Refugee School Impact Grant Resources
We hope you find these resources useful. We have worked to provide you with resources specific to the RSIG outcomes.
Resources include print, media, and web-based materials.
Topics:
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Curriculum
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Cultural Profiles and Case Studies
- ELL Students and Language Training
- Newcomer Centers & Resources
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Online Resource Centers
- Parenting and Family Strengthening
- Professional Development and Teacher Preparation
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Refugee Health
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Refugee Youth
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Resources in Washington State
Against All Odds (UNHCR Geneva, Switzerland: UNHCR, 2004) – An interactive online game created to increase students’ awareness and knowledge about refugee situations by putting players in the position of a refugee. Against All Odds takes players on a journey ultimately towards asylum, but also touches on issues of understanding and intuition in different environments.
Faces and Voices of Refugee Youth: A Curriculum Guide for Secondary School Teachers and Counselors (Salt Lake Education Foundation, 2002) – From forty interviews with Utah’s newest and youngest refugees, this curriculum guide was developed to address the unique needs of refugee students while enhancing the learning of all students in their classrooms.
Kids Like Me: Voices of the Immigrant Experience (Judith M. Blohm and Terri Lapinsky, 2006) – As the number of refugee and immigrant students in our classrooms grows, the diversity and variety in our classrooms grow as well. In Kids Like Me: Voices of the Immigrant Experience, there are 26 personal stories of refugee and immigrant students who are making a home in a new place. Kids Like Me also includes discussion questions, self-directed activities and research ideas for teachers and program staff.
Cultural Profiles and Case Studies
Center for Applied Linguistics: Cultural Profiles - The purpose of these cultural profiles is to provide background information on the target populations and to discuss the ways in which these cultures and history might impact their resettlement in the United States. These great resources include language information, difficulties expected for new arrivals, service provider specific tips and much more.
- The Iraqi Kurds: Their History and Culture (Barbara Robson, Center for Applied Linguistics, 1996).
- The Iraqis: Their History and Culture (Barbara Robson, Center for Applied Linguistics, 1995)
- The Somali Bantu: Their History and Culture (Dan Van Lehman & Omar Eno, Center for Applied Linguistics, 2003)
- The Somalis: Their History and Culture (Diana Briton Putman and Mohamood Cabdi Noor, Center for Applied Linguistics, 1999)
Understanding Your Refugee and Immigrant Students: An Educational, Cultural and Linguistic Guide (Jeffra Flaitz, 2006) - Each of the 18 country profiles in this book feature statistics about the country, a historical synopsis, an overview of the county's official education policy, cultural perspectives, and a problem-solution section containing classroom strategies. Also included is information about teacher-student relationships, linguistic systems, discipline and class management, and appropriate non-verbal communication.
Background Notes - These publications include facts about the land, people, history, government, political conditions, economy, and foreign relations of independent states, some dependencies, and areas of special sovereignty. The Background Notes are updated and revised by the Office of Electronic Information and Publications of the Bureau of Public Affairs as they are received from the Department's regional bureaus.
Backgrounders – The Cultural Orientation Resource Center backgrounders provide key information about new refugee groups for U.S. resettlement workers. Backgrounders include sections on the need for resettlement of the group to the United States, cultural attributes of the group, resettlement considerations, as well as a one page statistical summary.
Culture Profiles - These profiles are developed for refugee service providers and others assisting newcomers to the United States. Each one contains a basic introduction to the people, history, and culture of the group concerned and includes topics such as history, geography, economy, social structure, gender roles, language and literacy, education, religion, art and song, food and dress, festivities, names, and features of the language.
ELL Students and Language Training
Illinois Resource Center E-kit - The Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Resource Center have collaborated to create a locally and nationally relevant knowledge base in the area of educating linguistically and culturally diverse students. The E-kit is an electronic resource that is designed to help teachers and administrators provide effective, efficient, and pedagogically sound instruction for the English language learners in your school.
National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs - OELA's National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition & Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA) collects, analyzes, synthesizes and disseminates information about language instruction educational programs for English language learners and related programs. It is funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement & Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students (OELA) under Title III of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001.
A Guide to Your Children’s Schools: A Parent Handbook - This guide to Illinois schools for newcomer parents can be downloaded in various languages: Arabic, Bosnian, Russian, Vietnamese, and Spanish. This is a great model for programs wanting to build their own parent orientation handbook.
How to Support Refugee Students in the ELL Classroom – This extensive guide from Colorín Colorado (2008) addresses the challenges faced by refugee students, provides strategies for supporting refugee students, and links the reader to a myriad of refugee serving programs and websites through the United States.
Immigrant/Refugee Awareness Instructional Materials – A listing of highlighted resources from BRYCS (Bridging Refugee Youth & Children’s Services) aimed at welcoming and orienting newcomer students to U.S. schools.
Raising Children in a New Country: A Toolkit for Working with Newcomer Parents and An Illustrated Handbook – This BRYCS Toolkit brings together these culturally responsive parenting resources in order to make them more easily accessible to agencies working with refugees. The toolkit provides an overview of how to support and educate refugee families, a list of parenting resources for refugee serving agencies and organizations, and resources and tools for program development. Available in the School’s Out Washington Library.
School's In for Refugees: Whole-School Guide to Refugee Readiness - Produced by The Victorian Foundation for Survivor's of Torture, Inc., School’s In for Refugees is a resource "to support schools in recognising and responding to the needs of their refugee students. It provides advice on how schools can identify refugee students and understand the impact of their experiences. It highlights the importance of creating a school setting which is welcoming and inclusive of parents of refugee students and the students themselves. It suggests policies and practices which a school might adopt in creating such a setting, and curriculum which supports the learning of refugee and other students."
Strengthening Services for Refugee Parents: Guidelines and Resources - Put together by Bridging Refugee Youth & Children's Services (BRYCS), this manual is focused "on providing parenting services to refugee families, although some of the issues and resources discussed are also relevant to immigrants who are not refugees as well. It is address to everyone who has an interest in helping newcomer families build satisfying and productive lives in the United States."
Tukwila School District Parent Handbook - With funding from the Refugee School Impact Grant and in collaboration with Tukwila School District, International Rescue Committee Seattle created this handbook with photos and illustrations to orient newcomer families to their local schools. Available in targeted refugee languages.
Welcoming and Orienting Newcomer Students to US Schools - Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services (BRYCS) has produced an in-depth look into the importance of successful school adjustment for both newcomer refugee students and their families. As with all BRYCS materials, this document provides an extensive list of resources for supporting all the refugee students you might work with.
BRYCS: Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services - Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services (BRYCS) is a national technical assistance program addressing challenges which refugee youth and children face in adjusting to life in the United States. Their fundamental purpose is to broaden the scope of information and increase collaboration among service providers for refugee youth, children and families.
Cultural Orientation Resource (COR) Center - Funded by the U.S. Department of State, the COR Center supports overseas cultural orientation (CO) trainers in a variety of ways. For refugee service providers in the United States, the COR Center publishes culture profiles or backgrounders on newly arriving refugee groups, provides the Welcome to the United States guidebook, coordinates a two-week secondment of domestic resettlement professionals to observe CO and processing at various Overseas Processing Entities, and maintains the Cultural Orientation website. The COR Center also manages the Refugee Discussion listserv, a forum for the exchange of orientation information, ideas, and materials.
Parenting and Family Strengthening
Ensuring the Academic Success of Our Children (Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition, 2001) - This resource is based on research that "confirms that when families are involved in their children’s education, children earn higher grades and receive higher scores on tests,attend school more regularly, complete more homework, demonstrate more positive attitudes and behaviors, graduate from high school at higher rates and are more likely to enroll in higher education than students with less involved families." A workbook to boost parent involvement.
Involving Immigrant and Refugee Families in their Children's Schools: Barriers, Challenges and Successful Strategies - This report, written in 2003 by the Adult Learner Resource Center and funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, represents effective strategies to assist schools to reach out to refugee and other immigrant parents. It synthesizes the suggestions of the ISBE Parent Outreach Focus Group, a group of Illinois educational and social service agency practitioners who work with refugee and other immigrant group students and families. It is also based upon a survey of school and social service agency staff that used the handbook A Guide to Your Children's Schools in their interactions with immigrant and refugee families.
LEP Parent Involvement Project: A Guide for Connecting Immigrant Parents and Schools - The LEP Parent Involvement Project, produce by the Minnesota Department of Education, was developed to be used in various adult education settings such as ESL classes, community-based organizations and parent groups for the purposes of helping parents and caretakers with limited English see themselves as active participants in their children's learning.
Minnesota: You Can Help Your Child Videos – The state of Minnesota sells videos produced for newcomer parents. The two videos in this series are: “You Can Help Your Child in School” and “You Can Talk to Your Child’s School.” They are translated into English, Amharic, Arabic, Nuer, Oromo, Russian, Somali, Spanish, and Hmong.
Raising Children in a New Country: An Illustrated Handbook (2007 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC) – This booklet was created to help service providers ensure that newcomer parents have the basic information they need about U.S. laws and parenting practices. This booklet is targeted to newcomer parents with low levels of English proficiency and/or low literacy levels.
Professional Development and Teacher Preparation
Children of War - Members of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, with funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, produced this film to bring the stories of refugee children to educators. Its purpose is to help educators better understand the refugee children in their classrooms and schools. Equipped with a study guide. Available in the School’s Out Washington Library.
The New Americans - This movie traces the journeys of several immigrants and refugees in a profound and moving way. A group of filmmakers followed refugees and immigrants from Nigeria, Palestine, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and India as they made new homes in the United States. This resource includes lesson plans, community engagement materials, a discussion guide, and activity kit.
UNHCR Teacher’s Corner - Whether you are looking for a brochure that helps young readers better understand the issues facing refugee children, a video that tackles the issues of exile or lesson plans to raise awareness with secondary school students about the plight of young refugees in Africa, you’ll find it all here. There are many tools to choose from.
Visit A Refugee Camp - This is an excellent site for teachers. It contains a middle and high school curriculum on refugee issues and refugee camps – “A Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City.”
Cross Cultural Health Care Program (CCHCP) in Seattle, WA - Addresses the broad cultural issues that influence the health of individuals and families living in ethnic minority communities throughout the United States. The Seattle, Washington-based Cross Cultural Health Care Program (CCHCP), established in 1992, serves as a bridge between communities and health care institutions to ensure full access to culturally and linguistically appropriate quality health care. The Web site provides information on a number of CCHCP's programs, including cultural competency and interpreter training, community coalition-building activities, research projects, and other services.
National Child Traumatic Stress Network - National Child Traumatic Stress Network works to identify and develop interventions that are effective for addressing trauma in refugee children, youth, and their families.
Beyond the Fire: Teen Experiences of War - This interactive website chronicles the stories of fifteen refugee teenagers, who lived through warfare and fled their homes in eight different countries. Their stories are complete with photographs of family and loved ones that bring their experiences of war to life. The website also provides a brief chronology of the events in each country to explain how the conflict developed. The stories of these fifteen refugee teenagers illustrate the types of experiences that refugee youth encounter abroad before being resettled.
Growing Up in a New Country: A Positive Youth Development Toolkit for Working with Refugees and Immigrants - This “Toolkit” pulls together articles, resources and programs which can assist agencies in adopting a Positive Youth Development (PYD) approach to working with newcomer youth.
Lutheran Community Services Unaccompanied Minors Program – Lutheran Community Services serves children and youth from all over the world that come to the United States without families. These refugee children are placed in long-term foster care homes found through LCSNW’s partners.
WA State Office of the Education Ombudsman (OEO) – The OEO functions independently from the public school system and works to mediate conflicts and disputes between families and public schools in Washington State. In addition to advocacy for students and families, OEO provides several publications to help families know their rights and these are translated into seven target languages.