Are They Katrina's Kids or Ours?: The Experience of Displaced New Orleans Students in Their New Schools and Communities

Abstract

Following Hurricane Katrina, thousands of schoolchildren have been scattered across the country and required to work through a wide range of trauma as they simultaneously adjust to new schools, communities, and cultures. Their reception in new schools has been varied, ranging from pity, to support and inclusion, to vilification. It has included the work of wonderfully dynamic teachers who have adapted to challenging new classroom circumstances, the shortsightedness of schools that did not adequately account for the presence and needs of new students, and even some teachers and administrators who have openly expressed dislike for their newest students.

This article uses examples from the challenging year of teaching, learning, and healing that has occurred in Austin, Texas to discuss the complex and varied impacts of forced dispersal upon African-American schoolchildren who are now attending schools across the country. This article provides a picture of children, teachers, and community in adjustment, including examples of effective practices in working with children dispersed from New Orleans and examples of ineffective or racist responses to new students that have been present and that we must counter.

This article is grounded in the perspective and methods of a school and community engaged educational anthropologist. It reflects over 100 hours of work in a shelter immediately following Hurricane Katrina, and a subsequent school year of work in Austin public schools working on issues of black student achievement—including the achievement of close to 1,000 students and 10,000 families from New Orleans. It builds upon Katrina related work published in Transforming Anthropology and forthcoming in Perspectives on Urban Education.

Keywords:

• black students
• Hurricane Katrina
• student resilience
• teaching

Notes

Children and families came from throughout the Gulf Coast region, but the overwhelming majority was from New Orleans.

Foster, Kevin Michael (2006) “Austin Shelter Notes,” Transforming Anthropology 14(1):26–30.

The Austin Business Journal reported that the city was reimbursed 100% for its expenditures. “All together, Austin estimates it spent $22.65 million on its Katrina response—$5.47 million of that for emergency shelter operations. The total includes: $2.5 million in payments to vendors, $2.9 million for labor, use of city vehicles and related items, $17.1 million for interim housing for more than 1,200 households, covering everything from $12 million in rent to $500,000 in moving expenses. The Federal Emergency Management Agency fully reimbursed the city for those costs through public assistance grants from the Division of Emergency Management in the Texas Governor's Office.” The city was not reimbursed for lost business in the Convention Center. Austin Business Journal 10/10/05, 10/28/05).

For instance, teacher and researcher Jeff Duncan-Andrade notes the presence of this practice in a California school he has worked with for several years (2005).

In following up on this with others, several have shared that Earl's claim is not at all unreasonable. Former New Orleans teachers who now live in Austin, along with social workers and others from New Orleans, have all met this part of the story with no surprise, and rather with sad shakes of affirmation to the possibility that some elementary school children (of whatever race) were subject to cursing by their teachers in their old schools (not to mention the readily evident thorough under-education that is reflected by the abysmal academic levels of many of our newest students).