Organized crime and terrorist groups. Also neil allen and joel gerschenfeld. Ed asker in shares his naughts on todays political thoughts on todays political issues. And john wheeler who explored theories of quantum reality and time. Thats just a handful of programs over this threeday weekend on booktv on cspan2. For a complete schedule, visit booktv. Org. Now we kick off this long weekend with journalist helen thorpe who reports on the assimilation of 22 immigrant teenagers over the course of a school year in denver. [inaudible conversations] hi, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. Were going to get started. I just want to thank everyone for being here for our last event of the year. We are completely honored to have helen thorpe. [laughter] thank you all for coming so much. This evening, were happy to welcome helen thorpe. If you havent realize her works of art, youre in for a treat on your first book that you read. Her other books are soldier girls and just like us, and the newcomers is what were celebrating this evening. Helen is able to bring together audiences to make global citizens out of all of her readers. The newcomers follows 22 refugees to the United States speaking 14 languages all in the same classroom in denver. It is a story its a gripping, heartfelt and powerful story. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming helen thorpe. [applause] thank you so much for being here. Its so nice to see everybody. Im delighted to be back at the bookworm, one of my favorite independent bookstores, and i love what nicole and the entire staff here does. My local independent bookstore in denver, my home away from home, im very attached to my neighborhood bookstore, and its just great to be here with you guys. So i thought tonight that i would read a little bit and then try to explain the book as a whole to you and then read a little bit more. So i wanted to start with the opening of the book, because i think it kind of sets things up. For you to understand what im trying to do. And then ill describe it in greater detail, of course, too. But im just going to launch into day one at South High School for these students and their teacher. This chapter is called nice to meet you. On the first day of school, it was going to be a 90degree scorcher, and you could already feel the air starting to shimmer. Eddie williams jogged up the four stone steps at the main entrance to South High School half an hour before the first bell rang, eager to meet his new students. The lives of men, the customs of peoples and the pageantry of nations chart the course of tomorrow, proclaimed a large mural by the front door. The teacher was a tall man, six foot, four inches in his socks with an athletic body, short black hair and a cleanshave, angular face. He was 38 but could have passed for 28, earnest, ardent, indiscuss throws, kind were words industrious, kind were words that came to mind. When i thought about the parts of himself this teacher brought into his classroom week in, week out all year long. He almost always dressed conservatively in longsleeved dress shirts, and his wardrobe often made me think of leafing through an l. L. Bean catalog, but that day he was wearing a shortsleeved purple south hypo low shirt d high high high polo. So the students could see who to turn to if they had a question about how to read the confusing schedules they were carrying or find a classroom or where they could find the schools elusive cafeteria up on the fourth floor of the buildingment mr. Williams usually avoided shortsleeved shirts even in august because they revealed the dark blue tattoo that circled one of his biceps, and he feared the students might misinterpret the ink designs given their backgrounds. He worked diligently to communicate in all sorts of ways. He was a person they could trust. Mr. Williams had inherited his anglo fathers rangy height and propensity to freckle along with his latina mothers dark eyes and hair. Fluent in both spanish and english, he was the sort of teacher who devoted an enormous portion of his warmth and vitality and intellect to his students. The Neighborhood Public School was a popular choice even more for families who possessed significant wealth and lived nearby. Most of the classrooms were crowded with noisy, chattering teenagers. That morning, however, as he looked around his room, mr. Williams saw many empty chairs and only seven students. The teenagers assigned to him wore shutdoor expressions. Nobody in the room was talking, not even to one another. The teacher had expected this, for his room always got off to a quiet start. Welcome to newcomer class, he said in a deliberately warm tone of voice. My name is mr. Williams. What is your name . Where are you from . The teenagers made no reply. Just the act of showing up by 7 45 in the morning had required enormous fortitude. It was august 24, 2015, and the students had spent on average more than an hour negotiating the local Public Transit system to get to the school. They lived crammed with other relatives into small houses or one or twobedroom apartments located in farflung neighborhoods nowhere near this upscale zip code in parts of the city where a dollar could be stretched. Getting from School Getting to school from the patchwork zones of cheap housing where they lived took dogged commitment, but that was a quality mr. Williams students had in abun dance. Abundance. What they did not possess for the most part was the ability to understand what he was saying. Welcome to new comer class, the teacher said again, taking care to enunciate each word deliberately. My name is mr. Williams. What is your name . Where are you from . Mr. Williams often said things twice. It gave his lessons a singsong quality. The students continued to stare back at their teacher without speaking. The technical term for what was happening is preproduction which in ab demick literature academic literature is also known as the silent period. The vast majority of secondlanguage learners begin in a quiet, receptive phase, able to produce hardly any english themselves even as their brains furiously absorb everything being said by their teacher. So thats the opening of the book where you meet this amazing man whos the main character in the book. He goes on to acquire a total of 22 kids by the end of the school year. He starts out with a small number because these families are arriving all throughout the year from other countries. South high school serves a very large number of Refugee Families and immigrant families as well as neighborhood kids, and the teacher is because its a very beginnerlevel english class, he has the highest concentration of refugee can kids in his room of anybody in the building. And the kids who arrive in his room arrive from all of the countries that are producing the greatest number of refugees from all around the world. Ultimately, his room actually comes to map the refugee crisis almost perfectly. So the top sender of refugees to the United States is the democratic republic of congo, and he gets four students from that country by the years end. Another very large sender of refugees to the u. S. Is burma, and he gets two students from burma. Many Refugee Families are coming from iraq because they allied themselves with us during the iraq war, and home is no longer safe for them. He gets a family from iraq, two sisters from iraq and so on until he has 22 students who speak 14 different languages and use five different alphabets. [laughter] and its his job to teach all of them english by the end of the school year as best he can. Hes an amazing guy. I was in awe of him. I think hes a hero. Maybe an unsung hero because i dont think we celebrate teachers enough, and english as a second language teachers or as its called in his school, english language acquisition teacher. Maybe they deserve even more praise, and maybe theyre even less celebrated than regular teachers. Their colleagues who are teaching in english to students who understand english. [laughter] so eddie teaches in english, and hell use spanish as well in his room when he needs to. He doesnt speak the other languages that the kids arrive, you know, knowing, and his job is to teach them english nonetheless. And he does this by immersing them in an english environment and using all kinds of ways to communicate to them, you know, the terms that they need and the language that they need. So, you know, right after he says nice to meet you, he starts pantomiming with another paraprofessional in his room shaking hands saying nice to meet you, these are our greetings. Pretty soon hes teaching them basic verbs in english, and hes pantomiming running, hes saying running, and hes pantomiming throwing, and hes saying throw, and the kids start knowing what running and throwing, those words are. And he builds from there to the point where these kids, by the end of the school year, will know basic english in the present tense and quite a bit of basic english in the past tense. And the fact that they can learn so much over the course of this school year is, i think, an extraordinary, extraordinary thing. I had the chance to spend a year inside this room with eddie and his students. Thats really unusual. You dont usually have a journalist sitting in a classroom. It was unusual for me, it was unusual for the students, and it was unusual for the teacher. It was easy for me to explain to eddie what i hoped to do in his room and why i was there and the principal, everybody who invited me in, and it was really hard for me to explain to the students why i was there. I could not walk up to them and say is, hi, im a journalist. Id like to write a book about kids learning english who have just arrived here. And it was important to me, you know, that the kids know that there was a journalist in the room. [laughter] decide if they wanted to be in the book or not. And i only wrote about the kids who wanted to share their stories. Ultimately, i actually had to hire 14 different interpreters, one for every Home Language in the room. And meet with the kids individually at lunchtime to say, hey, im a journalist, ive been invited into your school, and im really honored to get the chance to write about the work that your teachers doing. And if youd like to share your story with me, i would love to hear it, and you dont have to, and its your choice, and youre going to want to ask your parents, lets involve them in the conversation. And tell me if this is something you want to do. In 14 different languages with the amazing interpreters who helped me explain myself to the kids. And as well as a journalist, im a mom. I have a 15yearold son, same age really as these kids were in this room. And, you know, i, i wanted to do the best job i could as a journalist writing about this amazing year where they were going to learn so much english. But i have to say also just as a mom, i felt maternal towards them and thought how would i feel if there was a journalist in my sons classroom trying to interview him at lunchtime . [laughter] so, you know, it was important to me that the kids decide if they wanted to be in the book and that i do the with best job i could do the best job i could giving them the chance to make that decision. Ultimately, 21 of the 22 kids in the room wanted to share their stories. Yea. Yes. [laughter] yea. I think, you know, i think they wanted to talk to me because they were well aware that theres a lot of conversation about refugees and Refugee Resettlement and immigration, and they felt like they wanted to be better understood. And they wanted people to know how grateful they were to get to live in a safe country and how much it meant to them to be invited here and how different it was to live where they felt safe compared to some of the places where theyd been loving before. Theyd been living before. And, you know, that learning establish was hard [laughter] english was hard, but they knew it was really important, and they were doing the best they could, and they were learning as fast as they could. And they wanted people to know that they really wanted to become americans. And they werent quite sure exactly how to do that yet. They were still working on, like, what do you wear to school in america . Because maybe in some of the countries where they were from, like burma, its really hot, and you only ever wear flipflops. And there was a young woman who wore flipflops to school one day in a snowstorm because shed never worn any other kind of shoes before. And they were, they had a hot to get used to living here from how to dress appropriately for cold weather [laughter] you know, what cupid of food the calf what kind of food the cafeteria servedded which maybe they werent used to, getting used to this new school, big urban, American High School environment. Their families, their parents working new jobs here, sometimes kinds of work they hadnt done before. Some of the families had made their living subsistence farming, but when they came here, they were finding jobs maybe working as janitors, cleaning a hotel. They were working in our meat packing plants, and they were working sometimes as maids. They were doing whatever work they could do sometimes with limited english to support their families so that their kids could be in School Learning english. And hopefully someday getting a high school degree, and hopefully someday can getting a College Degree and assimilating fully into our society. And the parents knew maybe, maybe they werent going to learn as much english as their kids, but they could work while their kids were doing this hard work of learning english and creating the pathway for a full education here and a different kind of life here. So wanting to get to know these kids better, i after i had the chance to introduce myself to them and say a little bit about this, i invited them to tell me whatever they wanted to about their journey here. And the kids, you know, we typically spent just one lunch period, maybe half an hour. And when they shared that theyd had difficult experiences in their home country or their home country had been at war in some fashion, that there had been armed conflict, i said, you know, maybe i could meet your parents if they want to talk to me. And id love to hear more. Probably not during your school day. If you want to invite me home, feel free. And a couple families took me up on that, which was an amazing experience. And i was invited into a congolese familys home and an iraqi familys home. And i got to know, also, a family from burma a little bit. I spent, i spent the most time with the congolese family and the iraqi family. So what i write about in the book is a year in this classroom and this amazing teacher teaching all these kids english and also the journey that the congolese family had in their first year in america and the journey that the iraqi family had in their first year in america. Which, you know, its an extraordinary thing trying to assimilate to our society, any new society. I would have the same experience if i was trying to assimilate in their society. Its super challenging. And i was really it was a gift to me that these families would share their first year in america with me because it was not an easy time. And i was watching them struggle to figure it all out. The congolese family, the parents and some older siblings found work really quickly. I mean, they were economically selfsufficient in three months time, and i just couldnt believe it. I thought that was a feat like nothing id ever seen really. I think we have this idea that refugees come here and take subsidies, and thats actually not how it works. You know, they, they get a onetime grant when they arrive. Its like 1,000 a person. That goes really quick. It usually pays their rent for maybe a month or two. But theyre supposed to be economically selfsufficient within 90 days, three months. And, you know, its just i dont even, i dont even know how they do it. I mean, i [laughter] i got to watch, and im still saying i cant believe that was possible. And, you know, with the iraqi family, again, just the strength of this family. Ill say a little bit about their journey here. So this family, the girls names in the classroom, jacqueline and miriam, they arrived speaking arabic, a language that is written from right to left, the opposite direction that we use, with a different alphabet, a language that structures sentences differently. They put verbs at the beginning of their sentences, subjects later. We do the opposite. [laughter] jacqueline and miriam arrived trying to figure out english, and i could tell that they were grappling with a lot. I didnt know what it was, but they had trauma this their background in their background and they, of course, had not only lived through the iraq war where their dad tried to help the u. S. Military and then was targeted, you know, for being our ally, and they had to flee from baghdad when they were very young. They went seeking a safe home in a country they thought would be a good place to live, and that was syria. And they moved to damascus, ask within just a few years and within just a few years, they lived through the civil war there. When their father was unable to find work in damascus, he thought he needed to go back to iraq, but when he did, he have beenished, and they he vanished, and they dont know what happened to him. And theyre pretty sure he was maybe killed. Again, because he had cooperated with the u. S. Military. And Jack Jacqueline and miriam e still struggling to put behind them the loss of their father, but also everything they witnessed while they were living in damascus. They lived through difficult things. And i knew not to ask the girls about this when they alluded to it. Their mom did tell me, you know, their story. And, thankfully, i had the help of an interpreter fluent in arabic and kurdish. Shes a kurdish woman who speaks both those languages. And not only was i able to forge a really close bond with jacqueline and miriam and their mom a single mom struggling to make it on her own here with limited english and this great transition, you know but i also got very close to the interpreter as well who helped me get to know this family and taught me a lot about middle eastern culture that i didnt know. They invited me we generally connected over meals. They invited me over for many, many meals. They fed me so much food that i started trying to bring them food too. I didnt want to just be taking things from them all the time and not giving back. And i one of the things we did which i loved was they like to eat sitting on the floor. So i, of course, like to eat sitting at a table. [laughter] and id never but this is like a traditional way to celebrate if somebody specials in your home and you want to honor them, you sit on the floor. And we did that a lot. I thought that was hilarious and unusual. I really admired their moms grit and determination and the fact that she was able to get he