Principal Todd Quarnberg, right, testifies before the Utah State Legislature on the impact of refugees in schools. PHOTO COURTESY OF TODD QUARNBERG

At times, you may have asked yourself if writing for NASSP is worth it. I want you to know the answer is a resounding yes.

A few months ago, I sent a blog post, “School Leadership Amid the U.S. Immigration Debate,” to NASSP. What I didn’t know or expect was that people would value my opinion. I read content regularly from NASSP and the Utah Association of Secondary School Principals, where I serve as the state coordinator. As a school leader, I value all this information, but I often wonder if those outside of our profession know about our concerns or even care about them.

I wrote the post because I was having a moment where I felt the need to stand on my soapbox to see if anyone would listen. My post was about the increasing number of refugees coming to our schools—and my school in particular—at rates that make it difficult to accommodate their educational and personal needs. I made it clear in the post that I didn’t want to talk about the border. I wanted to talk about the students sitting in our classrooms trying to learn.

Soon after NASSP published my post in April, someone in the great state of Utah heard I had gotten on my soapbox, and they Googled my name. The post came up in the search, which led to the Utah State Legislature inviting me to discuss the impact of refugees in our schools. 

Putting Names to Faces

One day in June, I spoke before state lawmakers on this issue. I decided to put names and faces to the foreign-born students “invading” our state, as some idealogues have put it. I held up photos of our students who are asylum seekers, refugees, and those who are undocumented, and showed them to our elected officials. It’s easy to demonize people who are undocumented, so I decided I would show the faces of the students I was referring to.

I could not have received a warmer welcome. Our legislators listened and asked a lot of questions. However, one question caught me off guard: “Why was I so passionate about this issue?” I immediately knew what to say because my why in this case has been a source of guilt from my time as an elementary school student. 

The Vietnam War impacted me in a very real and shameful way in elementary school. I remember the day in fourth grade when I saw the first refugees from Vietnam in my school. There was no introduction; they were simply placed in our classrooms as new students. In the early 1970s, there were hundreds of refugees who were brought into our community in Fillmore, UT, but no one understood why they came. I remember the many fights and the bullying the Vietnamese students faced because they were different.

The students in my high school today are refugees from Venezuela. They are proud of who they are and where they come from.

As children, we didn’t know our new classmates had seen family members killed right in front of them. We didn’t know they had left other family members back in an oppressive country. We didn’t know that their relatives were being punished for supporting the cause for freedom and that they ultimately lost. Looking back, I wish we had been told why they were there. I wish that we as students had welcomed them to our country. I wish we would have treated them better, and I wish I didn’t have the personal guilt remembering the injustice and intolerance toward these refugees. I didn’t physically fight them as a boy, but I didn’t do anything to protect them either. I didn’t try to teach them our culture, and I certainly did not want to learn about theirs. As we grew, they didn’t participate in our school band, play on our football teams, or attend games or dances through high school. I have tried to justify my reaction because I was only nine years old. 

I hope you will never live with this guilt. 

I remember my Vietnamese classmates graduating with our class eight years later after arriving in our country, and I have not seen them since that day. I do, however, remember their names, and I want to apologize to them: Nam Tran, Hai Nuign, Ncog Sang Vong, Thou Dang, and Tay Phung.

As I write this article, I’m watching the Summer Olympics on TV. With these games, patriotism has found its way back into our hearts, and we are once again proud to wave Old Glory. The wins and the losses that I’ve been watching remind me I am still proud to be part of something special. I’m sure the Vietnamese students in my class took pride in the culture they left across the sea. It has taken years for me to understand what they lost would not be easy to regain. I can’t imagine their anger at leaving everything behind and not being welcomed into our culture. 

This school year, I will not be an educator who does not teach humanity. I will never forget the way my classmates and I acted toward those new students in fourth grade. It wasn’t until I left high school that I looked back and realized I was ignorant and apathetic. I will not stay quiet and allow students to live in ignorance. I will respect their opinions if they have the information they need to make decisions. The students in my high school today are refugees from Venezuela. They are proud of who they are and where they come from. A life of murder, kidnapping, sex trafficking, and violence is what they left behind, and I will be a part of the good they find in America.

Thank you, NASSP for publishing my thoughts on what is often a divisive topic. For school leaders reading this article, please know that I want to listen and learn from you. What are you doing to help students who are refugees in your schools? What are your thoughts? What mistakes have you made?  What have you learned? And where do we go from here?

Todd Quarnberg is the principal of Herriman High School in Herriman, UT, and the state coordinator of the Utah Association of Secondary School Principals.