Dah Bu gathered her kindergartners on the rainbow carpet and asked them to identify the letter she held in her hand.
“K!” chorused her students.
K is the first letter in Karen, she told her students, writing the word on the board. And it’s also the first letter of kindergarten.
For two kindergarten classes at Wellstone Elementary School, it was the first day not only of school but also for a new program in the St. Paul Public Schools: an elementary program in Karen language and culture.
For now the elementary program is just for kindergarten, but the district plans to expand it to other grade levels in the future. The program, taught by Karen teachers, will be primarily in English with Karen language and culture instruction several days per week.
The new kindergarten program comes after the St. Paul district introduced Karen classes in high schools last fall. School officials believe the courses are the first Karen language instruction offered at any public school district in the United States — a major step for a refugee community that had been largely denied the opportunity to learn its native language in schools since a 1962 Burmese military coup.
The new regime banished the Karen language from public schools in the country now called Myanmar. Since that time, many Karen people have learned their language at church or in refugee camps.
The rollout of high school Karen classes last fall in St. Paul was “successful beyond our wildest dreams,” said Sarah Schmidt de Carranza, the district’s executive director of multilingual learning. District officials had hoped 150 kids might sign up; more than 300 did.