19712: (Hermantin)Sun-Sentinel-Haitian students find school is least of their worries (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Haitian students find school is least of their worries

By Karla D. Shores
Education Writer
Posted March 2 2004

South Florida is where they live. But they walk into Haiti when they open
their front doors. Creole language pours out with tears. Grown-ups make
frantic phone calls to uncles, aunts and grandparents. Frustration fills the
house when no one gets through.

If you're Haitian and young, the past four weeks have dealt a blow to your
feeling of security. For many Haitian children, Sunday's news took away what
security they thought they had left, said Michaelle Pope, principal of
predominantly Haitian North Side Elementary in Fort Lauderdale's Little
Haiti district. They aren't shedding tears for distant relatives. They're
fearing the worst for sisters, mothers, brothers less than 700 miles away.

"My Mommy was crying [Sunday] because I heard yesterday that Haiti don't
have no president," said Dominique Luc, an outspoken, bespectacled
second-grader. "I saw some people holding bottles on the TV. They had knifes
in their hands and a big red paper."

A day after Jean-Bertrand Aristide stepped down as president of Haiti, many
Haitian students don't yet know how to feel. But as students at some of
South Florida's predominately Haitian schools sat in class Monday, confusion
and fear for the welfare of their immediate family consumed them.

Luc, 8, said she is worried about her two older sisters who live in Haiti.
She could not recall the name of the city.

Erna Casseus thinks about her sister, too. Casseus, a senior at Toussaint
L'Ouverture High School for Arts and Social Justice in Delray Beach, said
she recently telephoned her sister, who lives in Port de Paix.

"My sister can't sleep because there's guns. She hears guns all the time,"
said Casseus, 20, who pointedly explains she immigrated to the United States
one year and three months ago. "I'm afraid I can't go back there."

Pope said the Broward school district does not track the number of Haitian
students, but she said more than 90 percent of her 510 students are Haitian
and most of those students have family living in Haiti. A count of Haitian
students in Palm Beach County also was not available Monday.

"For a child of Haitian descent, this may be even more traumatic than the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks," said Pope. "When they go home they may be
hearing, `we don't know where your father is, where your mother is.' These
children may see tears, panic and crisis at home."

Pope said she wants to eventually help her students process the information
about how Aristide's departure could affect their families abroad. But now
is not the time, said Pope, who wants her students to focus only on the
high-stakes Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

"I don't want to raise the dust now. I usually put the Haitian Times
[newspaper] out in the office and the students look at it. In fact, I've
kept that out of the office for the past two weeks," said Pope, who shares
her students' feelings of not knowing. Pope's father, Fort Lauderdale
businessman Austrel Valbrun, is unable to return from a two-week business
trip to Delmas, a neighborhood outside Port-au-Prince.

Pope said she plans to hold a forum for students to express their fears once
FCAT is over.

Political turmoil was just one more burden for students at Toussaint
L'Ouverture High.

While Pope tried to numb the effects of Haiti's crisis in her classrooms,
administrators at Toussaint L'Ouverture urged teachers to engage students in
discussion about Haiti so they could get it out of their system and focus on
FCAT, said Principal Diane Allerdyce.

"We believe [the discussion] empowers them to have academic success, which
prepares them to have an active voice in their community," said Allerdyce.
"They are distracted and upset about what's going on in Haiti and we're
giving them the tools to deal with it."

Most of the Haitian students are immigrants who left Haiti by boat or plane
over the past three years. Many buried their heads in their hands Monday,
literally bowing under pressures of the bad news combined with FCAT, which
begins today for them.

Kemly Dorilas, 20, listened attentively when the class was told that interim
President Boniface Alexandre had been installed at the National Palace.

"So is everything OK there now?" she asked Kemly Dorilas, 20. But as
students filed out of class, they whispered and looked ahead solemnly,
processing the news of Haiti silently.

"I feel bad and I feel sick because my mom is in Haiti and my brother," said
Dorilas, who recently emigrated from Cap-Haïtien, a city swallowed in
violence over two weeks ago in an attack by paramilitary groups. "Even if it
is not my family I feel bad. It's my country."

Karla Shores can be reached at kshores@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4552.












Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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