Educators Get a Taste of Immigrants’ Life : Schools: San Gabriel Valley teachers and administrators learn at seminar about the humiliations foreign students often face.

POMONA — The woman behind the counter was speaking in Korean, and Norma Herrera didn’t understand.

To get her lunch on Wednesday, the El Monte Union High School District administrator had to fill out a long and complicated registration form. But she couldn’t read the instructions.

No matter where she turned for help, there was an Asian person speaking a foreign language. Even the man at the translation center barely spoke English. He scolded her for not having followed the directions, ripped up her half-completed form and told her to start all over again.

Exasperated but enlightened, Herrera joined 60 other educators in the auditorium. Briefly, they had had a taste of what Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese immigrants experience when they enter school in the United States for the first time.

“I know this is what students have to go through,” Herrera said.

“It made me very short-tempered,” said John Kao, a bilingual program specialist for the Alhambra School District. “I wanted to begin my lunch. It was very frustrating.”

The role-reversal kicked off a three-day conference at Cal Poly Pomona designed to sensitize educators to the problems Asians face in public schools, particularly in the West San Gabriel Valley. The conference was sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and is part of a continuing effort to study the impact of immigration on the educational system.

Teachers, administrators and counselors listened to experts on bilingual education, gang violence and crime in the Asian community. Social workers talked about broken families, increasing divorce rates and children sent to the United States while their parents stay in Taiwan or Hong Kong to work.

Absent from the discussions was the once-popular perception that Asian-Americans are a “model minority,” overachieving, industrious and well-off. Several Asian students who told of their frustrations trying to learn English and fit in with their American peers exposed the fallacy of that stereotype.

“I flunked my English class,” said Johnny Lam, 18, who left Vietnam with his family in 1980. “Just to do some kind of history report would take me a long time.”

“I had to carry around two thick dictionaries every day,” said Susan Kim, 17, who moved from South Korea four years ago. “I dressed differently. My hair was straight and long. I was embarrassed.”

Jason Feng, 16, a senior at San Gabriel High School, said, “People felt that, because I’m Chinese, I’m supposed to be taking calculus. I’m not good in math.”

His comments elicited a hearty chuckle from the audience, to which he responded, “Why are you laughing? To us it’s not funny at all.”

A teacher replied: “The laughter was sympathetic. I really understand what you were saying. Oftentimes, Americans offer subdued laughter in sympathy.”

“You are not immigrants,” Jason said.

The audience was silent. Then Rudy Chavez, principal of Mark Keppel High School in Alhambra, spoke up.

“Will you help me, please?” he said. “Have you had a pleasant experience, a positive experience so I can provide that for my kids?”

“My first (English as a Second Language) teacher was an immigrant herself, too,” Susan said. “I would cry in front of her. That helped me a lot.”