Vietnamese Portland

Hội Phụ Huynh (HPH) Oral History

The group that is known as Hội Phụ Huynh, or HPH, today first met in November 2016. At that time, the group was an informal advisory board to Vietnamese Dual Language Immersion (VDLI) made-up mainly of community representatives. Today, with the distinction of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, HPH is composed of parents, guardians, teachers, and administrative staff who support the VDLI programs in a growing number of Portland Public Schools. Through a lottery system, the VDLI program accepts two spectrums of students: half native English speaking and half native Vietnamese speaking who are then taught by teachers in both languages. In recent years, the program has fulfilled all open spots. Backed by Portland Public School District and parents, the program is free and the curriculum is consistently reconfigurated.
Dustin Kelley and Dr. Crummé speak with the Cultural Enrichment Committee of Hội Phụ Huynh. Board Members James Luu, Huynh Pool, Bao-Loc Nguyen, Anh Le, and Vân Truong touch on various different topics that align with their own experiences. James Luu, as a former president of HPH and a founding member, discusses the beginnings of the organization, growing to find his fellow board members, and his own account with his son. Huynh Pool brings insights into the classroom from when she volunteered in her daughter’s class and describes projections on the organization’s growth. Bao-Loc Nguyen explains the contention in the community over the development of the Vietnamese language after 1975 and how that affects the curriculum. Anh Le illustrates the importance of the language and apprehension of English speaking families. Vân Truong, an advisor figure for HPH, describes parents’ desire to adjust the curriculum and the Vietnamese dual language program’s struggles in comparison to other organizations.

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Transcript

Dustin Kelley: Hello, my name is Dustin Kelley. I am one of the librarians at Lewis & Clark College’s Watzek Library, and I am joined today by my colleague, Dr. Hannah Crummé. Today is Monday, January 4, 2020, and I have the privilege of meeting with several board members of HPH via Zoom. HPH, Hội Phụ Huynh, is the non-profit organization supporting Vietnamese Dual Language Immersion in Portland Public Schools. I am specifically joined by members of the Cultural Enrichment Committee. Thank you all so much for speaking with me today! I'm curious if you can begin by briefly introducing yourselves. You can say your name, how long you have lived in the Portland area, and when you came to the United States or if you were born here. Who wants to go first?

James Luu: I can go first, Dustin. My name is James Luu. I have been in the Portland area for just about all my life. Thirty-eight years now, thirty-nine in April. I was born in Portland, raised in Gresham which, ironically, my wife, who is not Vietnamese, went to Parkrose High School. I went to Gresham High School. I cannot remember a single Vietnamese person from Gresham High School. I do not think there were any others besides myself. But, my wife went to school with a lot of Vietnamese people so we always had that irony. I went to school at Linfield College in McMinnville, came back to Portland and have settled here. I am a past president of HPH, or Hội Phụ Huynh, as well. I have been a part of the organization since its inception which dates back to a few different years depending on when you want to call it starting. I will pass it to Anh.

Anh Le: Hello everyone, my name is Anh Le. I came to the United States on October 15th of 1992, so twenty-nine years, almost thirty years. I have a daughter in the second grade of the Vietnamese dual language immersion program and it is such a blessing for me to be able to have my daughter attend this program because when I was young, I never thought about the value of the language and the culture, and one day I was introduced to the program, and I thought if we don't keep our language and culture, one day we will have so many Vietnamese kids that do not speak the language or write the language. It would be sad to call ourselves Vietnamese when we do not read or write the language anymore. And if you do not read or write the language anymore, how are you going to know where your culture, your background, where you came from. I got thinking because of my daughter, and because of her I will support the program and be a part of it. I do not think I would do without my daughter so she is really the motivation that keeps me going and I really value this program to make a great community for the whole city of Portland to have an authentic Vietnamese community that is able sustain the language and culture. The beauty of this is it’s immersion, so the other fifty percent of kids in the community gets introduced to Vietnamese as a second language. That to me, the language will break down the gap in barriers within our culture. There would be more level understanding between the community and I'm grateful for the program. I'm also a board director too, that's it. I'm going to pass the torch to Huynh.

[00:04:40]

Huynh Pool: Hello everyone. My name is Huynh Pool, that is my marriage name. My Vietnamese name that was given to me by my paternal grandfather, and my mom added on so it made since, is Huynh Anh The Huynh, because Huynh is always going to be with me even after I get married, that's what my grandpa said. Since I was born a girl, I need to carry my family's name regardless. I don't know how he kind of saw that [laughs] for the future so whenever I go anywhere and it is not like… the schools will sometimes mess up my name and just put like Huynh The Huynh. [Pauses and turns to speak with a child] Sorry about that. So, usually people will ask why I have a first name and last name the same and I said ask my grandfather about it, or ask my mom. It is a conversation starter. I was born in Vietnam and my family came to the United States based on the American Homecoming Act because my mother is half white and half Vietnamese. We did an Ancestry.com DNA test on her and I think before we had to lockdown due to COVID, we found out that there are living relatives from Tennessee, Texas, and California. I have not really reached out to that side yet and I also found out that we have relatives that were lost when my grandma was kidnapped when she was a kid and sold during the popular time of child laundering. And some of those families are up north in Vietnam so that's a very different case. I have been in the United States for thirty years. Not born here, but it feels like I'm born here. When we first immigrated, we came over to Rome, Georgia. I asked my parents, “Why Rome, Georgia?” and they thought it was the closest thing to Italy. That's always a fun joke I make. I was like, "Hey, guess what guys? I grew up in Rome, Georgia because it was the closest thing to Italy, to the Vatican, and to the Pope!" That was the roughest six years growing up because the town was small, it was not diverse. And the people were a bit unforgiving of those who look a little different than them. And then we moved over to Portland in ‘97 and I was culture shocked because I never saw so much diversity in one place that I withdrew, all I did was observe. I was not much into sharing and that stuff. But, I knew what was going on, what was being developed in Portland so when I tell people stories, “Oh, that shop used to be there” or “There used to be this amazing festivities that went on during this year,” and people were like “How long have you been in Portland?” I'm like “You know, like twenty-four years. That's all.” [laughs] Yeah, that is a little brief about me and I'm going to pass it over to Bao.

JL: Huynh is also one of our co-president of HPH this year.

HP: Oh, I forgot to mention, too. This is my first year as one of the co-presidents of Hội Phụ Huynh. I have two other awesome co-presidents. Sorry for leaving that out. Thanks, James.

Bao-Loc Nguyen: Hi, my name is Bao Nguyen. I have been in Portland basically all my life. I was not born here. I was born in the Galang Refugee Camp, but we came here right after I was born. Literally two months after I was born we immigrated here to the United States. Further in my life, I am the newest member on the board. I think I started in September or October when my daughter became of age to go [laughs] to kindergarten. They asked for any volunteers so I signed up right away to join, because this is a program I have been interested in knowing about for awhile, and the first opportunity, I had a kid and made sure they got into the program. [laughs] It has been great. There have been some hiccups but it has been great so far going into the program, understanding where others are coming from, and the slow evolution of the program itself. And with that I want to pass it to Vân.

[00:10:24]

Vân Truong: Hi. I think most of you know me here, but I do not know if all of you know me personally. My name is Dr. Truong Hoang Vân, that’s actually my Vietnamese name. First Vietnamese cultural lesson is that our last name goes first, then middle name, and now first name so I would be called Dr. Vân Truong here, but my real name in Vietnamese would be Dr. Truong Hoang Vân. The Vietnamese community here is really kind of small, so I almost know all of the members right here from one time to another. Like James, I know your parents. Anh, I taught his sister when they were in high school. And then Huynh, I probably know your parents too, but I have been working with her awhile, and Bao is really not new to HPH. When we started the Vietnamese dual language—and I was one of the key co-founders for Vietnamese dual language in PPS [Portland Public Schools]—Bao was actually involved in the Vietnamese parents group when we first started. So he just joined HPH, but he actually has been very involved with Vietnamese dual language as one of the key people who helped us form the language for the curriculums. That's really all I have. I have done my interview individually, so thank you. And I am the advisor to Hội Phụ Huynh.

DK: Thank you so much. I'm curious to know more about HPH. For starters, when did it begin and what has been the general timeline of your organization?

[00:12:41]

JL: Yeah, I think I am going to take this question, Dustin, because I think I am the longest tenure HPH board director here. My son is in sixth grade so that's the very first year of VDLI [Vietnamese Dual Language Immersion] in Portland Public Schools so I have seen it all when it comes to his education and when it comes to the parent group and the parent organization. I was also a part of the initial movings so I'll give you guys a quick run-down on it. Hội Phụ Huynh as an organization actually has officially received its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status only a year ago, January 2020, so it has been just about a year since we first received 501(c)(3) status. So that makes us relatively young in the IRS's perspective, but as a group of parents and other individuals, the earliest meeting that I have on record dates back to November 2016. It was a less formal group that met and I remember pretty clearly we met in an IRCO [Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization] building off of … I cannot remember. It might have been the Asian Family Center building. That group was informally known as the VDLI advisory board. It was really attended by community representatives, so we had folks from the VNCO, Vietnamese Community of Oregon. I think we had the president of the VNCO in that meeting. We had a couple folks from APANO [Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon], we had a representative from IRCO, we had a representative from the Multnomah County Library, we had another gentleman from the Ngoc Son temple and also three VDLI parents. So in 2016, that means we would have been the parents of third graders, so in my son's kindergarten year and his first grade year there was no formal group that had been formed yet. We also had a couple community elders that were a part of the initial design team as well in that first meeting in November 2016. From there, that group of community members and parents has slowly shifted and evolved into a more parent-led organization with bylaws in place. In fact, all of our board directors today are parents in the VDLI program, so we all have kids in the program. Cô Vân, our senior community advisor is a grandparent of one of the kids in our program as well, so she definitely has a lot of skin in the game. Over time we have also had a few different names. So, back in November 2016, the group referred to ourselves as the VDLI advisory board. Later on in our history there was an effort to rebrand ourselves as more of a parent organization. The first name that was given to us was Văn Hóa, which means ‘culture’ in Vietnamese. It was a community-created name by mainly our parents who had come forth and presented a bunch of name ideas and it was voted on by the members of the advisory board. That name was later scrapped, and we referred to ourselves on an interim basis as the Parent Support Group for VDLI, which is a lot of words and letters. So ultimately we settled on the name Hội Phụ Huynh, which means ‘parent group’ or ‘parent association’ in Vietnamese, so the name describes exactly what we are and that's kind of the genesis of where we came from and where we are now with the name that we have.

DK: Thank you, James. I think you answered some about who some of the catalysts were in founding HPH as well, else you have anything further on that?

JL: Yeah, it is actually an interesting story. I actually reviewed some of our old meeting minutes and I found in 2017 that part of our work plan as an advisory board was to create a parent-led foundation of sorts, and that was a hope and a dream of one of our community members. Three years later the dream was really picked up by the VDLI parents that make up Hội Phụ Huynh and they brought that across the finish line in January 2020. There is a story behind it, but there is also a kind of a forming moment with the 501(c)(3) where things are really official. It is an organization now, there are certain legalities in play as well and responsibilities and duties as board members. Duties of loyalty, duties of care. That really kicked off January 2020 thanks in large part to all of the board directors in HPH.

VT: I do not have the questions right in front of me right now. I was not sure if there was a question there on how VDL has been created in PPS because I think it is also important to add that piece, because James just reminded me of how the parents group was formed and how we became HPH. It is crucial to also note why PPS started the Vietnamese dual language, because when we have five different foreign languages that we have dual language programs in but because we are doing the equity work in the district at that time and I was in the central office as a ESL director, and because dual language is one of the proven research-based best practices for students learning a second language as well as expanding knowledge and brain research and all that. So then I saw that Vietnamese is the second-largest spoken language and with large [numbers of] ESL students, and [so] why PPS did not have Vietnamese for our Vietnamese students and our non-native English speakers. Therefore, I worked with VNCO and Lavang [laughs] vicariate to actually do a petition and request to the board of almost 3,000 signatures from the parents and the community to start the Vietnamese dual language program. It was an internal and external effort because if there were no community members supporting the request, it would not happen. That is why the parents’ group is so important in the creation of Vietnamese dual language, and from there they formed the parents group for informing PPS on curriculum and practices.

[00:20:54]

DK: Thank you so much for that. Which schools participate in this program?

VT: Bao, do you want to take that question?

BN: Sure. Right now, it is Rose City Park, Roseway Heights, previously Gregory Heights. Eventually, it will go to Madison High School.

DK: Some of you already answered this a little bit during your introductions, but I'm curious how long each of you has been a part of HPH? Maybe start with James and then continue.

JL: HPH formerly, right, back to January 2020, but the various incarnations of it, I was there from the November 2016 meeting I have on record so that’s almost four and a half years now. It feels like a lifetime. It feels longer than a presidential term—because it is. [laughs] I'm happy to be a part of it. I think it has been a great opportunity to support my son and eventually some day my daughter who will be in the program. She is only three years old. I hope to lay a great foundation for her and I hope to continue on as well. Anh, how about you?

AL: Yes, so I think I have been involved with it for three years since my daughter started kindergarten. I attended the first meeting in the library and I saw a lot of opportunities and things I can do, so I was asked. At first, I was very hesitant because I hate socializing with people. [Huynh Pool laughs] I do not like socializing with people, but I kept thinking about it. In Vietnamese, they have that one quote, “Just let the next guy take care of it.” So I talked to myself, looked at the situation: I think I'm the next next next guy already. [Vân Truong laughs] If I do not get involved, who else? So I jumped in with both feet and do whatever I can to support the program.

JL: I remember Anh's first meeting. I remember he raised his hand and had a lot of great ideas and asked a lot of great questions. I think I remember we told Anh, "Those are great things you can help us answer if you were a board director." And I think that is maybe how we got you ‘cause you were so eager, you had so many questions.

AL: OK, Huynh.

[00:24:15]

HP: I became a part officially when Hoi Phu Huyn became a nonprofit. But, I came to the introduction based on the advice of our kindergarten teacher last year, or before COVID and all that stuff. I liked where Hoi Phu Huyn was going and I saw room for growth and some additions. I do not know what those are, I know it is going to come with growth and with more people who join in on the team. For me, I'm going to say going on two years, officially one. Bao?

BN: Officially four months since I have been on the board. Unofficially, I have been involved with the VDLI program even at its inception, starting in community groups and talking off and on, having conversations. I have a niece in the fourth grade, I have a cousin in the third grade, or I have a nephew in the third grade, so I have family members through different levels of program, but all around always supportive of the program. Officially four months is how long I have been a part of the program. Cô Vân?

VT: Thank you. It has probably been a hundred times I have done that. [laughs] As I said, I have been a part of Vietnamese dual language in the start. When we first started with the parent group, I was involved, but officially with Hội Phụ Huynh since last year. I retired three years ago and I took a break from everything for a year and then James called me and said, "Would you like to be an advisor? Do you want to....” What was it you said? Do you want to facilitate a meeting for us? And then that is how I started as advisor to Hội Phụ Huynh, since 2018.

DK: Alright, I would love to hear about your organization's mission statement, vision, and core values?

VT: Should we read it to you or [laughs] do we want to send it to you? Or someone can just read it to Dustin.

JL: Why don't I read it really quickly because I have it pulled up here.

VT: OK.

JL: Our mission is that our organization engages new and current families, promotes cultural enrichment, and seeks fundraising opportunities to sustain a strong Vietnamese dual language immersion program in Portland Public Schools. That's our mission. Our vision is celebrating Vietnamese culture while making diverse connections and ensuring equitable opportunities to help cultivate global change leaders.

DK: Excellent. So let’s zoom out a little bit. Who is eligible to participate in your organization? And, what does an average school day look like for participating students?

VT: So, can I clarify the question on organization: Are you meaning VDLI program or HPH, our nonprofit organization? Because the second question is kind of for students and about the program and I did not think about that when we read the question, sorry.

DK: No, that’s OK. Let us start with the VDLI, and then we can come back to the parent and family member organization.

[00:29:14]

JL: Maybe I can just quickly also interject, it has been a common confluence that has happened amongst many community members over the years that HPH is an organization that is in some way also the VDLI program. We are not. We are the nonprofit organization of parents that supports the program. I will just quickly answer on the HPH side in terms of who can participate in HPH. We have a membership and it is defined by our bylaws. Our members are all parents and guardians in the VDLI program and teachers as well as administrative staff. Those are voting members in our membership. We also have the ability as board directors to assign special officers and agents to our organization as we deem fit. From time to time, we bring in someone from outside of that membership group who might be an expert in the community or something like that to help us in some regard or capacity. But generally, that is who our membership is and who participates in the organization.

VT: Also, I think many Vietnamese parents in VDL can be a member and are a member of HPH. For the Vietnamese dual language, it is by lottery. We have a specific number of students for two kindergarten classes, so it is usually about forty-eight students. And then we save half of the spots for the Vietnamese native speakers and half of the spots for English native speakers, so that way we can learn from each other and that is how the program is supposed to work. PPS has a lottery system so if you are a Vietnamese native speaker, you automatically get in if the number is not over the number that the lottery had set up. And if you are outside of the district, you can apply to the Portland Public Schools. That is how the students are chosen to be able to participate in Vietnamese dual language. The first year, we barely filled up two kindergarten classes. Five, six years later, this year we are all completely full.

Hannah Crummé: What do you attribute the change in popularity of the program to?

JL: I can speak quickly of my son's kindergarten experience which was the last year in Portland Public where kindergarten was not free for all students. We had to actually pay to go to public school [laughs] as a kindergartener which always gives me a little bit of a chuckle. But I know once that ended there was certainly more enrollment following that. As your program gets more of a track record and more history behind it, it builds up more momentum. We have seen a trend over the last six years where each grade has added more and more students every year thereafter.

HP: It is also word of mouth, like parents who already have kids in the program. I know that when we were a part of Portland’s Head Start, they had these folders that said, "Hey so we are going to help you successfully enroll your child either into their neighborhood school or any of these schools that you find on this pamphlet." And I opened it, and Vietnamese dual language caught my eye and then they set me [up] with a representative and we spoke a little bit about it. They said, "Hey you should go to one of these openings to talk about what you need to do, what you need to submit, and here's when the open enrollment happens." We went through that, and I liked the program so much that in my neighborhood groups a few weeks before open enrollment happened for Rose City Park VDLI program lottery, I posted a message and a flyer and said, "Hey if you guys are interested in sending your kid to a dual language immersion, you guys should check out Rose City Park." I have had a few parents in my kindergarten class right now who have said, "Thank you so much for sharing. We didn't know how we were going to get our diverse mixed family to kind of teach our children Vietnamese and stuff like that." They are happy with the program so far, I have talked with them. So I am going to say part of it is word of mouth and just all things that are gaining traction, that is getting attention.

[00:34:50]

AL: Part of the HPH is we try to do a lot of marketing for the program. James and I set up a booth at the Jade Night Market. We tried to take every opportunity we have to put the program out there, but there are still a lot of parents that do not know that the program exists within our community. They think we are a paid program where the parent has to pay, so there is a lot of misconceptions about our program. People think that we are just like the school or church or the temple put together, but we are totally different. It is backed by PPS so the parents do not have to pay anything. We also have our own bus route for the VDLI program that runs from Rose City Park all the way to 82nd Avenue dedicated for our VDLI kids because the majority of the Vietnamese community are in Southeast and the school itself is in Northeast so it is a challenge.

HC: You mention the Jade Night Market, what else do you do for publicity?

AL: We also have a booth at the annual Tết celebration that the Vietnamese community puts together. What else, James?

VT: Fundraisers from the teachers, like at the Hong Phat market.

JL: We have a Facebook page which Anh put together, which was great. And Huynh is now the editor of it.

HP: James sold me into joining Hội Phụ Huynh when my child [Vân laughs] came into kindergarten, so I recall one of my questions to him was, "Does Hội Phụ Huynh have a website?"

JL: Yeah …

HP: And he smiled and he said, "No, but you can help us do that." [Huynh laughs]

VT: Oh, so James is lucky! [Vân laughs]

HP: So it is more like I said, there is going to be growth and it is going to be a steady, strong growth because you have to have an online presence. Thanks to COVID now everything is online, mostly. We are going to have game plans and we are going to get there. With the Facebook page, with a website, Twitter [Huynh laughs], anything that is going to get the general audience and parents who have kids who want to be enrolled.

JL: I would also throw out that we have had one of the first batches of test results out of our fifth graders last year, World Speak Assessment results and they outperformed, and they were the very first cohort who has had a new curriculum developed for them every year so in a way they are guinea pigs. They out performed on their very first standardized testing for Vietnamese language. That has also been a strong selling point when we have been able to get that message out. So word of mouth, again, that is a hugely important and popular communication channel among the Vietnamese community and I think that is one way we have been able to market.

VT: I really loved what everyone said because it is all true, but I think one of the challenges that the Vietnamese dual language has in recruiting parents—and it has been improving—is the perception of the Vietnamese parents on their children having to learn English, "English is the main language to success, so why do I want them to learn Vietnamese?" So that was probably PPS and my number one challenge to overcome when we opened up the Vietnamese dual language because it was really hard to convince our parents. We had to put on workshops to talk to parents about the brain and different gains intellectually that the kids can have from being bilingual. But now, the younger generations are growing and they are more receptive to learning two or three languages and understanding more about dual language immersion. I think that is one of the key pieces as well. And, because Vietnamese is not a commonly taught language for the English-speaking parents, so it was hard to recruit them as well. Therefore, there are two challenges of recruiting: recruiting the Vietnamese-speaking parents and also the English-speaking parents. With word of mouth, reputation, and the younger generations with kids that are more understanding of keeping the native language to actually gain in life and be more successful as well, so that’s one of the key pieces.

[00:40:40]

DK: What does an average school day look like for the students who participate in VDLI?

HP: I volunteered a lot of my time for my daughter's kindergarten class last year. I wanted to build a relationship with both teachers in the English and Vietnamese-speaking side. Saying, "Hey, if there are any projects, anything you need, let me know and then I will connect with the parents and see how we can help." So there were a few times where I would sit in the Vietnamese class and it was just learning the basic sounds, exercises of adding, just blend[ing] letters together with accents and just getting the kids utilizing their mouth and tongue to make it sound correct. There was just a lot of practice and a lot of exercise. By the end of the day, the teacher spoke strictly just Vietnamese and if the child does not understand it, I noticed that the teacher will point to a particular picture and will say it. And then sometimes the teacher will encourage the child to say it too. And if they say it correctly, then if they want to use the bathroom, some kid will be like, "I need to go to the bathroom, I need to pee." So then the teacher will say something to the effect of needing to go and when the child says it correctly in Vietnamese, they are allowed to go. There was a little bit of etiquette that was taught that I really loved. When class started and your child came into class, the kids would say hello and the formality to the teacher and sit down. Sometimes I hover [laughs] to make sure my child is sitting, because kindergarten is very tough for kids. Then the teacher will review what they are learning. I love the fact that both teachers, on the English and Vietnamese side, were in tune with each other's teaching. Like if they are teaching a topic, they are both teaching the same topic but in two different languages so that it is seamless for these kids. That is my experience for the average day. Whatever they are learning, it is all in English and then when they transfer over for the next half day, it’s Vietnamese. It is spoken all in Vietnamese and if the kids are having a hard time, there are visuals that they can learn. I really liked that. And there are songs, just activities, that is what I noticed a few times when I volunteered.

VT: Half of the class is in Vietnamese and the other half in English. Most of the literature is in English and Vietnamese. Math is in Vietnamese and music is in English.

[00:44:11]

AL: I would like to share one piece. In my general point of view and what I have experienced—and this is not to put down the American teachers—culturally the Vietnamese teachers carry a very special responsibility. One, they treat the students like their kids and for us the biggest foundation in our program is our Vietnamese teachers’ love and passion to teach the language and to maintain the language with our kids is what makes the program a success. They have so many challenges and they put up with it. They are in the COVID. I have a teacher that when they started out, spent twelve hours a day putting together the materials and everything. For English, you have all the information right there. For the Vietnamese, they have to become a content creator, edit and record what they need to teach. They do so much and not many people know that, but I want to put it out there. For our program to be a success, the teachers are the biggest foundation and I think they make the program a success. I greatly appreciate it.

DK: Anh, thank you for mentioning the curriculum piece too. I'm curious what the curriculum development process has been like, and what has it been like for you to be a part of either choosing curriculum or textbooks?

HP: I currently am not a hundred percent satisfied with the curriculum books that are being provided for first grade. I have taken a look at it and it is very confusing for me. I do not have the proper education in Vietnamese, I am self-taught so I learned the speaking, the reading, and the writing myself, I never went to school for it. So the way I process it is a little different. But, looking at it, I feel like there is a tad bit lacking when it is online school right now because the kids do not have enough time to digest what they are learning and then to delve into the materials. Some parts of it are not correct and I do know that PPS is going to work on correcting some of that along with some help that they will be seeking. I worked hand-in-hand with Vietnamese kindergarten teacher to ask permission if it was OK if I took some of the visual videos that the teacher recorded to share with the students and the families to listen in. I helped to create like ten or twelve pages worth of worksheets so it could be printed out and handed off to families, kind of like those workbooks that you can find at Dollar Tree or really simple worksheets that teachers print out with visuals. That is what I did with the kindergarten class because I was afraid that some of the English speaking students that do not have any Vietnamese-speaking family at home did not understand what pictures go with what and if they have to have internet on the computer, it might frustrate them. That is one thing I did with the kindergarten side. I was hoping that PPS would have something where parents or the participants of children in the VDLI have some form of partnership in creating it because not all the materials are, in my opinion, a hundred percent the materials. It needs to be blended and looked at and simplified.

JL: One common thread I wanted to pick up on with Anh's comments and Huynh's comments is that the materials could be better. We have an advocacy committee which has been pretty active this year. One thing that we have done as an organization with regards to curriculum is we started a letter writing campaign. We accumulated signatures from folks in our community. We partnered with the Rose City Park’s PTO [Parent-Teacher Organization], and Rose City Heights' PTA [Parent-Teacher Association] as well. We advocated on behalf of our program to PPS's board of directors and their superintendent for additional resources to help with this particular challenge and we were recently informed that the district has got some funding from some source, we are not sure which, to help support the department of dual languages' efforts with regard to curriculum. Specifically, they are working with a group down at Cal State Fullerton, the National Resource Center for Asian Languages, and their director is a Vietnamese woman, a doctor. She along with PPS and as we understand a few other VDLI programs across the western states, up in Seattle and as well as down in Southern California, are working to create a first of its kind common core state standards curriculum in Vietnamese. That has been one proud achievement of our organization, being able to advocate for that for our children on a grander scale. Obviously, that is going to take time. I think Huynh's comments about having some grassroots effort here as well with the parents in the program is a worthy cause as well to supplement until that curriculum is fully developed.

[00:51:09]

DK: Thanks, James. Thank you all for those answers.

VT: I also just want to add on the curriculum piece. The Vietnamese dual language also has some challenges with how the community views how the curriculum should be done like what language. Pre ‘75, or post ‘75. There is just a lot of that discussion going on and that is also part of the challenge that we are facing. Maybe Bao or James can put it more politely. There is just some new vocabulary since 1975 that did not exist pre ‘75. We did not have WiFi, we did not have a lot of common language before ‘75. So now, there are a lot of verbs that if we have anything like that in just our letters, then some parents are upset. Not all of them, very few of them, but since we are such a small community, just a few people can lead a humongous effort, like saying we are teaching the wrong language just because they perceive it as a post-‘75 Vietnamese language. What are your thoughts, Bao, Anh, and James?

JL: Yes, Bao should say something about this because we were just talking about it.

VT: Yes, Bao should say something!

BN: Yes, I am very passionate about this. When we were first fighting on this or the beginning of this issue, I advocated for the language in the curriculum to actually be brought from Vietnam and the reason why is that the language is being used. Language changes. We are not using old English. We are not using English from the 1500s anymore. It expands and it changes. Just like the Merriam-Webster Dictionary changes and they add new words every single time. The Vietnamese community unfortunately here as much as I love [them], a lot of the language newspapers are stagnant. They use pre-‘75 verbiage, and my wife came here in the early 2000s and she reads a lot of the newspaper here and half the words she does not understand or she is like, “Why are they using such outdated terms?” If we want our children to succeed, we have to actually give them the tools to succeed, one of them is specific language. Let us say if they are actually visiting Vietnam and they are using language that does not exist anymore, that is not going to be beneficial for them. Yes, it is a newer program and we do have a little bit of a different experience as opposed to the Chinese or the Spanish or the Japanese program. For comparison, there are probably a lot more Vietnamese speakers than there are Japanese, but the Japanese program has been here a lot longer. They have understood, they have grown. My understanding and my guess is that they are getting a lot of their curriculum by partnering up with the Japanese companies to make sure the curriculum is correct. I have spoken with James and I have spoken with him until I’m blue in the face and I always will. We are reinventing the wheel when we do not necessarily have to. There are already books and stuff out there. We just need to go there. And a part of it is getting the community on board. It is a slow process, but we will be able to get there and the newer generation of kids coming in are getting that already. It is just that slow change of generational shift.

[00:55:13]

VT: And when we first started the Vietnamese dual language, the parents stood up and asked me the question frankly, “Where are you going to get your curriculum? Is it going to be Vietnamese, is it going to be commoners language?” So the first two years I personally went to Vietnam to choose books because I know what alignment we have to do. But, I have to make sure to flip through all the books and then maybe I miss one page or two and then there was a big challenge because I missed a couple pages that had a flag in it. [laughs] The curriculum for Vietnamese dual language is a challenge in many ways, and Bao said it perfectly. I think the key point also is that the Japanese, they have been here a long time, but their community has been very stable and financially stable. Because I was in charge of dual language, I know that the Japanese curriculum is not funded by PPS but really funded by their parents’ groups, so that is kind of what we want to do. Hoi Phu Huyn intends to have a parents’ group to support the curriculum and raise money so people know about our language. The Japanese community is able to host interns from Japan, that is something we can not do. Not just because of the language, just a matter of fact that politically we can not do it. That is the death of the Vietnamese dual language program if we cannot bring someone from Vietnam over. But with the generational change, I think four, five, even three years from now, I think it will be very different.

JL: If I can just round that off, I think it is clear that there are some differences among generations of Vietnamese folks. I think organizationally where we stand on this is that the Vietnamese American story is still being told. We are still a relatively new immigrant group in this country. We have the latest generation in our schools right now, our kids, and if the story is being told still, it has to be written out. We as an organization are looking forward and that is a part of our mission and vision as well. Where that takes us, we will see. We have some opportunities with resources that Portland Public has put behind us as well as what our parents are able to raise, so we hope to see things improve as we move forward.

DK: This next question several of you have spoken to a little bit, but I'm curious if there are any additional ways we want to elaborate on. So the question is: how are parents able to participate with your organization?

JL: Yeah, I can just hit that one real quick because I know we are running short on time. HPH has monthly board meetings which all of our members are always welcomed to attend as well as others that are from outside within the greater community. We host events that each of our committees put on, depending on which committee you are on. Those are always communicated out to all of the schools that we have parents and kids in. We are constantly looking for volunteers. We would like to see more volunteers and better engagement—that is one of our goals is to connect and engage with parents. Parents are always welcome to join, community members are always welcomed to join. We try to market it and communicate out whenever we have opportunities for people to participate.

HC: We are running short on time, so I wonder if there are any questions perhaps that the group is particularly interested in answering. I do not want to mess with your plan Dustin, but I am also conscious that it is evening and people will probably want to sign off. If there are any of your questions that you think are more pressing or any questions that the group thought were particularly compelling, we might skip around.

[00:59:41]

JL: I wanted to touch on the challenges question. Dustin, I think you and I talked about this before and I was a little apprehensive about answering this question, mainly because we are trying to promote our kids program and we want to portray VDLI and our organization in a positive light. There are really only good things to say about the program and our organization. But truth be told, there are challenges that we run up against. I was talking to Bao a little bit earlier about this and I kind of labeled it and boiled it down to one word: the challenge is really, in my opinion, multiculturalism. This is a dual language program, it is in the name of the program, right. Sometimes in our school community, that piece gets forgotten about in conversation or in advocacy efforts or in terms of what people think it ought to be. It is a challenging problem because the way that the community was engaged in the past and how it's engaged going forward now that we have non-native speakers in our program as well, there are two different approaches. There has been a fair amount of confusion over the years about who this program is for and what it’s for. Anh talked about the challenge of selling the English learning skills to native speaking Vietnamese parents earlier. I will just share a quick story. We had parent-teacher conferences about two months ago and I was speaking with my son's English teacher and I told him, "Listen, my son has been in this program for six years now." And it is a fifty-fifty immersion program which means he has had half as much English language instruction as every other neighborhood school kid. That is three years less of English language instruction. And I told him [the teacher] to tell it to me straight, “How is he doing in English? Do we have any concerns here at all?” Because I believe it is going to work, but I can see why someone might think that the English language instruction may not be up to par especially after having three years less of instruction. And he told me my son is doing great and that he is towards the top of the class, it is all working out. To me, hearing that at the middle school level, after six years, really kind of made me feel good about that particular challenge in general, this multicultural piece. It is hard to communicate the challenge with multiculturalism, but I think that is a tangible piece that I hope whoever listens to this conversation can take away.

DK: Thank you, James. In consideration of time, I would like to skip ahead to questions fifteen and sixteen, and at the end if there is anything we missed and we want to come back to, we can always make room for that as well. We talked about some goals for the curriculum, but what are some other future goals for HPH moving forward?

JL: In more of the immediate future we are trying to get a Vietnamese award-winning Caldecott children's book author to join us for this Read for the Roses campaign that we are participating with the Rose City Park's PTO on. His name is Bao Phi. He owes me a call back [laughs]. He is going to come join us for a Zoom call in the classrooms with the kids, so that is a pretty cool thing that hopefully comes to fruition in the next few weeks. On the grander scale, we would like to host an annual fundraising gala to really celebrate the successes of the program and to fundraise for future opportunities, one of which we hope would be an annual capstone for some of our eighth graders, if not fifth graders, if not high schoolers some day in the future as well. We know that some of the other VDLI programs in this district have some pretty robust parent groups that can put together some pretty amazing research residencies. These are capstone programs that really engage the kids with the purpose of what their program is for. We have heard from others that the whole dual language piece finally clicks when the kids actually participate in these nearly full immersion research residencies. We do not have anything like that for the VDLI program. We know it takes a lot of parental support. That is a big goal of ours, at least for me it is, out in the future. Hopefully, some of the other efforts can help get us there as well.

[01:05:15]

VT: I think Bao, or James, has touched on this a little bit. I think our future goals on a bigger scale for me, and we have discussed this many times in board meetings, is really how to write our own Vietnamese American stories. Many of our stories are written by Americans. So we want to be able to, as parents, be able to write our own curriculum, write our own stories and to expand it to other districts as well. There are other districts that have called us. The Boston district has called us to ask us for advice on how they could open a Vietnamese dual language [program] in their school district. We would like to expand our Vietnamese culture and language to more than what American people know about us.

HP: We are not defined by the Vietnam War. [Laughs] That is what I like to tell people. And, [a goal is] to let the Vietnamese community not have so much prejudice on the regions of Vietnam, because the words in the curriculum are not just words. Words are born from regions from how people basically lived their lives culturally. They develop it and when you have prejudice of different regions, then that is where you get the conflict. I am hoping that we can just come together and unite everyone and just accept.

AL: To me for non-native speaking students, they are the ambassadors to our language and culture. I really appreciate the parents taking a risk with learning a language. The future will be awesome when I retire and I go to see a white doctor and he can speak some Vietnamese. He will say, “Hey, I went to the Vietnamese dual language immersion program.” I would be happy as hell. [Laughter from many participants] That is the goal. That is an honor for other people to learn the language, that is how I see it. It is an honor.

DK: Has this program changed the way how the students who have participated interact with the Vietnamese community at large? And even broader, what about interactions with their elders and maybe even with relatives back in Vietnam?

AL: One thing I can speak for is my family. I have six siblings and we all have two or three kids. One thing I see is from their birth to five years old when they are at home, they speak a lot Vietnamese, but as soon as they go to school and learn English, they start to drop off the Vietnamese so fast that it is not even funny. For me, it is very embarrassing to admit, but my daughter could only speak two or three words of Vietnamese before she entered the program. So shameful of me. But now, she speaks Vietnamese with grandma. It really makes me happy that she can speak Vietnamese with grandma, she has had conversations with grandma and grandpa. The kids and all the family members on my side and my wife's side, we have about ten kids and only my daughter is able to speak Vietnamese—I am so proud of her. That is why it is very important even though both parents speak the language, but if you do not send them to the program, they will lose the language.

[01:10:15]

HP: Besides my parents who are Vietnamese, because my in-laws are white, so my daughter favored English. She understands Vietnamese very well. She refuses to speak it. Before she started kindergarten, I asked her “Why don’t you try just speaking a little bit of Vietnamese to your grandparents?” She told me, “I do not have to because everyone else speaks English.” I think because she heard a little bit of conversation with my mother-in-law, saying she does not understand why we are wasting money signing her up for dual language then I had to tell her, “No, it is PPS. It is Vietnamese dual language, it is free. I am not paying for anything.” She told me, “Only Vietnamese people speak Vietnamese. I am only half Vietnamese so I can choose which half I want.” I have a tough cookie on my hands. When she had her first month in kindergarten, she would talk really quietly, “Mommy, that kid is not Vietnamese and he speaks Vietnamese better than me.” I'm like, “Good! You should be friends with him.” We would casually start a conversation and I would ask the kids who are not Vietnamese if they liked Vietnamese, and they would say, “Yeah! It is fun. I can make all these weird sounds.” As time progressed, she opened up more, she wanted to speak Vietnamese and she wanted to say all these fancy sentences to her dad and when he does not understand what she is saying, she laughs at him and then she teaches him to speak Vietnamese. And now she is like, “I love Vietnamese. I want to go to Vietnam. I want to live in Vietnam. I want to talk to all my cousins in Vietnamese.” So that makes me proud. This program has literally made my child [go] from, “I get to choose which language I speak and you can not tell me” to “I want to learn more. I want to speak, read, and understand it more than you, mommy, because I am going to school for it.” So that was a proud moment for me.

VT: She is only in one year, right?

HP: Only one year, yeah. She is making up her own words. To me, you know how you say "Engrish," she says, “It’s very ‘Vieglish’ for me.” I'm like, “That works, I understand what you are saying, but grammatically that is not correct. But, I understood what you meant. Good job, build on that.”

JL: My wife is a white American girl, so my kids are half Vietnamese and half white. It is something we are very cognizant about. We know that there are certain prejudices about that. I think the thing I take away from it is there has been some instances where it is clear that some Vietnamese people have little to no expectation that my son or I can speak Vietnamese very well. I actually cannot speak Vietnamese very well. I understand a lot of it, if not most of it. In a way, I kind of learn from my son. But, when they hear him speak, you can see the demeanor just change right away when they know that he is Vietnamese to a certain degree and is speaking the language and understanding it. It opens up a lot of doorways for him. With my parents as well as his extended family on my side, all the great aunts and great uncles and his grandparents just love the fact that he is speaking Vietnamese. I have a lot of cousins—Vietnamese families generally are pretty big—I have a lot of cousins and he might be the only one of his generation who will be fluent is Vietnamese which, as Anh was saying before, there are a lot of opportunities here for a lot of Vietnamese folks in this country to lose the language. There was no way I could have taught my son the language, my Vietnamese skills are not good enough. So if it weren’t for a program like the one we have, we literally might have lost this language in our family in a matter of two generations which would have been really sad because there is so much interesting culture and a big part of that is the language. For that reason, I am very proud of him. I am very happy for this program and this opportunity. I am also happy that my daughter will hopefully be able to participate in it as well. Before long, those two will have their own secret language when they are talking behind their mom's back and only I will be able to understand it [laughs].

[01:15:30]

DK: Anyone else?

VT: For what I see, it is not just being able to speak to your grandparents, parents, or friends and being proud to be Vietnamese, but I think one of the most important that I have seen is actually being proud of being Vietnamese in the mainstream culture. They can walk [with] their heads high in the English-speaking schools and know that “I am great. I am bicultural. I am bilingual. I am Vietnamese.” It is not like kids walking around “Oh gosh, I speak English with an accent” or anything like that. Also another thing is I think it's really awesome to see native English-speaking students speak Vietnamese fluently. Oh my gosh, if you have not attended one of our Vietnamese New Year's celebrations and you hear first, second graders read Vietnamese poems with no accent. I cried the first time. I think it was second or first grade. I could not stop crying when this blonde-haired girl read a Vietnamese story about New Year's without an accent. I'm like, “Gosh, she speaks better than my kids in Vietnamese.” [Laughs] I am very proud of that for the Vietnamese dual language program to exist.

DK: We are coming close to the end, but I'm curious if there was anything that we either skipped due to time or if there was anything we did not have on our list of questions that you wanted to discuss, now would be the time.

VT: I think that we—James talked about this earlier last time—but I think that some of our future goals should also tie into the curriculum. I think it would be interesting to see if Lewis & Clark, this program, and HPH can be partners in working with PPS in creating curriculum for our middle schoolers or just history lessons on Vietnamese for students across PPS because right now they flip through the social studies book and two pages about the Vietnam War, that is it about Vietnam. [Laughs] Huynh is laughing, but it is true. Even if we just do post ‘75, pre ‘75. We also have a historian here which is Bao, he studied Vietnamese history. If we can move forward with that and somehow have a plan to discuss that, we can bring it up to the HPH board and I can connect with Michael Bacon in PPS to see if Lewis & Clark, PPS, and HPH can collaborate and partner; that would be awesome.

HC: Yes, thank you Vân. Outside of the interview, but yes, it is our long term goal to make this archive we are building useful for academic researchers, but also for education at the K-8 or K-12 level. Our goal throughout this project, as most of you heard, is just to create the resources necessary to have a representative history of Portland available. The story of Portland is not the one that has been told for ages about pioneers, but is the more complicated story of lots of different immigrants coming from both the eastern United States, but also from all over. What we are trying to represent in that is the Vietnamese American story, so we would love to collaborate with you to figure out how the archive can be useful as an educational tool, but that is sort of separate to the interview.

[01:20:23]

VT: Yes, that is separate to the interview, but I thought I would just bring it up so we can have another conversation if you are interested.

HC: Yes, thank you Vân. That’s always something I want to cheer for, making an archive useful.

VT: Yes.

JL: I just want to make sure it is on the record because I know I said it before to you, Dustin, and earlier before we started the recording. I think the work that you, Hannah, E.J., and Cô Vân as well is amazing, tremendous work. I am impressed by how many folks you have been able to interview already and the archive you have built up. One of our past board directors, he is not here, but he chairs our equity committee. We have had some conversations in the past with how challenges the work we do in HPH is amongst the Vietnamese community and the VDLI community as well. There is a lot of recent history, recent trauma that a lot of our families have lived through and experienced. One of the things he told me in terms of how to work with it is the sharing of stories, because there is not necessarily a solution to some of the challenges. It is not always about finding a solution. The sharing of stories really helps all of us connect with one another in a more meaningful way. When it comes to our children and education in the Vietnamese culture, it is of very high importance, so the stakes grow quite a bit in our boardroom when there are differing opinions. When we are able to share stories about ourselves it really helps to bring down the temperature a little bit, so I commend you guys both for all the work you are doing. I think it is tremendous. I think it will be a great asset for the Vietnamese community in Portland and, as Cô Vân mentioned, I hope we can collaborate again in the future.

HC: Thank you, that is lovely for you to say, and we are grateful to the community for working with us. I think it is an asset, not only for the Vietnamese community, but for all of Portland to understand the city itself so we are tremendously grateful to the Vietnamese community and to all of you for working with us because we are only doing everyone justice if we understand the city as it actually is. We are tremendously grateful, thank you.

DK: Yes, thank you. It is an honor to be a part of this and help share these stories.

HC: Dustin, I would say wrap us up so the people can go to their evenings. Everyone we are talking to has children because that is why they are here.

DK: Exactly, that is just what I was about to do. This concludes our interview. Thank you so much for speaking with us.

[01:23:33]

Additional Information

Date: 2020-01-04
Interviewer(s): Dustin Kelley, Hannah Crummé
Interviewee: James Luu, Anh Le, Bao-Loc Nguyen, Huynh Pool, Vân Truong
Location: Portland, Oregon
Subject: Education; Language transfer (Language learning); Vietnam; Portland (Or.)
Creator: Luu, James; Le, Anh; Nguyen, Baoloc; Pool, Huynh; Truong, Vân; Lewis & Clark College
Format: mp3
Duration: 01:23:27
Language: English
Rights: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

For questions about rights statements, or access to the original document please contact Lewis & Clark College Special Collections and Archives http://specialcollections.lclark.edu