The Student Body Eclectic

On a Minneapolis fall morning, arriving buses plant casual-Friday-dressed workers along Hennepin Avenue. At most stops, jean-jacketed and khakied women and polo-shirted men stream out, but the passengers who disembark at 730 Hennepin are a different variety. They run the gamut of fashion, from dress shirts and polished shoes to hijabs to basketball jerseys to “Mean People Suck” T-shirts. As they drift into their building just a spitball’s distance from First Avenue, they attract the attention of the Hennepin Avenue crowd, which is exactly what Joel Gibson wants.

Gibson is executive director of Lincoln International High School, an alternative school whose student body is made up exclusively of immigrants and refugees. Established in 1997, Lincoln receives funding from the district; students find out about the school through social service referrals and word of mouth. Numbering nearly three hundred, the students hail from a dozen countries, though most are from Ecuador, Mexico, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Alternative schools like Lincoln are run by organizations that use district money and their own methods to educate at-risk populations. “Once they get the tools they need to fit into society, they will enrich it,” says Gibson. The school raises three hundred thousand dollars beyond the money from the district to have the small class sizes and individual attention that will allow students to learn English, get job skills, and become collaborative members of society.

On the wall of the five-story school, “My Life” posters plot the paths of individual students from the countries where they were born to their arrivals in Minnesota. One story begins on a farm in Mexico and ends at an after-school job loading trucks at a fruit distributor. Another student tells of being born in Mogadishu to a businessman father, then fleeing to live among his grandmother’s camels in northern Kenya before finally coming to Minneapolis.

The past year was one of adjustment to the new location: new buses to take and more stairs to climb. During passing time, the school explodes with the sounds of slamming lockers—a novelty at the new site, as is hot lunch. The school newspaper brags about the new basketball team and, though many of the students’ cultures disapprove of dating, the school has organized a prom.

Many of Lincoln’s students have lived through war, terror, and other intense traumas. Some have arrived without parents and other family members, and about a third have never before attended school. They are older students, most between eighteen and twenty-two years old, with mustaches, marriages, and children. For some, the main objective can simply be learning to sit through classes for an entire day, along with learning English; for others, it involves navigating more complex social norms.

Suad Mahammud, a Somalian seventeen-year-old clad in a stylish turquoise skirt and hijab, is happy to rave about the school. Because she had attended school and learned English in Uganda, after her family had left Somalia, some friends and family were puzzled by her decision to attend the “immigrant school.” However, for Mahammud the decision was part of exercising her right, in America, to make choices. She wanted to attend a school where there is no violence, where students listen to and respect teachers. “We are all here for one goal,” she says.

There is an overwhelming sense among the students that despite their efforts, they and their school are going unnoticed. While the students who are in the country as refugees feel more secure than their immigrant classmates, there is still a permeating sense of otherness. The school’s downtown location is a step toward a solution to that segregation, as are planned internships and other interactions with the downtown business community. One of the reasons the school moved downtown from South Minneapolis last fall was to bring visibility to this hidden population. Even the orange and blue awnings that flutter outside the building were chosen not to show the school’s colors, but for their eye-catching combination. “If people would come in and check it out, they would see that we are trying to be the best people we can be,” says Mahammud.

Mahammud’s history teacher is screening All Quiet on the Western Front. Mr. Pilgram is the classic high school history teacher, dressed in a blue cardigan and a tie printed with a world map. An American flag-print Puffs box sits on his desk. “They’re burning books here,” he says, pointing to the movie screen. “Book?” one girl puzzles. Her classmate turns to her, whispers “B-o-o-k,” and opens and closes her hands in the international symbol for book.


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