Dakota Digest
Afghan Student Thrives in School, Struggles for a Diploma
Air Date: 11/17/2009
By Charles Michael Ray
We'll call her Miriam. But it's not her real name. She made it to America as a foreign exchange student from Afghanistan. The Taliban have placed death threats on students who travel here. So we're using a false name to protect the identity of her and her family.
Miriam is enrolled at Rapid City Stevens taking mostly senior classes. This fall, shortly after she landed in Rapid City, the Taliban took over her hometown, bombed her former school, and forced her family to flee their home. Despite this, she's still getting straight A's at Rapid City Stevens high school.
Miriam wants to go to college, but the war in Afghanistan could compromise her chances of getting a diploma back home. Meanwhile, Rapid City school officials have told her that as a foreign student she has little chance of graduating here. She's trying to beat the odds.
Miriam is a practicing Muslim, she wears a burqa or a traditional head scarf, it leaves her face uncovered. Miriam has been in the state's now for three months, and as a young woman she says it feels liberating. "Like there is no discrimination," Miriam says. "I never face any problems of being a Muslim girl, like everything is good." She says, "I like it."
The Taliban are targeting schools in Afghanistan that girls attend. Miriam says they've killed a number of female students. In some cases they've poised the well water in girls schools. Back home Miriam went to school every day in fear. "They had a warning that when they come to the city they will kill all the girls in our school, and I was very afraid of that," says Miriam. "I'm glad I came here," she adds.
Despite living in fear - Miriam was a top student in Afghanistan. She was the only girl out of more than 900 applicants to qualify for this foreign exchange scholarship. Now in America, Miriam is still acing her classes. Her last report card shows a 4.0 GPA. She's not taking a light load; trigonometry and chemistry are her favorite subjects.
" I have to try hard, she says. For Miriam life is not all about fun so she says, "We have to have some challenges in life." Miriam says " I have U.S. History and Civics and English that are the requirements of my program - all of my other classes are challenging classes and I love it.
Tom Keck is Miriam's math teacher. He's impressed with her thirst for knowledge. "What I like about her is her love of learning. I mean it's truly a love of learning," he says. "She is not trying to learn to get a job, not to get through the class. She's learning the material because she absolutely loves what happens when she learns," says Keck.
But Miriam's ability to concentrate on her learning was disrupted on election day in Afghanistan. The Taliban made good on one of their threats. They attacked her school, firing two rockets into it. She read about the attack on the internet, then called home, worried about her family.
"I just cried for an hour," she says. " It was so frustrating for me. It just doesn't feel good for me. I feel bad. I think about all my friends and my sister," says Miriam.
Her family made it though the attack and they've since fled their home to the safety of the capitol in Kabul. Besides worrying about her family, she's also concerned the war could make graduating from high school in Afghanistan difficult. So Miriam wants to try for a diploma from Stevens High School in Rapid City, but has a foreign student, this is hard to do.
"We've sort of hit a brick wall," says Mary Beth Neilson one of Miriam's host mothers. Neilson says school officials told her that Miriam can't graduate from Rapid City Stevens despite her good grades. "They sat down with her transcripts from Afghanistan and compared them with the scholastic requirements here and they don't match up," she says. " Because it's a different system, it's a points system not a credit system," says Neilson.
School officials won't comment on the specifics of this case. They says they must respect the safety and privacy of their students. Katie Bray is the Assistant Superintendent. She says only a small number of foreign students in the last ten years have met the strict requirements for graduation. Bray says the rules can not be bent. "Part of our credibility of our high school is that we have to be able to stand by our diploma and say the students who earned this diploma actually did take all this coursework and we can verify that," Bray says.
A few English courses and a World History class are the main obstacles for Miriam here. There is a chance that she could take the missing classes on-line, through the state's Virtual High School but, on-line classes are expensive and cost more than Miriam can afford. Despite these obstacles she hasn't given up. "I was very disappointed that they're not getting me a diploma," she says. But she adds "I have hope still. Still I have hope in my heart."
The president of the Rapid City School Board Wes Storm says Miriam shouldn't give up. He says might get into college if she does well on entrance exams. "If she would take the ACT's or SAT's and score on those like I think she would score she'd be automatically admitted to most universities," says Storm,
Miriam has a dream of studying medicine at a university in the United States. "I want to go to college - I want to know more - learn more and so i can go back to Afghanistan and serve people," says Miriam.
Miriam is hoping that the education system in America can help her achieve this dream. She and her host mother Mary Beth Nelison plan to go before the Rapid City School Board to plea her case.
For information on how to become a host parent for a foreign Exchange student in the Black Hills you can call the Nikkole Abbas with the local student foreign exchange program at (605)-716-7802
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