Hard work pays off for Somali student

Girl could not read or write in her native tongue, or speak English, 6 years ago

SAN DIEGO — Amina Musa heard the news from a teacher she encountered in the hallway at school just before spring break She had passed the California High School Exit Exam and would graduate with her class.

“She came into my classroom. She was jumping up and down,” said Diana LaMar, Musa’s instructor in English as a second language at Crawford High School.

While some students might take passing the exit exam for granted, it was a major accomplishment to Musa. When she came to the United States with her family at age 12, she didn’t speak English, could not read or write in her native language and had no math skills beyond counting to 10.

Now Musa, 18, will be the first female Somali Bantu student to graduate from the school, said Amberley Middleton of the International Rescue Committee’s Students Plus Program at Crawford.

One of the keys to Musa’s success was her dedication, Middleton said. In order to catch up with her peers, who were starting middle school while she was still struggling with concepts being taught to kindergartners, Musa took tutoring sessions, went on field trips and enrolled in after-school programs.

“Amina came after school basically every day for four years,” Middleton said.

Carl Munn taught Musa in his math classes for two years. Munn recalled how she frequently came to his classroom for extra help, staying as long as three hours to improve her skills.

Musa, who has six brothers and two sisters, lives with her family in North Park. Her father works at Lindbergh Field, greeting passengers and handling luggage, and her mother is studying English.

The family left Somalia because of civil war and spent more than 10 years in refugee camps in Kenya.

“It was like a whole new thing to me, I was scared,” Musa said of her first days in sixth grade in San Diego.

At the time, she said, her stomach would hurt from the unfamiliar food, and she would sit in class with no idea of what the teacher was saying.

She moved on to middle school the following year and entered an intensive language program.

In high school, she continued English as a second language classes, both during and after school, and first took the exit exam as a sophomore.

Last year, Musa said, she went home and cried when she found out she had failed to earn a passing mark on the test. Her mother comforted her and told her to keep trying.

So after doing her after-school classroom work, Musa would study for the test on her family’s computer.

Munn said many non-native English speakers struggle with the exit exam because it requires strong English skills, even on the math portion of the test.

Now Musa serves as an inspiration to refugee students, volunteering to work in Crawford’s new-arrival center. In addition to English, Musa speaks Kugwaza, her native language, Swahili, some Somali and two other dialects.

Newly arrived refugees “need to be able to see light at the end of the tunnel,” said Viraj Ward, who oversees the new-arrival center, where her students speak 14 different languages.

Ward said Musa “just jumps in head first. She’s a go-getter and a problem-solver.”

She gets plenty of practice at home.

Her older brother, Haji Auli, 20, said Amina helps her siblings with their schoolwork. Auli graduated from Crawford in 2007 and has attended local community colleges since then. He plans to attend San Diego State University in the fall and study psychology.

When he comes home, Auli said, his sister will ask whether he has homework, and offer him her help.

With her graduation pending, Musa has set her sights on attending nursing school, either at Cal State Dominguez Hills or San Diego City College.

Musa said that after college, she would like to return to Kenya to work.

“When I was in Kenya, too many people died because there were not enough nurses,” she said.

BY JOE TASH, SPECIAL TO THE UNION-TRIBUNE