From the Soviet Union to Chattanooga, Tennessee, listen to the story of Anjelika's incredible journey from one world to a very different one. Glean valuable insights about what learners truly need to be successful, and rediscover the universality of human resilience.
David Reynolds:
What matters most in learning? The challenge, the thrill, the benefits, interacting with other people or something else entirely? What is the connection between leading and learning? Does change drive learning or does learning drive change? What's more important teaching or learning? Is everyone a leader, a learner, a teacher? Want answers? Listen in as we address these intriguing issues through commentary and with guests who share their thinking and tell us their stories. Lead. Learn. Change.
Anjelika Riano:
When you come new to the new country, it's a whole new world. Take your house and put family in every single room, another family in the living room, and have schedule to use bathroom. But I lived through Soviet-era and I lived through post-Soviet era. It's all the life savings evaporated in three days. There's also direct threat to my life and to life of my daughter. I had to escape $0.25 In my pocket. I don't know how to drive a car. I don't know how to use ATM. I do not speak English. I have nothing. But I had a huge hope for the better life. Work of educator never ends.
David Reynolds:
Today, we have the pleasure of hearing from our friend, Anjelika Riano. Her story is riveting. Her experience is extraordinary, and her achievements are amazing. Anjelika, thank you very much for joining us today.
Anjelika Riano:
Thank you, David, it is my pleasure and honor.
David Reynolds:
You're an educator, parents and advocate for families and a bonafide leader in the community. You are the coordinator and developer of a International Newcomer Center in the Hamilton County school district in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the founder of the city of 75 languages initiative and the Hamilton County department of education, extended learning academies. You and I first met about 15 years ago. I did the math just earlier today, and you served at that time as a stellar teacher at the International Inclusion Center, I believe it was called in Dalton, Georgia. You were a great facilitator during some of our induction sessions, where you broached the topic of second language learners. I can still remember as a matter of fact, the lesson where you taught us parts of the plant in Ukrainian, I believe it was. Stable or something was stem and maybe list for leaf.
Anjelika Riano:
Oh my goodness. You remembered it David.
David Reynolds:
Good teaching. Some points in your very interesting story that I hope we might touch upon today include your time in the Soviet Union, fleeing to Moldova. The fact that you took a college entrance exam after only being exposed to English for 12 months. Your required participation in the youth communist group, when you were growing up and the interaction between Cuba and Russia during your childhood, which actually fed into the Spanish language background. Your former husband's membership in the mob, in the Soviet Union, unbelievable story there, and the kidnapping of you and your daughter by the police. And then with only a hundred dollars in your pocket and a young daughter in tow and with zero English, you were placed on an airplane to California.
Anjelika Riano:
Yes. When you were start telling story, when somebody tells you that story and I'm like, "Oh my goodness, somebody just telling me my life. That was very interesting." What I'm doing right now, right now, per request of the new superintendent, Dr. Johnson, Dr. Brian Johnson, Hamilton County schools. He asked me look into situation of the new commerce, of the new immigrants and that is dear to my heart, because I was one of them more than 20 years ago now, and especially my child. In my particular situation, I had great education in former Soviet Union. Even though I didn't speak any English, I did speak Spanish. We always had the vision for better life. What I'm dealing with right now, we're providing welcoming environment for the boarder response crisis. Majority of our students come from country of Guatemala, Central America. A country that had civil war for more than 32 years.
Anjelika Riano:
We getting not only language barrier, not even Spanish language barrier, our students and 97% of them, they speak dialects, and Spanish is their second language. And then they trying to teach them English. Some of them been out of school between two to seven years. We work in not only in academics. As you can imagine, academics is probably question number three or part three before that goes social, emotional support. Because only three students out of 37, I had in academy this year had biological parent living with them. Everybody else is everything you see in the boarder. When you turn on TV and you see all that, that's what I'm doing right now, developing the center. I'm very proud and honored to do it. It's very hard work, but let me tell I'm waking up every morning, very happy to go to work.
David Reynolds:
You have a passion for this that's obvious. What is the biggest learning for you in all of this? Because you were exposed as a very young person to multiple languages. If I'm not mistaken, I believe you told me you speak four and a half. Something like that.
Anjelika Riano:
It's Ukrainian since I'm from Southern Ukraine. There's the whole issue with the language I learn Ukrainian as adult. Even though it's language of Ukraine and I'm from Southern Ukraine. And then of course, lately I have to update you. I have been taking Italian and Polish. I can read in several languages. Of course, I took Latin for more than six years, but nobody speaks Latin. So I'm only counting languages, I can hold job and be successful. That's what I'm counting for. I have everything else, it's just linguistic entertainment for me. But I can get by. I can go to 14 countries and I can get by.
David Reynolds:
What have you learned from working with newcomers who have some similar experiences with being thrust into a new place or without language skills? What have you learned from your experience with them that either parallels your experience or contrasts with it and helps you figure out how to serve them better?
Anjelika Riano:
Similarities, of course, being in environment of the foreign country, but the way I got here was drastically different than children getting here. What I learn as an educator? We can teach them English. We live in America. There's a lot of people who can teach them, lot of professionals, but what most important to attend to their needs. When they come to us, most of the students, they do not have particular vision for education. That was different for me. Comparing and contrasting, that was very, very different from me. Also, I thought foreigners whole my life, and I'm so used to it.
Anjelika Riano:
What I'm always impressed and I learned from my students is resilience of human spirit, through how many things, those children ages of 14 to 17, sometimes 18 came through. It's really hard to comprehend, but they still at school. They still want to learn every day. Some of them work all night and come to school in the morning because they want to learn. I learned that education and a work of educator never ends. It goes two fold to support them social, emotional support provide for them because you can imagine they live through a lot of trauma and then teach them language. Also, keep them in school, and all that giving them vision. Difference between my immigration, for my daughter, yes, we were so poor. I mean, when it was really hard for us in America. Sometimes those kids have even more than I had because when I came to America, we were hungry. My daughter and I.
Anjelika Riano:
We've been in situations, we had no shoes. That may be not the case with these particular kids, but they don't have vision. They don't have adults who give them that vision. In my situation, I had nothing, but I had vision that life going to get better. This is America and everything can happen, friend. Once you hear, all the opportunities open up. I think we own to something here. Giving them vision, giving them hope, providing supporting environment, wrap around services, and then giving them academic certain way. I know how to do that. How the brain works and what we need to do for them actually to learn language and retain that. That was my little journey. I hope I answered your question. If not, I can start over.
David Reynolds:
I remember you telling me when we talked a few years back, this won't be verbatim, but I remember you saying that teachers have to understand that in order to reach every single student, the student has to be encouraged to have the vision of what they can want and achieve. I think you just restated that in a different way. The other thing I lifted from what you just said was this notion of the resilience of the human spirit, wanting to be part of a community and Excel so that the listeners have some backstory that you have some street cred when it comes to resilience.
David Reynolds:
You could take us through a version of, from being born in the Southern Soviet Union in Ukraine, and then the events that precipitated your need to flee, to Moldova, to some other family members and how the language ended up being presented to you there. I remember what the story was about how you ended up being immersed in a community where multiple languages were spoken. And then when you returned to the Ukraine and were married. What happened there with the kidnapping, and then that takes us full circle back to what you just said, where you mentioned that when you and your daughter came, you had no shoes and you were very, very poor.
Anjelika Riano:
Well, you just described season one and season two of some maybe future movie, but let's try to do it under a couple of minutes. Yes. I was born in USSR and a lot of my students don't even know what it was. It probably tells you my age, which I don't talk about it. It's more how I feel. I was born in Soviet Union and my mother it's like my whole, my family. It's very interesting because from my mother's side, I have people who literally benefited from socialism so much it took them somewhere very high. My mother's family [inaudible 00:12:22] brothers. They literally had nothing, but they ended up getting great education and being in military and being high military officials and retiring with in the ranks of the generals and that level.
Anjelika Riano:
From my father's side is completely opposite story. From my father's side, they were Christians, they were Protestant Christians. They were the people who ran from Soviet in 1918. It's my father's grandparents. They settled in Bessarabia, which is modern Moldova. They experience all the opposites. If you're talking about persecution and prison camps and people dying, that's my father's family. Those two unlike people meeting in Soviet Union, Odessa Ukraine in '60s, and they fall in love and they get married. But at that point, my father is not even telling my mother that he believes in God, that he from a minister's family. They get married, and then my mother finds out, and a whole another story because of the propaganda, Christians kill, and stuff like that. So that's how I came about.
Anjelika Riano:
And then my mother, but I was exposed to Bible. She start reading and she start reading into it. Then she becomes Christian. Once she become Christian, she becomes total outcast for her family. They can not communicate with her. You can imagine military officials, she's married paster son, and they got baptized. So once they got baptized and they start to follow the Bible and they start to follow, they were a Seventh-day Adventist, so followed the Sabbath, which is Saturday. That's when persecution start. At that point, I'm getting close to three years old and they live in commune living. If you want to know what commune young living is, just take your house and put family in every single room. Another family in the living room and have schedule to use bathroom, one bathroom and one kitchen, so that's commune living.
Anjelika Riano:
We living in the horrible setting and the neighbor just overheard my mom telling me story, Bible story and she report to [inaudible 00:14:32]. Social workers get involved. Of course, as a kid, you'd be. They decide to take me, separate me from my family, because that considered a child endangerment and child abuse to be indoctrinated. So they trying to take me. Of course, my parents want to save me because they know how it ends up. You ended up in somewhere in orphanage. You ended up somewhere else. You ended up being degraded because you child of the enemy of the state. Basically, if you Christian, especially if you Protestant Christian. In the middle of the night, my parents basically take me and take me to Moldova and they drop me there.
Anjelika Riano:
Now when authorities came, my father said, my wife left me. I don't know where she is. I don't know where the child is. Well, praise God. In those times, we didn't have surveillance, cell phones, anything, social security numbers. There's no way to trace you. So here I am, three years old in the area is modern Moldova, which is a huge, huge Ashkenazic Jewish settlement blended this Moldavian people, which speak Romanian. Ashkenazic Jewish people back then they were speaking Yiddish. And then of course it's Ukrainian because my family, they were refugees from Soviet, so it's Ukrainian and Russian in some stand. So here I am and my grandma, she spoke all that because it's your environment. You automatically speak everything.
Anjelika Riano:
For a couple of years, for me being there, I couldn't differentiate the languages. I was communicating with everybody else. I guess now, as a linguist and professional, I realize that's how my brain formed in those important years. I could understand several languages from Yiddish to Ukrainian, to Moldavia and Romanian, whichever you call it now politically correct. It's a variation of same language, very similar to Spanish. Of course, Russian, when I had to communicate with my mom, who is [inaudible 00:16:31]. When I'm coming back and they put me in kindergarten and you know, me, David, for years, I'm not really shy person. I like to talk, I interact. The teachers at kindergarten ask my mom, "Can she speak?" Well, because Russian was becoming for me a second language.
Anjelika Riano:
So here I am trying to learn fluent, Russian, trying to learn alphabet, trying to learn all the letters, trying to learn all that. When I'm there sitting in the first grade, I remember teachers, all my papers, all read, because I write the way I speak, and God knows what I was speaking. I was mixing Yiddish and Romanian and Ukrainian. That's how people speak in these villages where I was hiding from soldiers. It's whole another story, how I came back. All that story of political persecution, my family's dealings. Because all of them lost their jobs and housing and ended up living in some church members home, because they were so badly persecuted.
Anjelika Riano:
My school experience. Unconsciously, I ran through certain stages that every child, every new commer child, every foreign child comes here. You come, and you're trying to learn new language. So that was my part from that. So let me stop for a second here, David. So what do you want me to say after this? After my languages experience, so where you want me to lead that?
David Reynolds:
Let's go ahead and fast forward to your late teenage years and lot of exchange between Cuba and the Soviet Union at the time.
Anjelika Riano:
I got into it, and okay. Let me start here. Okay. I'm coming back to Odessa, Ukraine. Here I am. I'm in the second grade, and I'm going to the school. This Christians were so persecuted. We were not allowed to live in the center of the city, so we ended up being in some outskirts, completely with where the working class and the criminals. It's not very good area, but education was fairly good everywhere at that point. That's what my assumption is. Here we are in second grade, and that guy, that's the old [inaudible 00:18:50], our neighbor here, who just died last year. I'm talking about Fidel Castro. He shows up in Soviet Union. He shows up in Odessa, Ukraine. At that point, Cuba facing horrible crisis. They don't have much and all they had at that point is the sugar cane.
Anjelika Riano:
He came to make the economic pact to build the factory. Communist being communist and having their attention to education. One thing is I absolutely cannot stand socialism or anything in briefs, but the one thing was good. Education was absolutely excellent, hard, but excellent. He comes and to build capacity. He's like, "Okay, they're going to pick two schools." The story has it, he looks at the Odessa Bay and he's like, " [inaudible 00:19:38]." They pick two different parts well. The communist leaders were trying to tell him that's not the right part of the town. Just don't go there. They still pick that school. Here I am, second grader, sitting in the classroom and that woman walks in and she speaks Spanish to us. Trying to teach you. She was speaking Russian and Spanish. That's how Spanish came into my life.
Anjelika Riano:
I didn't know why I was studying it, but I guess it was mission of my life to ended up being here and heavily use my Spanish daily to educate America. Educating America for me, started with Fidel Castro first educating me in a Soviet Union in Spanish language. Growing as a teenager, it helped me and at school, I couldn't be that active in sports or anything else because you have to be member of Komsomol. My family are Christians. We couldn't, because point 7, when you getting into Komsomol said, "We believe in ourselves. There's no, God." I could not say that. With that came a lot of hardships. Life at school was really under the depression. Then time pass and you're living in Soviet Union, at the time everybody was getting married very young and that did not exclude me.
Anjelika Riano:
I married late in life, back then in those traditions. I was 18 going into 19 and that's considered almost late. Most of the girls at the time were getting married at 17 and that was norm. I got married and the person I was married to was also Church goer. It was Pastor's son. It was interesting things in life. When I'm looking at my life and I said, "Wow." I didn't live through World War II. I didn't live through different era, but I lived through Soviet era. I lived through post-Soviet era. When everything turned upside down, when my dad woke up in the morning, with the gray hair, because all the life savings, evaporated in three days. Something like great depression here. That's what we lived through.
Anjelika Riano:
They closed banks for about two, three days. When they opened the banks, what would be equivalent like $100,000 equivalent, you can live and send your children to college, but you can buy three loaves of bread. I lived through that situation. My husband and my friends are just ended up going to another side of that. In that situation, you can go one side or another. He ended up being recruited in mob. But there's a whole story behind that. There's my life starts. I don't know where he is. I don't know those late evenings. I don't know exactly what he does, but considering by what unravel later, that probably was nothing good. Then we see movies right now. It's a part of the history. It's a whole period of in America, they were calling the Roaring Twenties, in Soviet Union they basically calling them Wild Nineties.
Anjelika Riano:
Because of the nature of activities whenever he was doing, and I'm glad, I didn't know. One day we'd been kidnapped straight from the street in the [inaudible 00:22:58], that would be mafia asking us where he was. And that was undercover police actually looking for him. That's the only thing that saved us. That shook me to the core. In addition to all the persecution, now we have all those people after us, and I realized really quick that not only there is no future for me, doesn't matter how many languages I speak at that time. Not only there is a still persecution, there's also direct threat to my life and to life of my daughter. With that said, making long story short, I had to escape, but remember in Soviet Union, you can not walk through the ocean, through the Atlantic ocean. You cannot walk through all those borders.
Anjelika Riano:
Situation with Central America and Mexico, it's easier. People just come through the border and they're here. With me it was different. It's a whole another story there, how we got here with $100 in my pocket to start with, and with the seven year old child running in the middle of the night. Here we are going through every single border there, getting in the plane. We landing in America with literally, literally $0.25 In my pocket. $0.25 in my pocket, I don't know how to drive a car. I don't know how to use ATM. I don't know how to write a check. I do not speak English. I do speak Spanish, but not English. I have seven year old child. Here I am on the mercy of God and destiny with huge hopes. Nothing, I had nothing. But I had a huge hope for the better life and no different than any other immigrant, who hundreds of years before coming to Ellis Island, just different was my comming to America.
Anjelika Riano:
If you ask me if I would do it again, I would, but I would hesitate. Only now after 20 years after going through all this, I can honestly say I would. For many years, I was saying, I don't know. I don't know if I would take my chances back there or come to America with a small child to raise here. Unbelievable experience all my life.
David Reynolds:
Tell me how that set of experiences, that continuous stream of challenges that you faced and dealt with and overcame. How did that feed up into what you're doing now?
Anjelika Riano:
Well, I think it is absolutely continuation. Because as you can imagine going through all that, I came and ended up being English second language learner. Then I also was a child who was ESL student. So I became mother of ESL student, right? Then I became ESL teacher. Then I became ESL coach, and then I became running and helping with the ESL program, and then I became a coordinator in the district level. So it led me, and then I also a mother of the child, American child with immigrant mother. So if you look at all those categories, I experienced it as a parent. I experienced with myself. I experienced as the mother of immigrant child. Those are the situation on a human level and on a spiritual level, when you go through something. I remember that morning really well. This was just we all have this moment when after that we'll go like, "Wow, that was the breaking point, or it was just setting moments to start something."
Anjelika Riano:
That was morning, and I lived in the basement of the one nice family, who let us live in the basement, but we didn't have a kitchen. We didn't have a stall. Of course, to live there, I had to clean the 6,000 square feet home and cook for that family. It's not like they would not give me food, but I would never ask for that. That morning I had the taco waffles, which is now $1.60, used to be $1.00, and there's eight waffles. That's our food for a week because we couldn't afford anything. But I did have toaster. I remember that morning last two waffles. I dropped them in the toaster and I wait and I give one waffle to my daughter and one to myself. She is growing body. She ate one. She's like, mommy, I want another one. Of course, I give her my waffle and I was hungry all day long.
Anjelika Riano:
At that point, it was [inaudible 00:27:51] community was helping me. I was going to college to learn English and I was taking business degree there. I remember in the morning I didn't have anything to eat. And then, of course, going through classes and I didn't have money to buy anything for me. I remember walking and it's so cold and I just only had sandals. I'm walking, and I'm thinking about all the immigrants, who came before me. Of course, you read stories from all around the world and thinking about why I in that situation. And then you start realizing it's probably destiny. I remember saying it to myself to whoever else I was saying. I was saying, "God, if you get me out of this situation, I will do everything possible that no immigrant child or no immigrant mother will live through the same things I'm living through. I really would like to dedicate my life to help. To help the new immigrants who come and who going through the same situation.
Anjelika Riano:
I guess after that, it's almost like the door opened up. I started doing much better in my studies. Soon enough, I got invited to work on the deli department in the college campus right there when you can buy very, very cheap. You can buy some food like leftover sandwiches or something like that. So food issue was stopped. Ever since, I guess I'm working on the losing weight, right? That was the only time when I was 112 pounds [crosstalk 00:29:23]. I'm like, "God I wanted to help, but maybe in the middle. Right now, it's like we blessed with all this food."
David Reynolds:
This is David Reynolds, letting you know that the rest of this conversation with Anjelika will be available on the next episode. If you have not already done so, please subscribe to, Lead. Learn. Change. Leave a review and/or rating and tell a friend or colleague about the podcast. You can also reach me with ideas and comments by emailing leadlearnchange@icloud.com. Music for Lead. Learn. Change is Sweet Adrenaline by Delicate Beats. Thanks for listening. Until next time, go lead, go learn, go make a change. Go.