"Identity Work"

It isn't unusual for Syonara Tomoum, a doctoral student in the College of Education, to see her students break down in tears in the classroom. Mind you, these aren't youngsters getting frustrated with a puzzle. These aren't teenagers groaning about Romeo and Juliet. 

Rather, Tomoum's group includes individuals from refugee and asylee communities, many of whom have fled from conflict-zone countries.

What unites these students is a common drive to make the best of their circumstances. By learning to speak English, they can step through the "gateway" of US society and have an easier time participating in daily life. 

"In the past, learners were required to talk about their knowledge of the US," says Tomoum, who organizes and teaches introductory literacy classes for the Jewish Family Service (JFS) of Western Massachusetts. "The learners were not provided the space to talk about themselves and to articulate their feelings about their home."

Tomoum, who immigrated to the United States from Egypt in 2016, along with her three children, took the initiative to flip this classroom dynamic on its head. When she was hired as the adult and youth education coordinator for JFS in 2020, she didn’t have a curriculum waiting for her. So, she invented one, applying her social-justice lens as an educator to create lessons that got her students talking.

"I decided, let’s talk about their lives before they came here," says Tomoum. "The minute we engage the learners with identity work, with something that will motivate and inspire them, this is when they will engage in the learning process, and make progress.

"The human connection is what keeps them coming to class."

The tears that Tomoum sees aren't born out of grief, per se, but the experience of being recognized as a multilayered individual. Instead of assuming that refugees are eager to assimilate to Western cultural norms, Tomoum embraces each learner’s diversity and heritage. She acknowledges that refugees have complicated relationships with their safe havens.

One activity that has proven popular with students, she says, is the Friday Conversation Circle, where everyone plays a song from their home country and explains how it resonates emotionally.

"The idea is, they are not coming to my class with nothing," explains Tomoum. "They have a lot to say about their own personal stories and culture.”

In 2022, Tomoum established an ESL class for Ukrainian refugees living in Westfield through a team based effort and with the help of retired professors at Westfield State University. She also created, with the help of JFS team members, a women-only ESL class for Afghan mothers (also refugees) living in Springfield and surrounding areas, in addition to a general class for all communities at JFS. Working with these classes has been immensely rewarding, Tomoum says, because JFS teachers learn from their students as much as the students learn from them.

"I was so misinformed, like many others, by seeing things that the media will focus on," she said. Meeting with Haitian refugees, for example, introduced her to an entirely new political context she had never considered before. Speaking with Afghan mothers, too, rerouted her perception of Afghanistan as a war-torn desert to a region steeped in history and music.

In the past year, JFS has enrolled seventy-five refugees in introductory literacy courses. When individuals have an intermediate grasp of English, they are referred to community-based programs that offer more advanced curriculum. In addition to making these referrals, Tomoum is responsible for assessing incoming learners' English proficiency, and for matching them with qualified and experienced teachers. 

Tomoum credits her mentors in the College of Education with giving her the tools to build JFS's literacy program from the ground up. As a means of giving back to western Massachusetts communities, Tomoum has worked with faculty members Maria José Botelho and Theresa Austin to hold workshops at JFS. Her focus on ethnographic research, too, has made a world of difference.

"It was like I was rebirthed, in every way," says Tomoum. "I believe there's still a lot of work I can do in working with refugees."