Wisdom started off his semester in Mrs. Jenner’s English class with excitement. However, as time went by, he became less enthusiastic about the class. The teacher never gave him corrections and never encouraged his strengths. There were often miscommunications between the two and that created tension. Wisdom didn’t want to inform Mrs. Jenner’s about his ELL experiences. However, as time went by he wondered how that would affect his academics. Ironically, despite Wisdom’s desire to keep his refugee past life in private, he was also frustrated that Mrs. Jenner’s didn’t extend an invite for him to write about his personal life. He thought the opportunity of writing about being a refugee would disclose his past. Eventually, Wisdom decided to invite his old ELL teacher to a meeting with all of his teachers to talk about his past association with the ELL program. This did create a truce between Wisdom and Mrs. Jenner’s.
From this research and Wisdom’s story, one can conclude that teachers ought to consider more closely how young refugees have been influenced emotionally, academically and socio-politically. One can see that by writing about their experiences, they can either feel more constrained or they are motivated to do better.