By Linda Shaw
Seattle Times staff reporter

Floor-length veils wrapped snug around their faces, four Somali girls push their desks together to discuss a worksheet titled: "Who is An American?"

The first answer: Native Americans. The final answer could be themselves.

Somalis are one of the fastest-growing groups of immigrant students in Seattle, the state and the nation - refugees of a civil war that's lasted nearly as long as the girls have been alive.

They've traveled a long way to get here, usually after years in refugee camps in Kenya. Many have an even longer academic journey ahead.

War closed the schools in Somalia before these children were old enough to enroll. Some received instruction at home or private school. But many arrive as teenagers not knowing how to read - in English or their native language.

Their teachers refer to them as "preliterate" - smart and motivated, but new to classroom basics such as the alphabet and how to use scissors.

And they present a special challenge to a school system that has pledged to help all students reach new, higher levels of achievement.

The number of Somali students in Washington has tripled since 1995; last year, 892 were enrolled statewide. In the Seattle School District, 500 Somalis make up the fourth-largest group in English-language programs.

Their introduction to school in Seattle comes through bilingual orientation centers (BOCs) - three elementary and one secondary. The Secondary BOC on Queen Anne Hill opened two decades ago to give immigrants a jump start on English language and American school culture before they join the throngs at regular schools.

But more and more, BOC teachers say they're scrambling to cram a decade of education into a year or less.

The Somali girls huddle over their worksheets, studying each question. They absentmindedly loosen and retie their veils, worn as part of the modesty their Muslim faith requires. When the teacher moves to other groups, they lapse back into their native tongue.

"English, please," the teacher gently reminds them.

High-stakes game of catch-up

A map on the overhead projector shows the streets around the BOC.

"Which road is to the north?" the social-studies teacher asks.

Layla Farah's hand shoots high above her head, which is covered with a graceful beige veil trimmed with lace.

"Which road is to the south?"

Farah's hand shoots up again.

When Farah arrived at the BOC in January, she was so scared that a teaching assistant accompanied her to classes for more than a week. She had to be coaxed to eat.

Now, the 13-year-old sits in the front row, eager to answer every question.

Her favorite subject?

"All," she says.

"When you want to live in the U.S. you can do nothing without speaking English," she adds through a translator.

Somalia, in far East Africa, has a strong oral tradition. Students like Farah pick up spoken English quickly.

"They catch up on language so easily," says Fatima Yonis, a BOC teacher who grew up in Somalia and Arabia.

Reading and writing take more time.

Some research shows it takes four to seven years - longer if the student is older - for non-native speakers to master the English needed in school.

And because students are placed in grades by age, not ability, students like Farah don't have that many years.

They're like a house that's built starting at the top, says Farhiya Omar, a Somali teaching assistant at the BOC.

"They're missing the bottom floor. Even if they try harder and harder and harder, it's impossible."

While some succeed, especially with the help of educated parents, many never catch up.

"If they stay in the U.S. for the rest of their lives, they'll never get a good job," Omar says.

Many students, many needs

Preliterate students, with little or no formal education, are arriving in Washington from Somalia, Sudan, rural Mexico - wherever war or poverty rob children of the chance to go to school - in growing numbers. A similar wave was seen in the 1980s, with the arrival of Hmong and Mien refugees from Southeast Asia.

Nearly 7 percent of all Washington students - roughly 66,000 - are now enrolled in some kind of English-language or bilingual program, up from 4 percent 10 years ago. The schools are legally obligated to educate all school-age residents.

The state prefers students to spend no more than three years in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs. But now a quarter of all ESL students stay in those programs longer. One reason, according to a recent state report, is the number of students who come to those programs with little or no schooling.

Advocates urge that schools do even more to help these students catch up with English-speaking peers.

Schools like the BOC "do a great job with what they have," said Tom Stritikus, an assistant education professor at the University of Washington. But Stritikus says more bilingual education is needed, where students are taught math and other subjects in their native languages, as they learn English.

Most districts offer English-as-a-Second-Language instruction, rather than bilingual instruction, in large part because they serve students who speak a variety of languages. Statewide, 20 districts serve students who speak 20 or more languages; Seattle students speak 59.

The BOC supplements its ESL classes with a cadre of teaching assistants, two of whom speak Somali, available to translate.

When to start regular school?

Farah works on an alphabet book in art class. She is supposed to draw a picture to represent each letter. Instead, she gets absorbed in a children's picture book that her teacher gave her to help show examples of what she could draw.

Farah points to a picture of grapes, and says the word. But for the word "forehead" she guesses "glasses;" the illustration in the book shows a man's face, wearing glasses below a prominent forehead.

Farah sounds out one-syllable words, stumbles on anything longer. She will finish her first semester at BOC in June, and likely will come back in the fall.

Students are supposed to transfer to ESL programs at regular schools after one semester in BOC. Sometimes teachers lobby to keep them longer.

But students with significant schooling gaps often never achieve even a second- to third-grade English reading level before they leave.

"We have to make some really tough decisions," said John Boyd, who runs the Secondary BOC.

ESL programs are designed to pick up where BOC leaves off.

"I know our teachers worry because they care so much about the kids," says Boyd, who worked as head ESL teacher at Denny Middle School for five years. "But I have a pretty high level of confidence in these programs."

But others say immigrant students are often socially isolated in regular schools, and risk lagging further behind.

"What they do is guard themselves by sitting by themselves and being quiet," says Tadesse Gobu, a BOC teacher who also has worked as a high-school teaching assistant. "They're ashamed of receiving help while sitting with American students."

Frustration, dropouts reported

No one officially tracks students after they leave the BOC, but teachers hear that many get frustrated, drop out and get jobs parking cars, driving taxis, staffing nursing homes.

One recent year, almost half of the 20 Somali students at Roosevelt High School left, says Yonis.

She remembers one who had two children and a job, but came to school every day. That determination faltered as the student grew frustrated trying to communicate with her teachers. She dropped out.

"She was really so dedicated," Yonis says. "That's what happens without resources."

Some BOC teachers would like to keep students until they reach a minimal proficiency, no matter how long it takes. Otherwise, "what's the use of having us here?" asks Svetlana Mamedova, who teaches ESL at the school.

But to let even half the secondary BOC students stay longer than the prescribed semester, the Seattle School District would have to operate two schools, says Martin O'Callaghan of the district's bilingual department.

"There are limited resources," he says.

Last year, he had to ask BOC to release some of its most advanced students before the end of a semester to make room for newcomers.

'It's just so new'

The increase in Somali students is likely to continue as the U.S. accepts greater numbers of African immigrants. This year, the limit rose from 18,000 to 20,000; Somalis traditionally make up a third of that group, says Anne Costello, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Refugee Service Center.

When asked what's changed since this new wave of preliterate students arrived, science teacher Young Lee points to the paper she buys - the grade-school kind with red-dotted lines separating the upper- and lower-case letters.

"Basically, we are just going slower," says Mamedova.

It's spring - two months before the end of the semester. Farah and the other students in Mamedova's beginning ESL class still are learning the verb "to be" - drilling "I am," "he is," "they are."

"It dawns on them slowly," Mamedova says. "It's just so new.

"At 15, they know how to hunt, to plow, to survive in the desert... but they've never seen a book."

Linda Shaw can be reached at 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com.