What struck Maria Rivera most about Van Tran when they first met in 2004, was the girl’s irrepressible generosity.
Tran, then 14, had been in the U.S. for less than a year and spoke only a few words in English, yet she welcomed Rivera into her family home with tea and homemade soup. It was humbling to be reached out to, Rivera said, when she was on a mission to reach out to the Trans.
Just days earlier Van’s older brothers and mother had been hospitalized following a car wreck in Winslow, leaving Van and her father to keep the family together. Rivera had been sent to offer charity from the community.
“But all she wanted to know was what I needed,” Rivera said.
With that same generosity, Tran has given back to the school community ever since, said Rivera, Bainbridge School District’s Multicultural Education Coordinator.
As co-chairs of the High School’s United Brothers and Sisters Club, Tran and Korean-born classmate Eui Min Jung, who graduate with the BHS class of 2008 today, have championed diversity and cultural awareness at Bainbridge High School.
Though both graduates may, out of modesty deny it Rivera said they leave an easier path for minority students to follow.
“They don’t think they are leaders,” she said. “But my God, they are the leaders in this school.”
When Jung and Tran enrolled in Bainbridge schools, both had been in the U.S. for only a few months, and neither spoke much English.
Tran’s family moved from the Dong Nai province of Vietnam to Silverdale in 2003. She had a rough time adjusting in the public school, and Tran’s aunt, who was working on Bainbridge, convinced the family to move out to the island.
Tran said she was already disillusioned with America when they made the move.
“When I lived in Silverdale, a lot of kids weren’t nice to me at school,” she said. “I thought it would be the same on Bainbridge.”
She found things were easier on Bainbridge, where Woodward Middle School teachers were open and helpful. But her classmates mostly ignored her, she said. The language gap walled her in with silence.
“I didn’t know English well at all,” she said. “I would see them talking, I would just look at them and not know what was going on.”
When the car accident happened in January of 2004, the outpouring of support from the community was both heartening and troubling for Tran, because resist accepting charity.
“It really helped, but at the same time we felt that we owned something from them,” Tran said.
Tran was enrolled in the district’s English as a second language program. She studied hard, and listened to American music, mostly country western, to help her grasp the language. Slowly the wall broke down.
“When I got to know more people on Bainbridge and talked to them I began to feel that somehow I belonged here,” she said.
Jung said he felt welcomed on Bainbridge when his family arrived on July 3, 2004, the summer before his freshman year of high school.
“It was neat because it was the day before Independence Day,” Jung said. “We went and watched the parade, and people were throwing candy.”
Jung’s family had lived in an apartment amid a small city in Korea, and he was used to busy streets and close quarters.
On the island the constant calm and empty streets were strange at first for Jung. Everything seemed very spread out, and even the sky seemed wider and the stars seemed bigger, he said.
As with Tran, language presented a gulf between Jung and other students, though he had taken English classes in Korea.
“I knew grammar, and some words, but I couldn’t speak much, and listening was hard,” he said. “I was very afraid to speak up at first.”
In his first P.E. class, he found could connect with classmates without saying much by simply playing beside them.
He enjoyed soccer and was introduced to tennis, a sport he competed in on the high school team all four years.
He excelled in math club competition and with a knack for computer programming, put countless hours into updating the high school’s website.
Both Jung and Tran were brought into United Brothers and Sisters by Rivera, the club’s longtime advisor.
Rivera said when the club began 15 years ago, diversity at Bainbridge High School was embodied by the large Phillipino Native American population.
It was those students who formed the group as a way of networking with each other and other students. The club was popular, and white students were frequently members.
Back then, Rivera said, most the students of color weren’t even graduating from high school, let alone considering college.
With the help of the UBS club and focus from parents and administrators, that trend has changed with most minority students now expected to graduate from BHS and go on to college.
Though still a small percentage of the student student body, the face of diversity at the high school is now composed varied mix of nationalities and cultures. BHS is home to students who speak languages ranging from Spanish to Farsi, Russian, Japanese, Italian, Icelandic and Salish Lushootseed.
Non-English speaking students who come to the school often react to their isolation by withdrawing, or acting out, said Karen Vargas, a mentor for UBS members.
“Then they find their way here (to UBS), and they find out how they can change the environment that makes them feel so isolated,” Vargas said.
Today UBS works to change the student environment by spreading awareness about the rich cultures represented in the BHS student body, a mission Jung and Tran carried with vigor.
With fellow club members they helped organize assemblies and poetry contests for Martin Luther King Day, crafted paper “peace cranes” for a Blakely Elementary teacher targeted by anti-semitic graffiti at Blakely Elementary, and joined youth rallies with high schools from around the region.
In an effort to make the school more positive they printed “Caught you being nice” cards that club members would hand out when they spotted students doing a kind act, like opening a door for a classmate or saying something kind.
Rivera admitted the idea sounded a little cheesy to some students, but the cards could be entered for a prize drawing and “everyone likes to be recognized,” she said.
Tran and Jung created a new motto for UBS: “Breaking down barriers, building up community.” The barriers, they said, aren’t just between students of different cultures but also ages. So, UBS organized “mix it up” days that encouraged students of different grade levels to break from their usual cliques and have lunch together.
Both students provided an example for other club members of how to get along with classmates without giving up their own culture. Tran shared views of her native country with classmates through poetry.
“I just wanted to introduce Vietnam to them,” she said.
After four years Jung and Tran’s accomplishments haven’t gone unnoticed.
Tran was recently one of six finalists, chosen from a pool of nominees from 25 western Washington schools, to win a $1,000 “Diversity Makes a Difference” scholarship from the Northwest Asian Weekly of Seattle. Jung and fellow senior Jonathon Potter were selected for the 2008 Faculty Award, given by staff to students who display all around excellence.
After graduation Tran will travel to Vietnam and volunteer at an orphanage for the summer.
In the fall she will attend Central Seattle Community College, a school she chose so she could stay close to her family, and after she hopes to return to Vietnam to work as a tour guide and perhaps start her own orphanage.
This summer Jung will visit Korea for the first time since coming to the U.S. He would like to move back to Korea someday, but first he will study at the University of Washington.
“It will probably something in engineering because I like math and sciences,” he said.
Watching Tran and Jung enjoy a final lunch period in Rivera’s colorful office this week, it would be hard to know that either of the cheerful and articulate students once had trouble finding a place among their peers.
Looking back on their path to graduation, both can offer advice hard learned for the students non-English speaking students to come.
“I wanted to help them, and make sure they were treated fairly, because I was one of them that wasn’t treated fairly,” Tran said, remembering her first days in public school. “I don’t want them to go through the same thing.”