I had never even heard of Hmong people until I came to ASU. In Winston-Salem, there were no Hmong children at my school. It wasn't until some of my friends mentioned going to school with some Hmong children in Hickory that I had even heard of these people. I never really knew what they looked like or what their culture was like until I went to a Hmong Seminar a couple weeks ago. I found this to be such an informative seminar. I wanted to share some of the information I learned with you.
I found out that sometimes these children may come into school bruised after they've been sick. The reason for the bruising is because there are special healing rituals performed by the Hmongs that have been passed down for generations. During some of these pressure is put on the arms of the sick person to "squeeze out the bad blood." As a future teacher, it will be helpful to know that a Hmong child with bruises is probably not being abused, but have simply taken part in traditional Hmong healing rituals. I also learned that the Hmong women get married very young. It is not as common anymore for the women to get married at age 14 or 15, but it does still happen. It would be very possible for you to have a married Hmong child in your class. These are just a couple things a learned. I was wondering if any of you know very much about the Hmong culture? Did you go to school with any Hmong children?[/quote]

Thanks, Sarah, for posting about this distinct group of ethnic refugees here in the United States. I had heard the term Hmong before, but had never learned about their history or culture; your post got me doing some research.

Most of the United States' Hmong population descends from Laotian refugees that fled extermination after the American withdrawal from Vietnam. In the earliest days of the war (while the CIA was operating for the US secretly after the defeat of the French), many Hmong were recruited in Laos to defend against communist political forces.

Following the pattern of violence and genocide that emerged after the North Vietnamese reclaimed control of Vietnam, the Hmong were targeted in Laos for their participation and support of the Americans. They fled to save their preciouis lives and culture.

I really liked your eagerness to embrace their culture (which, in instances like their medicinal practices that you mentioned, can be very strange to Americans) and apparantely it is crucial that the younger generations of Hmong in America continue to learn about their unique history and preserve their language and cultural practices! Thanks so much for telling us about these fantastic people.

http://www.jefflindsay.com/Hmong_tragedy.html

I also did not know much about this ethnic group that seems to be so prevalent in certain areas of North Carolina. In one of my Block I classes that I took we had to become advocates for certain groups of young adolescents and someone chose the Hmong as their topic of study. I attended her information session and one of the main things that was discussed was that they are likely to marry early, which Sarah mentioned earlier. I did not remember her discussing their medicinal rituals to get the bad blood out. I would be quick to assume that the student was being abused in the home if I saw them enter school with bruises such as those. I also believe that I went to school with a large population of Hmong students, but I was unaware of it at the time. My high school had a large ESL department and there were many Vietnamese students, but they were somewhat secluded from the rest of the school because they were in their own department. I love learning about different groups of students that I may encounter, and thank you for helping me learn more about this interesting group of students.

I seriously have never heard about this until this topic was posted. How would you go about handling certian situations? Having a married child in your class? I guess if there is a Hmong child in your class to make sure that your principal and collegues understand that situation if questioned about bruises or what not? Could that embaress the student as well?

I also attended the same seminar as Sarah and was very surprised and intrigued by the presentation. I never attended school with any Hmong students, and had never heard of many of the cultural beliefs. It is very important that we as teachers try to understand the different cultures of the students in our classrooms, and I was very appreciative of the girls who gave up their time to give us a small amount of information on this culture.