In Focus: Mialy Dermish
By Rosie Hughes
Mialy Dermish is an education specialist with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)’s regional representation office to the European Union in Brussels. She has been a preschool teacher in Hong Kong, conducted research and advocacy campaigns for International Planned Parenthood, and started her own non-profit to fund youth projects in Madagascar, among many other endeavors. She holds an M.A. in International Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and an M.Ed in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE).
We spoke to her about what it’s been like to take her classroom learning into the field, her current role with UNHCR, and how she thinks about research in her work.
“Research isn’t enough. At the end of the day we’re humans. We’re only capable of a certain amount of activities and emotional energy each day. We have to try and create relationships with people where we can help them see what we can see, and also listen to what they’re seeing.”
How has it been to take your classroom learning about education in emergencies from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) into a work context?
What I found challenging before I went to HGSE is that all across my career I felt I had strong intuitions about why things were going well or not, but I didn’t have a solid background in data to support these gut feelings. I think what Professor Sarah Dryden-Peterson’s class on interviewing told me is that I am the type of person who will very quickly relate to someone and that that’s OK. It’s OK to go with your intuition. You just have to be super reflective about how and why you’re doing that, how that plays into the kind of information you’re finding out, and how that plays into your eventual findings. That realization has stuck with me, particularly in terms of doing focus groups and partnering with different organizations.
Another course that really sticks with me was Jack Shonkoff’s class on early childhood adversity. First, it’s totally amazing to read neuroscience. We read all sorts of studies about how parenting behavior has a massive impact on educational outcomes. It made me realize we need to look at families and parents a lot more in schools. So in my current role I’ve really pushed to get parents more involved.
Can you talk about the history and context of your current role with UNHCR?
When I was brought on in 2016 it was clear that someone needed to be looking at education for refugees in the European Union. There had been a lot of telephone calls coming into the local UNHCR offices, like in Germany, Ireland, and France, from teachers asking two different questions. The first was, ‘Do you have any materials that could help us explain what migration is? Because we’re struggling with xenophobia in our schools.’ And the other question was, ‘Eek we’ve just got five new refugee kids in our school and we don’t know how to work with them and we’re struggling to find local resources.’ That was particularly true for places where there really hadn’t been a history of migration. In The Netherlands, for example, there were children and families placed in quite remote areas.
That sounds really challenging. What steps did you end up taking to help address these teachers’ needs?
First I tried to do research around the situation. I did a quantitative survey around Western Europe which we sent out to teachers through our country offices, and we also did a few focus groups. The results of that research showed that we needed to try and support teachers more by highlighting local best practices in their own languages and connecting people with nearby schools that actually had established practices that were working. And then we created a bunch of tools as well. Since then it’s been on and off doing that kind of work, creating tools and linking people together.
Could you talk about how you use research in your work, highlighting some of the challenges too?
I think there’s an element of relationship-building that needs to go on before, or at least simultaneous to, the bringing of research to the table. When I started with UNHCR in 2016 I wrote up a strategy to engage in refugee education in Europe that was based on the latest research on migrants, refugees, and education on the continent. The head of our region was on board with it. But it was very difficult to get others to buy into it because those responsible for education in their countries either didn’t have the technical background or didn’t have the time to work on it because they were overwhelmed with all they already had to do. But then the more I talked to people and listened the more it was clear they were willing to start doing things.
That’s why I say I think the relationship is really important. Research isn’t enough. At the end of the day we’re humans. We’re only capable of a certain amount of activities and emotional energy each day. We have to try and create relationships with people where we can help them see what we can see, and also listen to what they’re seeing.