Teaching Diversity

Local educator, author and graduate student Ia Xiong takes pride in teaching the distinction between cultures

By CHHUN SUN

At first, Ia Xiong hated school. And it’s hard not to blame her. She wasn’t considered the brightest kid in class. She was slow to understand the subject matter. So she tried to avoid class, but couldn’t go very far, especially when class was held in a refugee camp in Thailand, where she lived.

And then there were the slaps on the hand, punishment for not answering correctly.

“I don’t like that, either,” she would say to her teacher. “I don’t get it, I just don’t get it.” But that excuse didn’t get her far.

Then, at age 12, she came to America with her family, a storybook dream of seeking a better life and escaping her war-torn country. America was where she was told she could go to school for 10 years, at no cost. It was a bluff at the time. But it was motivation to learn everything as quickly as she could.

Xiong found learning easy and her teachers were supportive of her efforts in learning another language.

“When I started going to school, no one embarrassed me,” she said with a smile. “In fact, no one hit me.”

Years later, school no longer gives her the jitters. How could it?

She goes to school everyday as the vice principal of Centennial Elementary. At the school, she’s an instructional leader for about 800 students, including Hmong children like her, guiding them through the same adjustments she had to endure.

Not only does Xiong discipline student, but she also teaches them the importance of diversity. And this is one of the topics she will share today at 6 p.m. in the Henry Madden Library as part of the Friends of the Madden Library program.

She will also discuss her achievements.

In 1992, Xiong became the first Hmong-American to teach in the Clovis Unified School District at Sierra Vista Elementary. While she was teaching, she found the inspiration – from her cultural background and the Hmong children she knew – to write a book called “The Gift: The Hmong New Year,” a way to let Hmong children know the importance of their culture.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree at Fresno State and her master’s degree in school administration at Fresno Pacific University, she transferred to the Fresno Unified School District in 1997. Now she’s earning her doctoral degree at Fresno State, hoping to fulfill a goal to teach at the college level, because she said she would eventually not have the energy to discipline children much longer.

“I can do it now as a young person,” she said, “but when you get older, that energy is going to dwindle, so I need another door to build information. I need an open door that I can access.”

She can access this door of opportunity because of the lessons she learned from her parents.

What she remembers from her childhood is the constant moving. She was taught early on to wake up at the sound of her parents’ voices, because nothing was guaranteed in the refugee camp. She has learned that when emergencies arrive, a family needs to stick together – a cultural tradition that has carried over to the U.S.

Those are the kinds of differences she has noticed between American and Hmong traditions.

Her parents always told her that by the time she turns 20, she should be ready to start her own life.

That meant a family, an education, a job and a family. Those were the expectations.

And she’s met them.

Even now, at 35 years old with all her achievements, her cultural expectations are still catching up to her.

“To the Western culture, it’s not old at all,” she said. “But to the Eastern culture, you’re hitting middle age. That’s one example of the differences.”

But like in her childhood, she keeps moving.

The children who she sees every day is what makes her move forward, even though she works 10- to 14-hour days. She said she spends most of her days disciplining kids, resolving fights and behavioral problems. But, she said, seeing a child change in front of her eyes is worth her efforts.

“It’s self-esteem for us, telling us we’re doing something good,” she said. “In a job that requires such long hours, you have to like your job. I do it for self-esteem or for something else other than money. If you calculate the work money-wise, it doesn’t compare.”

That’s one attitude she’d like to carry back home one day.

She has visited Thailand three times since settling in America.

The first time was “to touch base with my soul,” she said. The second was to get a close look at the differences in the Hmong culture from the one in the U.S. The third was to take an inside look at the educational system.

With that attitude and her expertise in education, the chance to go back home and teach may not be too far away.