Somali Youth Program

After a week of working with the Somali Youth Program, I have already learned a lot about the students and the challenges we may face in making this program work. First off, the students are great. I wasn't really sure what to expect from a group of young Somalian refugees but to be honest they are just like any other group of kids, they love basketball, cartoons and horsing around. The design of the program kind of looks like a low intensity summer school/camp set up. The program takes place five days a week in northeast Portland near PCC, but most of the kids come from east Portland, near Gresham. The ages of the kids range from about 11 or 12 all the way to 18, so it would be difficult to design a curriculum that would cover all the material they would each individually be facing in the next school year. Instead, the goal of the program is more centered around getting them excited about learning, keeping their brains functioning during the summer months and helping them fine tune classroom skills and study habits unique to the American school system which they may be relatively new to. These kids are all very smart, clever and have great attitudes and there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to be successful in the classroom. In learning more about these kids, I also hope to gain some insight into how their refugee status affects their lives. I want to be careful not to place any prescribed stories on them by formulating my own ideas about what I think their lives are like. Instead, I just want to watch, listen and learn about them in an effort to form a completely accurate picture of their lives without any of my own assumptions.