good afternoon and welcome to the planning board a printers rope lit fest. please help me thank the sponsors for putting on this event. [applause] before we begin, we would ask that you silence your cell phones and turn off all camera flashes. the restrooms are off to my right past of the elevator. when we do questions and answers at the end of the presentation, i will bring a microphone to the stand and we ask that you come up there so the questions are clear on the videotaping. with no further ado, i want to

introduce the author of coming-of-age in america. she will be in conversation. thank you so much. [applause] thanks everyone for coming. welcome. i am a senior producer with the local npr affiliate. and as you heard, with me is the author of refugee. also with us is the director of the english language learners department at sullivan high school and also sam, who is a former sullivan high student. thank you foror being here. >> we are going to start with a

short reading. some of you may have already read it into some of you may be familiar with the story and not know the story behind it. but essentially it's about rogers park that has almost half the student body that are immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers et cetera from all over the world that speaks k something like 40 languages and the story is about the communities found of sullivan high school. ellie is going to kick us off with a brief reading to give you a sense of what the story covers. a. >> so happy to be here. among the folks i met, i follow

four students in the book. one student is from iraq, myanmar and another is from the democratic republic of the congo. icyou follow their stories over the course of a single school year. but what i thought i would read today is the introduction of a young woman, and these are all pseudonyms. she is a young woman from myanmar. every morning on her way, she passes reminders of the life she narrowly escaped. that's why she counseled down the days until she turns 18. she has 408 to go but that is close enough to keep them in good g spirits. though the way the school conjures memories, the refugee

from myanmar is always relieved to be out of the house.ho tensions are high at home and they rarely speak. when they do, she curses her daughter and school offers distraction. she walks past the quotes next to each classroom.th the american dream is being able to follow your calling. and one from dr. seuss, think lefthi and right and low and hi. of the things you can think of if only you try. at the school is a sea of navy blue lockers with the bright yellow insignia painted above them. below the black and brown checkered floor was in the optimism on the a walls. it's up there in the room that the 16-year-old will station herself near and take dozens of

selfies.e she will spend hours each day uploading close-up portraits and keeping up with ongoing facebook messengers. recently she's been talking to a boy in boston who claims he carries a gun and runs with a crew. his profile picture has the logo and their name with a lightning bolt. though she's never been particularly interested in school, she looks forward to starting her sophomore school at sullivan. she can watch youtube tutorials and catch up on social media gossip. she can make plans to watch scary movies. shema can drink diet coke and et soggy pizza. she quotes and began fighting with her mother. the girl refuses to eat at home. most days the meals provided are the only ones she eats.

she can be a kid. six months ago she thought she would never get that chance again. where i want to get started here, we describe the school you get a good sense of where she is. i want to turn the clock back to 2016, 2017. on what's happening in the world at this time that leads you to seek out local refugee stories. >> this story does go all the way back to 2017. so i've known these guys for a long time now at this point, whether they wanted that or not.

but i first began this project after attending a protest after donald trump was inaugurated in january, 2017, and one of his first executive orders was signing a travel ban from the countries and when i was there at o'hare airport where the protest was happening, i just wondered to myself who are these refugee families arriving in chicago and what their lives look like here. that quickly led me to sullivan because i've always been interested in the lives of young people. and when you think about young people, you think about schools. and as you mentioned in your lovely introduction, almost half the students at sullivan are refugees of immigrants. as soon i walked in the door to meet sarah foror the first timei was completely overwhelmed by this scene. i saw the languages, the visual

languages of the flags and different i fashions from all or the globe and i thought this is the place where there are many llstories to tell and i want to figure out what they are. >> so you mentioned meeting sarah. who else did you meet on that first day? before he started a meeting of g students, that was very purposeful. she takes great care of her students and also and very serious trauma, i didn't want to encroach on anyone before they knew who i was and got familiar. she had me play some of the typical games, one is called hot

seat, which now i've put you in up>> here so it all comes full circle. i sat in front of the class with a big jar of candy. i don't think you were in that class, but i met you around that same time. your sister was in that class. kids were encouraged to ask questions. then it kind of unfolded from their. >> a journalist strolls up to your school, what is your reaction? >> i'm a little nervous about the microphone now.

i told ellie over and over again what is entertaining is our real lives. they would speak these different languages d and have these different experiences of trauma or otherwise you hear about things on the news but it can bw exciting and you can be swept up in the moment of meeting someone that is actually experiencing this. we actually have a student, we both know a kid whose family got on the airplane, sold everything, got on the airplane, came to chicago and they were

stuck in the airport the day that donald trump closed everything and they had to go fly back to turkey, but they had no apartment, no clothes, no car, nothing. so it's exciting for people when they need to students where they meet people that have actually experienced these things that we hear aboutou on the radio or see on tv. but i was regularly reminding her what is news and exciting to you is actually our real lives, so what are your intentions and what are you planning to do with the stories and how will you tell our story is because it isn't always entertaining. it doesn't always feel good. and i say we meaning the students and the adults we carry that stuff with us and take those home with us there are

four questions you are never allowed to ask someone in america. i was always teaching my students they come from cultures where you don't ask and it's considered extremely rude to ask a follow-up question for clarification and in general they are shy about their language and the cultural difference of getting to know people. so i was constantly putting people in the hot seat forcing students to ask questions. how much do you weigh and how old are you. >> very inappropriate questions in our culture. >> don't ask any women in america how old are they.

[laughter] >> can you give us a little bit of background about yourself and where you came from and how you ended up at sullivan? >> when the war started we moved to egypt and then we moved and moved there for like three yearl and four months exactly. then we studied and asserted working.t,

uso we went and from there we started on w the process for nas and passports and came as refugees. it was all the way. my dad has two dealerships. so, when i get here after two

weeks right away they send me tt sullivan high school. a. >> it's been a million years since i've been in school, but i know the most nerve-racking moment is the night before your first day of school. that's where any kid, let alone someone coming to a new country and school what was going on in your mind the night before your first day at sullivan. >> i can't remember what's going on but i can tell you i can't believe that i can make it. the first thing is the language. when i came here i speak only arabic. but i don't learn french that much. but when i came here, everybody everybody's speaking english and then everybody's speaking. i walked down to my apartment.

he kept looking at me. i cannot g help you. i go back home. the day that i get to sullivan i was talking to my sister and tell her we can't make it. we just came here. it's a different culture, different language, different people. it was not for me.

what were your first impressions? >> first impression, he was actuallys very quiet. a 24 hours later he was no longer quiet and hasn't stopped talking since. he is going to learn english and life will be good. >> so you meet and are likely so there's over 40 languages spoken. you will hear french, english, et cetera. sam had mentioned he was there. what does communication look like atll sullivan? >> we did an event a couple of days ago i made to the audience participate in an activity to show them what we do with all these different languages.

lots of smiles, hugs, high fives. a lot of using your body depleted things or charades. no matter how little they have mor how much they are struggli. that is one of the first things i noticed and technology is absolutely part of the book as well. and it's this amazing way people stay connected with their home countries and how they communicate with each other like one of the nicknames for

sullivan. wanting to share music and google translated and i had no idea how advanced it had gotten. you can take a picture and it translates the language let alone putting in what you want to say. oneha of my favorite things thai would see inside of the holes is kids kind of flirting with each other through google translate. [laughter] into things would get a little scrambled in the most beautiful, wonderful ways. so, i think even though that's not [inaudible] it's how the communications have been like with all teenagers.

>> in the book you focus on four students that go to the schools. we learn about them as people and who they are before. why was that important to you as you are writing the story? >> i think i mentioned earlier that i was aware that these kids carried a heavy burden and come from all different kinds of backgrounds and situations. they are not defined by that. they are trying to buy sim cards.we they are teenagers. i wanted to understand who they were in the schools because they

edwere kids and this is somethig we talked about in the process. what i was seeing was stories of resiliency, not simply of hardship. so much of that i feel like is often not necessarily overlooked, but a lot of stories focus on the flight and hardship, and i wanted to tell a different kind of story. that honestly grew directly out of what i was saying outside of sullivan. the memories i had while reporting the book, seeing him dancing with his friends and plugging in his phone when eventually he got his card which i'm sure didn't take him long and putting on his favorite songs and then all the boys starting to dance together at school even so there's one they do every year call refugee

thanksgiving and you brought this incredible architectural -- i always mispronounce it. of the inverted rice dish. >> [inaudible] >> i mispronounce to the other night. i was trying not to do it again. those are the things i wanted to highlight and celebrate as much as telling of course the stories of the cultures they came from and to the places that they've led to anther journeys to chicago and a sullivan. >> as journalists we deal with the reporting of young people's stories. human gender part off how you build trust was the hot seat where they got to ask youg questions. how else were you building trust with students and the faculty that were protective

understandably. how were you navigating getting them to trust you with their stories? we took it really slow. a lot of it before i ever took out my recorder or did formalized interviews, i just wanted to have conversations with the younger people and even the teachers at sullivan. and i wanted them to kind of in the same way encourage students to ask questions in the classroom, i wanted them to feel like they had agency and they could ask questions and it was a conversation. i tried to make it as clear as possible they could raise their hand and say if they were uncomfortable or if there was something they didn't want included in the story. and you know, when you are reporting a book over three years, which is how long i was working on refugee high, you become part of each other's lives as i said earlier.

it was to remind kids of that as well because it becomes a current conversation you grow comfortable and build in intimacy but i always wanted to make it clear that i was still a journalist and this was still a book. even visual cue iss like havinga notebook out and things like that just making sure that they understood, things like that were also important throughout the process.he >> from what you'reha saying, you've spent a lot of time there. i'm trying to think you are sitting in the back of these classrooms meeting with these students, how are kids responding lacks. >> one day i asked [inaudible] i

did get filtered into a freshman assembly once. can you share a memory of something that stuck out to you that you saw or experienceden whether it was your own experience or observing the faculty and interacting. one thing that i almost wasn't there for was the 30 something birthday party. we don't talk about age. but i think she called me thett day before like i am sure the kids are going to throw me a

birthday party. you should be here for it. and it was sam's sister who was one of the main organizers and another of my favorite people on the planet. it was this incredible -- so they could throw a surprise party. is that a serious tradition? >> can you represent the rest of the world and tell us. she planned it all out. she's very organized and it said happy birthday. everyone had brought the dishes from home.

and also her favorite foods were in ample supply as well. >> remember the birthday card? may be from several classes they made this handmade book. a. >> i was talking about the poster board of that was in the shape of a diet coke canned that everybody thought -- it was all drawn with the font and everything. [laughter] >> if you see a diet coke, you know sarah isn't far. [laughter] but as her gift, they made her rthis beautiful gift where every student drew a picture that was a scene from their home country. and i remember because i did this to sarah.

it was tied together with string and it was like a travel log of all the places that they had fled and the memories they wanted to share with her and it really was one of the most beautiful moments that i saw and sullivan and now one of my favorite scenes in the book. a. >> that tells me a lot about how the students see you. >> i can't tell you because some of them will tell about it. she wasn't only a teacher obecause she's sitting here, i would say m to everybody, i rose to my family, for me sarah was a

friend, a sister, a mother, teacher, helper, everything. she helped me with my court date. she called my lawyer. i had a speeding ticket. inshe helped me with that. she helped me to find a job. to spend more than two hours a day explaining life here, how i have to do it, how i have to deal with people, talk with people. don't do that, they aren't going to like that. you have to do it this way. she explained to me if i want to apply for the job i have to look nice. she always helped me. she's not only a teacher. for other students, they say the same thing. when we go to sarah's class, we feel like we are home. because i'm telling you, she never -- she's not only a teacher, she treats everyone the same. we are all the same, but she

treats us like her kids. >> you also call your office -- that is a different dynamic than i think the average regular teacher has with other students. what made you want to approach helping these kids that way? >> because they are all a bunch of babies. they are learning to grow or learning how to behave and they are not allowed to leave school, leave the underworld, leave

until they have been fully conditioned and trained and ready to be ready for the rest of you to meet them. it started, the uterus as a joke,h but in general i approached them. i tell them all the time you art not done. you are learning english. you're not going to try to get away with something here because you're from't somewhere else or you don't speak english. you still have a brain, you still have experiences and values and morals and lessons that you've learned and manners. it may be hard for you to articulate those because you are learning english, but you're not done and i'm not going to let you get away with is this just because you are in a different country around other people in another language. a. >> that's why i speak another language now.

>> as far as how we are talking of you right now, it is a lot of humor. you asked how do we teach. it is so much humor. the other thing i told the kids as if we are not laughing, we are crying. we definitely have a lot to cry about. he's telling this beautiful story of the war broke out so we left and then he called and said we could come to america. that is the shortest, quickest, easiest description. his family came to my parents house two years in a row for thanksgiving. i know their story. i knew his father, his mother and you were to be in a corner

crying if you knew his real story. so i always tell them if we are, not laughing we are crying so let's do a lot of laughing. >> the way that your department sort of supports the students that come in, to me this goes way beyond just english and of the advice you would give and how to get a job and all that advice that you give for the kind of cultural notes that it might be helpful. it was the department always taking that approach or how has it evolved to what it is now? >> i can't speak to how it was before i got there. i was hired in the fall of 2012 and i started as a teacher just running my classroom that way.o.

and every monday through thursday it was i love you, have a good night, then it was have a good weekend. it started out as a joke. i was just kind of stirring the pot. if any student one time said you know, your i love you is the only one i get all day. and i said now in my head i feel bad for kind of mocking them, telling them and they start saying at the back and i thought they were just mocking me. they said no, really it's the only one i get all day long and it just kind of stayed. so as far as how the department

is, i just started in my classroom and then i was promoted.rt i was promoted to run the department, actually the year that she started writing the book. she transitioned to the library andd much of my reporting and much of the book, the heart of the book i would say is for office, which is this small room at the back of the library, the uterus where she was stationed with her department, and so much ofos the kind of even those of e classroom were translated into this corner of the library. you know, you were talking about how sam'sut family had had

thanksgiving dinner with you, and i had dinner at your families house and your mom made me an incredible feast, syrian pizza. about in this room, where i spent so much time and where so much of the heart of the book unfolds, there is a little table that plaintiff functioned as a family dinner table. the students that came into that room -- >> to get snacks. a. >> yes. and there was a lot of napping. but also, to find that family fuel and that is where i met a lot of the students i ended up following in the book because i was there and they were there. in many cases when they start to get their footing and find their way they show up at the library less and less.

that's ultimately what you want but there's about to be more. it was this amazing. it felt like it was a place that sat at the heart of everything that sullivan was doing. >> i always introduce the kids to each other. you would end up having guatemala, nepal, syria, african countries, all these different countries around the table plus the people that work in the actual office trying to get work done.

they are going on about the dumbest things like i'm trying to work here. i would always introduce them like this is your brother, this is your sister. the cool thing is when you see it transcend out of your office. hewhen you see them interactingn the hospitals or -- always were other classrooms and other students who know where would you see these different cultures or languages interacting and not supporting each other and helping each other or joking around. you just think if we go to behave the way they do, the world would be such a nicer place. >> i was just going to say they

do kind of spend a lot of time talking about the data and gossiping and stuff and it can feel really trivial. but that was one of my favorite things is that it is also a universal language and no matter where they are coming from, they are still teenagers into that as also really important to the story. from my perspective, one of my favorite things is something that i also spend a lot of time talking about in the book. i see myself in them and all those experiences that still a live very close to the surface even for me. so i wanted to write about that.

a. >> we are going to leave a fewea minutes at the end so please feel free to get ready and ask them. while you are thinking of a question i'm going to ask at least one or two more. what stands out to me, you mentioned the story of resiliency. it isn't history of trauma or adolescents but what speaks out to me is this story of community. even in the most surprising ways and how the community evolves into definitions of communities evolved. would you say that is the point? >> in many ways, yes. also, how is school fits into a community and one of the things that i think sullivan and particularly the staff do so wellha is they recognize that ty

are part of a broader community they invite neighbors in and to build that community from the classroom outwards. it means that it extends beyond. look at sara and sam, they are still close and i keep in touch with many students and that's also a reflection of the park where the neighborhood in chicago where sullivan sits is a neighborhood that sarah mentioned that an earlier event it felt like the whole neighborhood came out to support the school and it is a place that rises up in many ways around refugees and immigrants, tomac and that is community. i'm going to give the last question to you. you've mentioned the physical space that your office is in and

the relationships that you build with the students which are obviously long-lasting. during the pandemic, you know, a lot of this last year and a half was remote. you didn't have this space to interact and build the relationships in that space. so, you know, one, how do you cater to the needs of these kids that need help and also how are you navigating that into and bug those relationships? >> we lost a lot of that. there are a lot of those things that fall through the cracks that we, kids rely on the school staff noticing. there's things that happen at home or in our personal lives thatun go unnoticed that trained professionals that were around each other all the time that we pick up bonnie and we notice.

there's a lot of stuff that we missed and things that we coulde she didn't get to school forer three weeks and it was her senior year and i drew over there and said we are going to mask up. you stand over there. i'm not leaving here until we figure out why you are in school. i had coworkers that dids the same thing. the social worker was a warm run groups outside in the parking lot where he would drive to people's homes and drop things off outside of their door. we relied heavily on the kids admitting to us were reaching out for help, which they are not so good at doing. so we missed a lot. it's going to take a long time to catch up.

>> okay. so, -- >> was that 45 minutes? >> that was 45 minutes. >> youte don't know yourself. [laughter] >> so, i want to see if anybody has any questions. sure. >> i just want to say that i love your book from the front page to the last, and i wish that it was longer. >> thank you. call my editor. >> my only complaint is i wanted to know what the various languages were. if you wrote a sample of the top line and mentioned what language it was. what i will say about the cover

is actually how many of the translations are from the students themselves, so actually that is their handwriting, and my amazing book designers in the audience. a. >> we had a students write out refugee high-end the native languages and took a picture of it and photoshopped it together to be this photo. so, on here, there's arabic, there's swahili, there's aspanish, there's a couple othr ones. i could tell you if i had my notes in front of me. but that was special.ll i wanted to have a way to bring the kids onto the cover, and that was it. a. >> because the third one in particular, i couldn't figure out what language that would

have been. >> i think that is like malaise. i do want to say your grandmother is very proud of you. a classmate of mine in the group. what i was going to ask is the deenglish department, you run io the way you do. what about math and science? do they take the same type of approach or that is and how we do things? in english, you can do that.

a. >> teacher questions finally. >> we are fortunate that we have an administration that supports innovation and creative thought and creative approaches to everything. what we ended up doing actually is we are the english learner department, and we made ourselves our own covert, our own department. in the english department at his math, english, science, history, music, art, physical education. so we have our own meeting, staff development, everything that the regular school is doing we are doing but we get to do it on our own so that is how the special ed department would meet and plan their stuff in their own unique way so we get to do the same thing. so it's not just english. like the math or science teacher. they arehe doing the same things

i'm talking about where we care for the whole child and we are teaching life skills over a content. >> any other questions? >> this is a question for sam. so, sam, you would be what we would probably call assimilated now, but i would like you to reflect a little bit on how you maintain the traditions in your culture and language as you've now become an american. >> or do you even want to? is that something that you value? because it's okay if you say no. >> but just explain to us why. >> she's always a teacher.

>> okay, so i still speak arabic with my parents because they don't learn english. they do go to college and they are learning english but they are not really good. i'm still speaking with my friends from lebanon, syria, iraq. i still speak arabic with them. so i don't give up on the language. but half of my friends are arabic and then half of them are mexican. so, i speak more right now spanish because i have employees that speak it with me. ybut my family always say don't lose it, like no matter what. you are going to have family here, kids here, don't lose this language. that is your own language. a. >> what about just besides language, though traditions,

holidays, customs. you didn't hug women and now you do. i'll leave here every day. my life is here so i'm doing this the same way. a lot of other holidays i'm leaving here, my life is here and it's changed completely so i would say i'll leave it there.

have a question about the social networking links into telecommunication links the students have while they are in the school. they are communicating with friends from all over the building and it may be people they fled in refugee camps before they got here. do you have any sense of what it's like if they are comparing their life here to people that were relocated in other countries like where does the u.s. stand in the kind of imagination of the people and how did the refugees communicate about their life here to people that ended up:: somewhere else? >> i have friends in syria and egypt and affirms that it was hard for them. i always cry when i remember the

story. i have my best friend whose dad was here, he disappeared. they couldn't even find his body in the water. that's a dream, it's harder to go there. how are you going to leave there and have your family life, language. when you start and people start coming in learning it starts becoming normal.

my friends always say can we find any way to come here? there's no way this has to be legal. but i'm telling you when i talked to my friends they don't have water, food, there's a lot of things that they don't have. i have questions from my other friends like what are you driving. i don't like to show people what i have here because i do work hard for it. i don't show my friends what i have here because they cannot have it. no matter what i'm driving, i am still the same person. if i have one dollar in my pocket or 2 million they are

still my friend. i don't like to show my friend what i have right now because it is a dream for them. a lot of people in egypt, they tried. they go here and they are just trying to get here. i'm waiting for two of my uncles to come. >> i think we could listen to you all afternoon but sadly, the time has come to end. i want to thank you all for your time if we could give them a round of applause. [applause]

and thank you for telling your story and being so open. we really appreciate all of it. >> american history tv saturdays on c-span2. exploring the people and events that tell the american story. at 2 p.m. eastern on the presidency, historians revisit george washington's 1796 farewell address. he and his warnings against threats and confronting the young nation. within 10 p.m. eastern this week marks the 100th anniversary of arlington national cemeteries to have the unknown soldier, samuel holliday of the u.s. capitol historical society shares the story behind the tomb including the overseas journey that took this soldier from the fighting field in world war i france to america's most revered burial ground. exploring the american story. watch american history tv saturday on c-span2. >> and find a full schedule on the program guide or watch online anytime at

c-span.org/history. >> presidential historian greg calls the autobiography of calvin coolidge the forgotten classic of presidential writing. the new authorized expanded and annotated division of coolidge autobiography has just been published by isi books. editors amadeus leis and matt denhardt quoted coolidge in the introduction as saying it is a great advantage to a president in a major source of safety to the country for him to know that he is not a great man. we asked amadeus -- amity she that was published in 1929, years ago. >> the caln