and welcome. i am meha a senior producer for radio affiliate and with me is allie fishman the author of "refugee high" and the director of the english language learners department sarah quintenz and sam a student. thanks guys for being here. we are going to start off with some short readings from "refugee high." for some of you that may be familiar with the story and who may not know the story behind it but essentially it's about the

school schools holden high school inn rodgers park which hs almost half of the student body are foreign-born and immigrants refugees and asylum-seekers etc. from all over the world. they speak something like 40 languages. the stories about the community at sullivan high school so elly will start off with a brief reading. >> i'm happy to be here. among the folks i met i follow for students in the book from different corners of the globe one is from guatemala and one student is from iraq and one student is from myanmar and one is from the democrat --

democratic republic of congo in youu follow their stories. but what i thought i would read today is the connection of the young woman. these are pseudonyms. she is a young woman from myanmar. every morning on her way to sullivan high school she passes reminders of the life she narrowly escaped. that's why she counts down the days until shent turns 18. she has 408 because that's close enough to keep a sophomore in good spirits. the way the school conjures memories she is a refugee from jan mark and eager to get out of the house. tensions are high in at school. she and her mother rarely speak and when they do she talks about her daughter's optimism.

inside soap and she walks past each classroom. the american dream is being able to follow your calling. think less and think right think low and think i. oh the things you can think of is only a try. the school is a sea of navy blue lockers with bright yellow insignia painted's above them to the drab black -- advertised on the walls. the did. and first-floor girls bathroom with large concrete slabs and rusting pipes is inside sullivan. there that the 16-year-old will station herself that the mayor to she will spend hours each day looking at photos and filters of snapchat uploading close-up no i portrayed instagram and keeping up with ongoing partitions with

a slew of employees on facebook and messenger. recently she's been talking to them boy in boston who claims he carries a gun and runs with it crew that he caused the boys gang. their name was a lighting bolt. though she's never been particularly interested in school she looks forward to starting her sophomore year at sullivan. at school she can watch catch up on social media gossip and make planssh to watch scary movies ad hitch a ride to the mall. she can drink diet coke. ever since she began fighting with her mother she refuses to eat and how. t most m days the meals provided school are the only one she get. at sullivan she can be a kid. six months ago the teenager thought she'd never get that chance again. that's one of the four students

that we follow. where want to get started here is to describe the school and get a sense of where she is. before you walk into sullivan ti want to turn the clock back to 2015 and what's happening in the world that leads you to seek a local refugees? >> the story does go all the way back to 2016. these guys i've known him for a long time now and very much part of their lives at this point. i first began this project after attending a protest after donald trump wason inaugurated in one f

his first executive orders was signing at travel ban for muslim majority countries and when i was at o'hare airport where ths was happening i wondered to myself who are these refugee families arriving in chicago and wanted their lives look like. that quickly led me to sullivan because i've always been in the interest in the lives of young people. as you mentioned in your lovely introduction almost half the students at sullivan are immigrants so as soon as i walked in the door on my way to meet sara for the first time i was overwhelmed by the scene that i saw in the languages and the visual languages of flags and different dachshunds from all over the globe and i thought there were many stories to tell.

>> who >> who loves to jaime:e: first-day? i spent a lot of time in sara's classroom. and that was very purposeful. sara took great care of her students and i was aware that i was an outsider walking into a classroom caring all different kinds of experiences including very serious drama and i didn't want to encroach on anyone before they knew who i was or until i was failure with my face to face some of her typical classroom games. so it all comes full circle or i sat in front of the class with a big jar off candy and i don't

think you are in that class but i met you around that time. your sister was in that class. and kids were encouraged to ask questions and i would answer and throw them a piece of candy and you'd start to build familiarity in relationships with kids and unfolded from their. >> sarah -- what is your reaction? >> i was nervous about the microphone. can everybody hear me? >> i tell people all the timeti what is entertaining law is our real lives.

a person comes in and they want your stories and they need all these kids from alll of the word and hear all these different languages and have had all these different experiences with drama or otherwise and it can be very exciting especially if you live in your own bubble in chicago. it can be exciting and you can be swept up in the moment of meeting someone who has experienced it and talking about being at the airport. we have the student. sam and i both know a kid whose family holds everything in turkey. she got on her -- the airplane with her close and everything flew to chicago and they were stuck at the airport the day the donald trump closed everything and they had to fly back to turkey and they had no apartment no clothing, no car, nothing.

it was exciting for people when they would meet students or people who would experience these things that we heard on the radio but i was regularly reminding elly what is exciting to you as our real lives so what are your intentions and would be planning to do with their stories and how are you going to tell our stories because it isn't always entertaining and it doesn't always feel good and we and i say we meaning the students and a the adults to wok with those students whether big committed to partners are her agencies we go home at night and we carry that stuff with us and we take all of those things home with us and try to find a way to compartmentalize it and shut ito all down. as far as the hot seat i want to add there or for questions you are not ever allowed to ask someone in america so i'm always teaching my student

counterculture is where you don't ask questions and to give you the information that you need and it's extremely rude to ask a follow-up question work for clarification and in general the kids are really shy about their language and cultural differences of getting to know people in different countries. i'm constantly putting people in the hot seat in forcing my students to ask questions. except for more questions you are never allowed to ask like who did you vote for? how much money do you make how much do you weigh and how old are you? they are very inappropriate questions. they make don't ask any woman in america how old are you. >> sam i want to turn to you can you give us a little background

about yourself and tell us where you came from? >> my name is sam and i'm from syria. my dad lives in lebanon beirut. we moved to egypt and we lived there for three years and four months exactly and my dad opened a business and we started working in it and he started having some problems so one day out of nowhere my dad received a phonecall from a church in cairo egypt and they said we would like to see you. we the family ready to leave for chicago. my dad hung up and said to my mom someone is playing a game with me and then they called again.

from there we named -- and then we came as a refugee. >> what was your first impression of chicago? >> i came from o'hare to a house they rented for f us. it was all the way -- we were so good in my country. dad provided everything we wanted. when i get here after two weeks weeks -- >> it's been a million years since i've been in school but i know the most b nerve-racking moment is the night before your first day of school.

any kid let alone someone who's coming to an new country and trying out a new school what was going on in your mind the night before? >> before school or the night before i got there? >> your night before your first day at sullivan. >> i couldn't believe i could make it. my second language of for is french but i didn't learn french but when i came here everyone is speaking english and some are speaking as daniel. spanish. the first two weeks ahead i had in chicago i walked down to my apartment and i couldn't talk to

a him then and i swear i couldn't talk to him. he's like i cannot help you man and i'm like okay and i just go back home. i just trying to get a card so that they do forget to sullivan i was told into my sister and i tell her how can we make a? we just came here and it's a different language in a different culture and different language and too many things are different. how are you goingg to do this? when i came to seoul than it was a way different story. snacks are a deer member meeting sam? >> i think i better leave. >> i do. he and his sister were placed in the same class so i remember but meeting both ofng them. >> what were your first impressions? >> my first impression was that he was very quiet. he was very quiet and he just

kind of stood there and in 24 hours later he wasr no longer quiet and hadn't stopped talking sense but first impression this is just another guy and he's going to learn english. >> you into the anguish department at sullivan. on any given day you will speak arabic swahili etc.. sam had mentioned he was nervous about the language. >> i made the audience participate in an activity to show you them what we do at sullivan with all these different languages but it's like what you see up here lots of smiles and lots of hugs and high fives.

a lot of just using a your bodyo point at things or sure raids. i'm pretty well known with my students for my awful drawings on the board. a lot of charades and pictionary. >> sam mentioned one of the first things he tried to do is give the sim card and he's not alone in that. every kid no matter how little they have or how much they are struggling they have ave cell phone and that was one of the first things i noticed that sullivan too. technology is part of the book as well in this amazing way that young people stay connected with their home countries and their committees but also how they communicate with each other. one of the nicknames for sullivan and maybe iiv gave it is -- because i was seeing kids like sam who wanted to talk to

their classmates from the congo, anywhere or wanting to flirt or share music. google translates. you can just take a picture and it translated into the language letting alone putting in what you ask her you ask i want to say and community catering. one of the things i would see inside the hall is kids flirting with each other through local translate and how things would get a little bit scrambled and a beautiful and wonderful way. even though that's one of things i saw is i how communication happens. >> elly in the book you fork it -- focus on learning about

them as people before he read and learn about theha burdens tt they carry or the trauma that they may carry. >> i mentioned earlier that i was aware that we carry burdens that come from all different kinds of backgrounds and situations but look at this young man. they are not defined by that. they are multifaceted people and they get here and they are trying to buy sim card so they can talk to their friends and they are teenagers. i wanted to understand who they were in the school that day in who they were as teenagers first because in my mind it's something we talked about process where would see stories of resiliency and not of hardship.

so much of that is not necessarily overlook both a lot of stories about refugee narratives focus on life and hardships and i wanted to tell a different kind of story and that came directly of what happened at sullivan. the memories i have seen him dancing with his friends and plugging in his phone when he got his sim card which i'm sure didn't take him long and putting on his favorite songs and all the boys starting to dance together with their classmates. there's an event that they do every year called recipe thanksgiving and you draw this incredible architectural they always mispronounce it. sam, tell me.

it's an inverted right fish. i mispronounce it the other night and was trying not to do it again. those are the things i wanted to highlight and celebrate and of course the stories of the culture that they came from in the places they went on their journeys to sullivan. >> is journalist we often deal with young people's stories. they mentioned this game where they got to ask questions. how else were you holding trust with their students and the faculty who are very protective understandably of the school and how were you navigating getting them to trust you and trust you with your stories? >> we just took it really slow and a lot of it before it ever

took out my recorder or did former allies interviews i just wanted to haveon conversations with the young people and the teachers at sullivan and i wanted to encourage students to ask questions in a classroom i wanted them to feel like they had agency and would ask questions and it was a conversation and i made it as clear as possible if they are uncomfortable or something they didn't want included in the story. when you are reporting for over three years which is how long i was working on "refugee high" you become part of people's lives. it becomes a conversation over many years as your lives change and you build an intimacy but i

wanted to make it clear that i was stillle a journalist so even visual clues like having a notebook out and small things like that just making sure they understood i was at work and i didn't feel taken advantage of, things like that were also important throughout the process. >> from what you are saying you spent a lot of time there. >> i did. you are sitting the back of these classrooms and how are the students are spawning to you? sam how are you responding to the journalist in a class? >> went to ask --te >> i get did get filtered into a freshman assembly wants and i was like thank you.

>> and you share a memory. can you share memory or something that stuck out to you you saw or experienced weather was your own experience with a student or observing a faculty interaction? >> one of my favorite scenes in the book in one that i almost wasn't there for a 30-something birthday party and we don't talk about age up here. but i think she called me the day before and she said i'm pretty sure the kids are going to throw me a birthday party next think you s should be here bored i said okay i'll be there. actually it was sam's sister who was one of the main organizers and another one of my favorite

people on the planet and they got sara out of the room so good they -- so they could throw a surprise party. it's a very american thing come is that the syrian tradition? >> we do that. it's like can you represent the rest of the world and tell us about surprise party's? >> so she had planned it all out and she's very organized and they had written a sign that said happy birthday and everyone brought something from home like somalia and pastries and yes you're not going to set f me upo fail again. curry and their favorite food diet coke and chocolate so that was an ample supply as well.

>> remember the birthday card? >> the most amazing thing was every student in the class had made a handmade book. >> i was talking about the poster board that was in the shape of a diet coke can but was all drawn with this diet coke font and everything. >> ebc a diet coke you know that sara is not far. but as her gift they made her this beautiful book where every student drew picture shows a scene from their home country and i remember they presented it to sara as like a travelogue of all the places they had fled in all the memories they wanted should share with her and it really was one of the most

beautiful moments that i saw at sullivan and now one of my favorites in the book too. >> i didn't do that for my teachers in high school. they called you sometimes mom. you referred. >> i can't tell you about that. from my side we always talk to each other about it but when i came to sullivan high school sir sara wasn't only teacher and not because she's sitting here. sara for me was a friend a sister and a mom a teacher to helplp her and everything. she helped me with my court case bridget called my lawyer. she helped me with that and she

helped me find a job. she is to spend more than two hours a day with me. how i'd could talk to people and she told me don't do that you have to do it this way. she explained how to dress and do my hair and whatever he needed to do and she was not only a teacher. when we go to sara's class we feel like we are home. i'm telling you she's not only teacher she treats everyone the same. we are all the same and we are like her kids. >> sarah listening to sam.

>> i also call it the but that was inappropriate for the book. >> to me that's a different dynamic than the average director or department. what made you want to put helping the kids that way? >> they are all a bunch of rabies. one hero. he is the hero. they are all a bunch of rabies and they are learning to grow and learning how to behave. they are not allowed to be in school to leave the underworld leave the until they've been trained and ready for the rest of you to meet them. it started as a joke but in

general i approach them all as rnbabies. i tell them you are not you are learning english and you are going to try to get away with something here because you are somewhere else where we speak english. you have experiences and values and morals and manners and it might be hard for you to articulate those because you are learning english but you are not you can't get away with it because you are in a different country. that's what i speak three languages. >> a lot of the students they not only fluent english but spanish. i started with english night ended with english and nothing more.

far as sam and i appear talking, it's a lot of work. and you ask how do we teach and i say hugs and google translation but there's so much humor and the other thing i tell the kids is we aren't laughing we are crying. we definitely have lots to cry about. stories about how the war broke outle when they left in the shortest quickest easiest description of sam's life. i had dinner att his family's house and his family came to my house for thanksgiving. i know their stories and i know his father and i know his mother and you would be in the corner crying if he knew his real story. i always tell them if we are not laughing, we are crying. >> away or department at sullivan supports the students

that come in he goes way beyond plain english. it's advice you would give on how to get a job and a court case in all that advice and cultural notes. how has it evolved to what it is now? >> i was hired in the fall of 2012 and i started as a teacher and i started running my classroom that way. they think you write about the only fight i've ever had. iran my classrooms that way and i and every monday through

thursday with i love you, have a good night and fridays is have a good weekend and don't get pregnant. it always started out as a joke and i was just as during the pot and a student one time said you know your eye love you is the only i love you i get. and in my head i felt bad for kind of like mocking them telling boys by i love you and i started saying it back. this kid said really is the only i love you i get all day long. as far as how the department is, i started in my classroom and then i was quote unquote promoted. really it's just more work.

i was chosen to run the department the year that elly started to write w the book. >> when i met sarah she was still in the classroom and then she transitioned to the library and much of my reporting in much of the book the heart of the book is her office which is a small room to glom -- the where she was stationed with or department and the ethos of the classroom was translated into thene corner of the library and you were talking about how sam's family came and had thanksgiving with you and i was there in your mother made an incredible syrian pizza.

but in this room were spent so much time and were where so much of the heart of the book unfolds there is a table to function as a family dinner table in the students that came into that room. >> to get snacks. t >> to get snaps and to take naps. during ramadan there was a lot of napping but also to find that familys feel and that's where i met a lot of the students who ended up following in the book because i was there and they were there and in many cases when they start to get their footing and find a way at sullivan they find their way to the library and it's a nest in a way. as they acclimated become more comfortable and because sullivan is always a place where their new students and there will be many more with afghanistan,

there are ways people athe the table. i spent most of my time there because it was a physical space that sat at the heart of everything that sullivan was doing. >> elly spoke about new kids coming in and i would say i would always introduce them to eachs other and say this is your brother, this is your sister and guatemala nepal and syria and the people that work in the office trying to get work done while all of us are sitting around gathering about god knows what. >> you say it lovingly. >> i do and they know it but they are babbling on. i'm trying to work here. it's so dramatic.

i was always introduce them as this is your brother and this is your sister and the coolest thing is when you see it transcend outside of your office in you see them interacting with each other in t the hallway or another classrooms and you see two or three students who you know outside of sullivan we see these different cultures or languages interact in and certainly not supporting each other and loving each o other ad helping each other or joking around the way they do. you just look at these kids and think if the rest of us could get our act together and behave the way that they do. >> i was just going to say teenagerssp do spend a lot of te talking about who they are dating and gossiping and they can feel trivial but that was one of my favorite things about being at sullivan. it's also aa universal language

and no matter where they are coming from or the language they are speaking they are still teenagers and that was also really important to the story. all that silly stuff that they are talking about and gossiping about is from my perspective, because i don't have to try to teach them in the classroom when in my favorite things about sullivan is something i spend a lot of time talking aboutf in te book because it's what makes us the same. even though i'm not a teenager anymore although i was in a seminar class i see myself in them and i see myself in that in all those experiences that are still very close to the surface even for me so i wanted to write about that too. >> we have a few minutes at the end for questions. please feel free to get ready to ask them.

i'm going to ask one or two more. elly what stands out to me you mentioned a story off resiliency and what sticks out to me is the story of community and where we find community and the surprising ways and how committees involved in our definition of community and evolves. >> also how was school fits into a community and one of the things they think sullivan and particularly the staff that sullivan dosu so well as they recognize that they are part of the broader community and really invite neighbors and then build that committee from the core classroom outward and it extends

beyond the four years or however many years kids are the building. they are still so close and i'm still in touchy with many students and it's also worth collection of rodgers park neighborhood in chicago where sullivan said. sarah mentioned in earlier event and it felt like the whole neighborhood came out to support the school and it's a place that rises up around sullivan in many ugways and rises up among refugs and immigrants to and that is community, yes. >> serum going to get the last question to you. you have a physical space and you have relationships you build up the students which are obviously long-lasting. during the pandemic a lot of us left and went remote and you

didn't have the space to interact with your students and to build relationships 01, how do you cater to the needs of the kids that really need help and how are you navigating that? >> we lost a lot of it. i'm sure there were a lot of kids who fell through the cracks. kids rely on school staff noticing.. there at things that happen at home or in our personal lives that go unnoticed that trained professionals are untrained around that we picked up on and that we noticed. some didn't leave their homes. you are picking up on those thingsot so there's a lot that e missed and the things that we

could -- i went to the students home and met with her in her backyard. it was her senior year and i drovend over there and i maskedp and i'm not leaving until we figure out why you aren't in school. i had co-workers that did the same thing. josh the social worker would run groups outside the parking lot or from home and drop things off outsidee their door and we relid heavily on the kids admitting to us are coming to us for help which they are good about doing so you miss a lot of m it. takes obama long time to catch up. >> areea right. >> was that really 45 minutes? >> that was 45 minutes.

i want to see if anybody has any questions? >> eye. i just want to say that i love your look from the first page to the last and i wish it was longer. >> yothank you. >> my only complaint is i wanted to know what these various languages were and a sample of that top line and mention what language it was. >> oh yeah. i will do my best but what i will say about the cover -- on the cover right? >> many of these translations are from the students themselves. it's their handwriting and my amazing -- andnd the audience

jackie. we had students in their native languages and took a picture of it in photoshop the cover. there's arabic and there is swahili and there is or do and there is spanish. and a couple other ones to which i could tell you if i had my notes in front of me but that was really special. i want to have a way to put it on the cover and that was it. >> the third one in particular i couldn't figure out what language that would have been. >> i think that's congolese.

>> i do want to say your grandmother is very proud of you >> oh thank you. i have the best grandmother. >> another place i wrote about once. >> any other questions? >> what i was going to ask the english department you run at the way you do but what about mask? tdo they take the same kind of approach? >> teacher questions,s, finally. >> we are fortunate that we have an administration that supports innovation and creative thought

and creative approaches to everything so we ended up doing is for the english learner department we made ourselves our own cohort in our own department so the english learner department is math anguish science history music art in gyms. the entire day so we have our own meetings and their own staff development everything that the regular school is doing we are doing but we get to do it on our own. they planned their stuff in their t own unique way and their students do the same thing. the math teacher and a science teacher are all doing the same thing that i'm talking about where we are teaching life skills over content. >> any other questions?

>> this is a question for sam. sam you are probably assimilated now but i'd like for you to talk a little bit on your traditions in your language and your culture in america? >> or do you even want to? is that something that you value? it's okay to sayyva no. just explain to us why. >> i w spoke arabic as my parens didn't really learn english.

my friends are from syria and iraq and i spoken arabic because i didn't know the other language. cat of them are mexicans so i speak more right now -- the arabic language my family always said that no matter what you are going to have family and kids here don't lose the language. >> what about traditions and holidays? when you first came to america you didn't assimilate and now you do.

she wants to know do you still maintain a link to where you came from? >> i mean, not really. my life is here so i'm doing it the same way. we don't'm have things called thanksgiving. a lot of other holidays like many things we don't have their but i started doing it here because i'm living here in my lifefe is here. it has changed completely here so i have to live how people are livingve a here. >> thank you everyone. i've question about the social networking in telecommunication link they have other in the

school and are you communicating with friends from around the world before they got here and you have any sense of what it's like if they are comparing their lives say to people who were relocated and the imagination of the people who aren't here and how did the refugees communicate about their lives here? >> sam i wonder do you have friends there? i have friends in syria and i have friends in egypt that are still there. i always cry when i remember the story. my friends went -- my best

friend'sbe dad disappeared. i have a lot of friends there but america was always a dream so if someone wanted to go to america while that's a dream. what you talking about? is hard to go there and it's hard to live there. what about your family life in your language? america opened her door to refugees and people started coming in learning and working and it started to become normal. oh he's coming to america like okay. my friends always say can we find any way to come here and i'm like i don't know. it has to be legal but when i

talk to my friends in syria they don't have electricity and they don't have water and they don't have food. there are a lot of things that they don't have here that we have. i have questions for my other friends i k what are you driving? i don't like to show people what i have here right now. i do work hard for it. i had three jobs in 2016. and now i own my own business and i have two businesses now. i don't show my friends what i have here because they don't have it. no matter what i'm driving i'm still the same even if i have 1 dollar in my pocket or 2 million or millions of dollars they are still my friends and i stay who i am. i don't like to show people what i have right now. a lot of people in egypt they go

here and there just trying to get away to come here and there is no way to get here especially with covid. people came five months ago and after that people were hopeful, i'm going next month, next year. i'm waiting for that. >> i think we could probably ask questions of you all afternoon but set sadly the time is come to an end. i want to thank you all for your time and if we can give them a round of applause. [applause] and thank you for telling your story and being so open. we really appreciate it.