A Toolkit for School Communities to Work With Afghan Refugee Families

Over the last few years, the global population of Afghan refugees has risen to 6.4 million people. According to the Migration Policy Institute’s analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, the Afghan immigrant population in the United States alone has nearly quadrupled, to approximately 195,000 over the last decade, making it critical that school staff (including educators, along with administrators, counselors, administrative and support staff, etc.) have the knowledge and tools necessary to support the families and students who arrive in their school communities.

Child Trends has partnered with the Center for Schools and Communities, as part of the Center’s Afghan Refugee School Impact Support to Schools Initiative, to provide professional development, training, and consulting services to school staff in Pennsylvania who serve Afghan refugee families. This work centers on two topics: culturally responsive family engagement and trauma-informed approaches. This toolkit, a culmination of our joint work, is designed to be a resource that school staff can reference to support their work with Afghan refugee families. While most of the information in this toolkit is relevant to school staff across the United States, a few resources are specific to Pennsylvania.

Using this toolkit

This toolkit is organized into two sections, both of which are intended to help school staff better understand the unique experiences of Afghan refugee students and their families and equip them with the skills to foster safe and nurturing environments.

1. Build Knowledge Among the School Community. While school staff should seek to understand each student’s unique strengths and weaknesses, they must also educate themselves about the cultural assets of Afghan families and on the challenges or barriers refugee communities often face. This section is designed to answer key questions about the Afghan refugee population and provide an overview of culturally responsive family engagement and trauma-informed approaches (see definitions below). The section also includes a tool to share information with the school community.
2. Take Action. School staff must be equipped with skills to foster safe and supportive learning environments that leverage the strengths of Afghan refugee students and their families. This section is designed to provide school staff with strategies, tools, and resources to implement culturally responsive family engagement techniques and trauma-informed approaches in their work with Afghan refugee families. This section also includes a tool to share resources directly with families.

Understanding the experiences of Afghan refugee students and their families

The following image can help school communities build skills that meet the needs of Afghan refugee students and their families. It offers a visual representation of how adversity can accumulate over time, as well as the benefits of positive coping skills and a robust support system to reduce students’ exposure to adversity and help them respond with resilience.

Figure: “Stress bucket” for refugee youth and families

Figure depicts a visual representation of how adversity can accumulate in students and their families over time.

Image is authors’ own, but was conceptually inspired by: Brabban, A. & Turkington, D. (2002) The Search for Meaning: detecting congruence between life events, underlying schema and psychotic symptoms. In A.P. Morrison (Ed) A Casebook of Cognitive Therapy for Psychosis (Chap 5, p59-75). New York: Brunner-Routledge.

Keep in mind that experiencing adversity does not always result in trauma. A supportive environment and adequate coping skills can help students respond with resilience in the face of adversity. Below, we define each component from the image.

• Pre-migration adversity. The bucket represents any adversity that students and their families may have experienced prior to leaving Afghanistan. Its contents may include things like experiencing war, death of a loved one, family stress, and safety issues getting to/from school. Understanding a student’s pre-migration story can help school staff better understand students’ challenges in Afghanistan.
• Post-migration adversity. The water drops represent adversity that might accumulate during a student’s journey from Afghanistan, as well as their experiences in the United States. The adversity represented by drops might include things like leaving loved ones behind in Afghanistan, family stress, language barriers, discrimination, and adjustment stress. These stressors can build over time and may add to or exacerbate pre-migration stress, much like water trickling into a bucket. Eventually, one drop of water—or a single stressful event—will cause the bucket to overflow. That event may appear small to school staff but could elicit a substantial response from a student who has reached their limit.
• Coping skills and support system. The spigot at the bottom of the bucket represents the positive impact of a supportive and nurturing environment paired with the use of healthy coping skills. When adults in a student’s life tend to the physical and emotional safety of the school and community environments, students are better able to process and overcome their adversities. Opportunities to acquire and practice positive coping skills also help students empty their metaphorical stress buckets.
• Negative coping skills and limited support system. The hose that goes from the bottom of the bucket back to the top represents what happens when students do not receive support from the adults around them or attempt to address their stress in negative ways; in such a situation, the stress is not reduced and additional stressors may be created.

Further explore this toolkit

The Build Knowledge Among the School Community tab answers potential questions that school staff may have about supporting Afghan refugee students and their families. It includes:

• Differences between refugees, asylees, and immigrants
• A review of various pathways by which Afghan refugees might resettle in the United States
• A description of the humanitarian parolee process
• The role of resettlement agencies
• An overview of languages spoken in Afghanistan
• The historical and contemporary landscape of Afghanistan’s education system
• Related, a description of Afghan schools
• The importance of culturally responsive family engagement
• The importance of trauma-informed approaches
• A list of additional resources about Afghan families

The Take Action tab includes information on the Plan-Do-Study-Act Framework, which can inform school communities’ work with Afghan students and their families, along with lists of strategies and tools for supporting these students and families and a set of resources for families themselves.