Summer classes ended about two weeks ago for many of Muhammad Tayyeb's eight children, but they are already asking him when they can go back to class. They want to see their friends and teachers and they're eager to keep practicing English.
The Tayyeb children are some of more than 200 Afghan students who have enrolled in Minneapolis Public Schools within the past year. Many of their families fled Afghanistan in the days and weeks after Taliban forces seized control of the capital city of Kabul in August 2021.
Tayyeb, the district's cultural facilitator and Afghan support head, works as a translator and liaison to these 50 or so families, and he helped spread the word about the Newcomer Summer High School program — a new offering for Minneapolis high-schoolers new to the United States. Afghan students made up the majority of the 70 or so high schoolers in the program held at South High School.
"It's a phenomenal program," said Tayyeb, who sent his three oldest children. They'd learned some basic English in school in Afghanistan, but not enough to be fluent. "It's a big challenge for them, but they surprise me with how fast they are learning," he said.
Betsy Winzig, one of the program's teachers, was also impressed by how much more confident the students became in their English skills. By the final days of the monthlong program, they were chatting with each other in English and even using the idioms and colloquialisms they picked up from their teachers. (Winzig realized she must utter "oh boy" pretty often based on how quickly her students started saying it.)
"They have so much joy and energy to learn," Winzig said. "That's what all teachers want from their students."
The program included weekly field trips, including a visit to Fort Snelling and another to the Rum River. Students went canoeing, pitched a tent and learned how to start a fire with the help of a Boy Scout troop.
Maryam Sharokhi, a 10th-grader at Edison High School, said she hopes she can apply her skills on a family camping trip someday soon.
