June 5, 2008

The Life and Emotional Issues of Being an Adoptee

People are often surprised when they meet Lincoln School first grade teacher Erin Kelley for the first time. Erin was a Korean child adopted by an Irish family and her appearance doesn’t always match the image conjured by her name. Her experience as an adopted child prompted her to write an Adoption Resource Guide for Brookline educators. With a grant from the Brookline Education Foundation, Erin is developing a comprehensive guide that she hopes to distribute to teachers, guidance counselors, and administrators. She recently spoke about her experience as an adoptee and the unique developmental and emotional issues that adoptee students face.

What experiences in your own teaching or in talking with colleagues led you to create an adoption resource guide? 
I use my own experiences to talk about adoption, but a lot of people don’t have that access point. Last year, I had three internationally adopted students in my classroom, and two were Asian adoptees. I wanted to find out what resources were out there and bring these resources to the educators here.

Can you describe the adoption resource guide for us and give us an overview of some of the most important ideas?
The Adoption Resource Guide is meant to address the needs for all adoptee groups, including international adoptees, domestic adoptees, single-parent adoption and foster children. I made an effort to make it relevant for elementary through high school students. A section called “What Teachers Can Do” gives guidance around how to discuss adoption with students, along with things to think about when planning curriculum. I also included websites, book lists, and suggestions around school and community resources for kids, parents, and teachers.

What do you see as some of the unique needs of adoptee students? 
In general terms, adoptees se12e through a unique lens; their adoption can have a great impact on how they perceive relationships around them. Even as adults, adoptees continue to explore their identity and how they relate to others. 
In a classroom, adopted children may be more sensitive to transitions, loss, or relationship issues. And certain class assignments may exaggerate differences in background or highlight missing information.

Can you give examples of class assignments that might be difficult for adopted children and some suggestions about how to modify these assignments? 
Assignments that focus on traditional families raise difficult issues for adopted children. It can help to put a different spin on these or widen the choice in the assignment. For example, in an assignment where children bring in baby pictures, children can bring in the “youngest picture you have of yourself” or draw “what you might have looked like as a baby.” Instead of making a family tree, kids can draw “Who is in your house?” In a genetics assignment, the child can act as a reporter with a friend, neighbor, or family member. These modifications lend themselves well to the needs in Brookline where there are many types of non-traditional families.

What are other common missteps that occur in school for adopted children that the information in your guide will help teachers to avoid?
Teachers might shy away from talking about adoption because they don’t know how to be sensitive to that piece of who the child is. The guide helps teachers frame answers to questions asked by the other children. There are language scripts for teachers to help support children when they are asked about adoption.

One of the scripts in the guide gives teachers an answer if a child asks an adoptee, “Why did your mother give you away?”

The teacher can point out that an adopted child has a real mother who cares for her every day, that her birth mother made a plan for her to be adopted, and that the adoptee has the choice of whether to talk about it or keep it private.

As a Korean adoptee yourself, what do you wish that your teachers had known? 
When I came to the United States, a child being placed in a new family absorbed the culture of the new family. I didn’t identify with being Asian and it wasn’t until I was much older that I began to identify myself as an Asian woman. If you asked me growing up, I was Irish. This was a hard thing for me to explain to classmates, seeing that developmentally, I was still trying to figure out that piece of my identity. It would have been great for teachers to know how to put my experiences into a positive frame and support me in those conversations with peers.