Teach This True Story

Teach This True Story: Hidden Girl: the True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave

Summary:

            In 1989 Shyima Hall was born in Egypt as child number seven out of eleven in an extremely impoverished home. When her older sister was accused of stealing from her employer and dismissed from her job, Shyima’s parents offered her up to repay the debt. Shyima was eight years old. She later discovered that these “employers” were paying her family a small sum for her work; but because she was forced to work ten hours a day, seven days a week, Shyima had little contact with her family. Two years into her servitude, her “employers” decided they were going to move to Irvine, California. Shyima was forced to go with them. Her captors illegally trafficked her into the country to live as their personal child slave. She was kept hidden from sight, only referred to as “stupid girl,” received one meal a day, and now worked eighteen hours a day instead of ten. After two years of being a child slave in the United States, a neighbor tipped off the police of her existence and Shyima was retrieved by Child Protective Services. Shyima must now begin her journey as a child of foster care. She finally attends public school for the first time on a kindergarten level at age twelve as an English as a Second Language student. She dreams of one day being an American citizen, and an activist against modern-day slavery. But how do you convince a country of a problem they don’t know they have?

Why Teach This Text:

            Oftentimes, it is easy for parents as well as educators to turn away from modern problems and focus on the horrible things that happened in the American civil war, or WWII. “Thank goodness those things don’t happen anymore!” an ignorant teacher may say as they widely ignore every societal problem that has taken place in the last seventy years. Learning about history is important, but history does not prepare students for the “real world” they are about to be a part of. For this response, I will argue that students have a place to learn about history in their history classroom, but it is the English teacher who may shed light on modern society through nonfiction texts such as Shyima Hall’s Hidden Girl.

            This is a book that is relevant here and now. With only 230 pages, it is amazing how many topics this book discusses that are relevant to modern life. First and foremost is the American idea that “bad stuff like slavery happens over there.” In these cases, it never actually matters where “over there” is, it is just assumed that human trafficking and modern slavery are not relevant to those living in the United States. As much as I would want to present a text that depicts modern society in Libya, Syria, or Sierra Leone, perhaps this battle is best fought by raising awareness that the United States is not immune to the problems people face “over there.” Teachable books should “level the playing field” by showing students that these problems are not “their problems,” they are everyone’s problems, they are human problems.

            Another common problem with the majority of nonfiction texts taught in the English classroom is the disconnect between what the student wants to read and what the teacher wants to teach. Bucher and Hinton explain that “[s]cholars have found that the gap between what students what to read and what schools provide them is widening” (272), it is my speculation that although “nonfiction is popular with young adult readers” (272) nothing is being added that is modern, applicable, and identifiable to the millennial audience. Therefore,  not only is it a problem that the educational system assumes that bad stuff happens “over there,” but it also oftentimes assumes that bad stuff happened “back then.” History classes will always be history classes, but in order for students to be engaged in the nonfiction text presented in the English classroom, the text should be about events that happened within a generation of the intended reader and present the reader with new information.  If I were to walk into a classroom and ask students to discuss issues of human rights they may bring up the American civil rights movement, American slavery and the civil war, or WWII and the holocaust. These are topics in which the student already has a basic understanding. It will be difficult to engage student with another narrative that talks about basically the same thing every other book they have to read talks about. When I ask students to discuss human rights, there will be no mention of modern day slavery, conflicts in Africa, or human rights issues in the Middle East or India. Give students something that is modern, and give students something that is new to them.

            This is a book about unpopular minority groups. Shyima is Egyptian (i.e. brown, not Hollywood-tan-white-people) whose native tongue is Arabic, and she was an illegal immigrant in the United States. This is a great opportunity to spark conversations in the classroom about their perceptions of these minorities and how society’s narrow scope can be widened. If Shyima were to be the same ten year old girl that was illegally trafficked to the United States today, would anyone have helped her? She is brown, and she speaks Arabic. At face value, she would inspire fear in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans who don’t see the value in a person over the “checklist for terrorism.” Furthermore, Shyima is an undocumented immigrant. American’s have this strange idea that all undocumented immigrants are bad Mexicans and have no idea that there are children of all shapes, sizes, colors, and religions who are being illegally trafficked into this country for a myriad of reasons that promise to strip away their worth as a human being. Perhaps a way to combat the American system of dehumanizing minority groups is to let them witness what it actually like to lose value as a person. Perhaps we need to teach a story about a little, brown, illegal immigrant, Arabic-speaking girl whose biggest dream is to become an American citizen and help people to give these groups of minorities their worth back as human beings. Remember, students fitting these descriptions will also be present in these classes. For once in their academic career, give these students a success story from hopeless beginnings that they can identify with as well.

            This book is about the American education and foster care system. Throughout this book, Shyima is placed with three different foster care families with varying levels of success. The foster care system is one that is present in every school but is rarely discussed. Teachers and fellow classmates oftentimes have no idea that there are students in the room who are living through “the system.” It is important for students to acknowledge that these situations are everyday life for some of their classmates, and it is important to understand that foster care can be both a positive and a negative experience. Similarly, two of the three foster homes Shyima encounters are with Muslim families. While Shyima is not Muslim herself, she must learn some basic customs to be able to assimilate to her new family. This experience also shows her that not every Muslim family is the same, and each Muslim family will have different rules and ideals that they feel are the most important for their household. One Muslim family wanted Shyima to convert to Islam, this is portrayed as a struggle Shyima faces between her own beliefs and her need to be accepted. Consider asking students how they would feel if they suddenly had to live with a family that wanted them to change religions. The last family Shyima lives with is not Muslim, and is presumably a “normal” American family. Shyima later receives a large settlement from the prosecution of her captors, of which her new family “borrows” a large sum and never returned. This could be an interesting conversation regarding the valuable thing Shyima experienced in all three families as well as the problematic things she experienced.

            As an educator, is it also important to see that Shyima first entered the public school system as a twelve-year-old, ESL student, on a Kindergarten level. This would be a great way to introduce students with these sort of issues with a class because, especially with the rise of inclusion, these students will be present at some point in the students’ academic career. Start a discussion in which it is explained that everyone has a different story, and there is no way to tell where everyone is coming from—and, really, their past doesn’t matter. This is a way to get other students involved in wanting to help students on Shyima’s level succeed, which is especially important because a popular UDL method is to pair the lower achieving students with the higher achieving students to promote learning. Students must be willing to help the lower achieving students, however, for this method to be effective.  

How to Teach This Text:

Twitter in the Classroom

Today, Shyima Hall is 27 years old and is still raising awareness for human rights. Students will follow Shyima Hall on Twitter and research a news article, project, or issue that Shyima Hall has tweeted or retweeted on her page. Students are required to take a screenshot or otherwise document that they did in fact get their source from Shyima’s twitter. Students will present their findings to the class. Follow her @ShyimaHallNews

Understanding Modern Egypt

Shyima Hall calls her native country an “unsafe world” (8). In groups, students will complete a research project on modern day Egypt using specific cues from Hall’s narrative to imagine the Egypt Hall would have experienced in the 90s. Note: this is a good way to teach students that Egypt is no longer all about pyramids and hieroglyphics.

Using Active and Authentic Prompts

Students will write a well-crafted letter to their state congressmen in which they discuss how Shyima Hall’s book has impacted their views on human rights legislation and ask them write back with information regarding their political platform on the issue and how they plan on addressing this problem in American society. Students will have to pull specific examples from the text to ask specific questions. These letters will be sent to the intended reader in hopes of a response. If a response is given, it will be incorporated into class discussion upon its arrival.

Works Cited

Hall, Shyima, and Lisa Wysocky. Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-day Child Slave.         New York: Simon&Schuster, 2015. Print.

Short, Katherine Bucher and KaaVonia Hinton. Young Adult Literature: Exploration,    

   Evaluation, and Appreciation. 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Print.