![]() ![]() MCEVOY: She says she is worried about going to a new school, but she's more confident now of who she is and what she can do. HEYMER: (Singing in non-English language). She likes to sing songs from her church as she goes. This year, Heymer is walking the eight blocks to a new middle school in East Oakland. Then, for the first time, all students who presented recited poems in English, Spanish and Mam. MCEVOY: At the fifth grade graduation, it was Heymer who greeted parents, welcoming them in Mam. More Mam-speaking students began wearing their traditional corte dress on Fridays, even the boys. MCEVOY: The joy Heymer felt in wearing her corte spread. UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Non-English language spoken). Others began to center the Mam culture in their classroom lessons. Teachers wanted to make kids feel they belonged - not othered. MCEVOY: What took place at this school was not just about the group therapy sessions. And if they ask you or say something mean, it's like, you know, like, let me tell you about my culture. INGA: Listen, like, yeah, some other kids might look at you weird, but it's because they haven't been exposed to other cultures. HEYMER: Because some people was looking at us and some people is thinking, why that girl wear some corte like that? MCEVOY: The day Heymer and the other girls wore their traditional skirts - called cortes - to school, Heymer's sister braided her hair. I said to her, to - can you go bring your corte in school? And she said, yes, of course. HEYMER: Oh, because I talked to my friend. And I believe it was Heymer who actually said it. INGA: It was bring something that means something to you, that represents you. MCEVOY: In the group session, Inga asked Heymer and the other students to bring in something of themselves. INGA: In the beginning, everybody was really quiet and shy. At Bridges, staff used some of that money to hire a part-time therapist to help Inga start group sessions, which they hoped would reach more children. The district reported spending about 650,000 of that money, nearly half going toward mental health. In the third round of federal pandemic funding to schools, Oakland Unified got over $100 million. MCEVOY: Kids like Heymer are the ones the extra pandemic dollars from the state and feds were supposed to help. Like, once they came here, there was no space to really talk about themselves and their culture, right? INGA: Not really feeling like they could trust other people. By fourth grade, Heymer says she had one friend. MCEVOY: Teachers had to hold her down to calm her and get her to stay in classes. She was scared to come to school because back in Guatemala, she was too young to go. MCEVOY: Heymer had arrived from Guatemala with her dad in first grade, screaming, kicking and crying when dropped off at school. HEYMER SANTIAGO GODINEZ: (Speaking Spanish). So kids like Heymer Santiago Godinez were falling through the cracks. And so, you know, oftentimes they just have to wait. MCEVOY: When Covarrubias tried to refer students out to other community agencies they partner with.ĬOVARRUBIAS: The waitlists are really long at different centers. ROSANA COVARRUBIAS: There was a lot of cyberbullying, and so we were seeing it erupt here at school because of what was happening online. Community Schools Director Rosana Covarrubias saw it on the playground. MCEVOY: Because Inga should only carry a caseload of 15 students who are clinically diagnosed, scores of kids who could have used help were not getting it, and the result was a lot of disruption. And so they were just kind of, like, lost, you know? INGA: They didn't speak Spanish or English. MCEVOY: Mam is a Mayan language spoken by some half a million people in Guatemala and Mexico. ![]() YESABEL INGA: And a lot of them that - I mean, when they first came in - only spoke Mam. JULIA MCEVOY, BYLINE: Yesabel Inga works at Bridges Academy at Melrose in East Oakland, where she is the only therapist for some 400 students, a quarter of them newcomers who have been in the United States for less than a year. KQED's Julia McEvoy looked at one school in Oakland, Calif., to see what that support actually looks like. ![]() COVID relief dollars made a lot of that possible. Supporting the mental health needs of immigrant students has been a challenge for schools to address, especially since the start of the pandemic. ![]()
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