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This School For Refugees And Immigrants Pushes Young English-Learners To Aim Higher

POST WRITTEN BY
Liz Posner
This article is more than 6 years old.

There’s been so much news lately on tech titans bringing their traditions of innovation and disruption for good to American schools. The Zuckerbergs and Bezoses of the world have good intentions, surely: to overhaul a broken system that prioritizes multiple choice test scores and archaic content over relevant skills and job training that a child enrolled in a public school in 2017 could actually use in the workplace one day.

But there are plenty of diverse education folks who are going back to the communities they came from, bringing years of experience and an entrepreneurial, modern spirit to the classroom. The International High School at Langley Park (IHSLP) is a shining example.

For two years, the Maryland school, led by 32 year-old Principal Carlos Beato, has exclusively served immigrant and refugee students with a focus on English language learning. In its first year of existence, 98% of students improved on ESL scores — the highest growth for any high school in Prince George's County. That’s especially impressive considering the students’ socioeconomic backgrounds: 99% of students qualify for free or reduced meals.

They’ve produced some outstanding individuals: In 2016, an IHSLP student spoke at the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Latin American Education Forum. This year, IHSLP students won three of the six Student of the Year Awards in Prince George's County Public Schools. Six IHSLP students also spoke at KIND's annual gala in New York City about their personal reflections on migration to the United States, and the school's STEM team placed 4th in a WorldSmarts STEM challenge for the prototype they built to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from cars.

How does a school for some of the most disadvantaged students achieve such notable success in just a few months? Beato traces it back to the school’s mission and methods. “The idea was to create a small school environment to help English language learners succeed. We were the first of our kind.” IHSLP uses competency-based learning, which gives students the opportunity to explain their answers in English or in their native tongue. In other words, a student who understands how to solve a math problem won't necessarily fail because they don't know how to explain their logic in English. Rubrics determine a student’s mastery of a skill, and scores range from “Beginning” to “High School” to “College.”

On a given project, a student can be graded on both softer skills like “Making responsible decisions” and collaboration, as well as English language competency. In math class, for example, students worked in groups to research and evaluate the best cell phone plan available for purchase. “We’re focusing less on content they’ll forget anyway, and more on skills they’ll use for the rest of their life,” saysEnglish Success Coach Nancy Canales. Canales, a 24 year-old from Prince George’s County whose parents are from El Salvador, says she wasn’t expected to go to college. She now runs the English department at IHSLP.

In the rest of the county, students with limited English language abilities graduate at a rate of just 48% . In most schools, ESL students are segregated from their peers, and curriculum mastery falls to the bottom of the priority list while English competency is the main goal. But teachers feel that IHSLP, with its attendance rate of 95% (the highest of any high school in the country) and its commitment to competency-based learning, is on a track to not only turn its students into fluent English speakers, but academic champions as well. “We all think of ourselves as language teachers,” says Canales.

Students at IHSLP rise against numerous challenges. Many stay in crowded multiple-family households; one lived in a homeless shelter this year. Many also faced traumatic or violent experiences while they travelled across the border. To ease their transition, students develop close relationships to teachers through weekly advisory sessions, and counseling services are encouraged. “They’ve been through so much to get here in their very short lives: they’re resilient,” says Canales. “When they came to this country, 70% of our students did not expect college readiness. Education was last thing on their minds. They wanted to meet up with parents who they hadn’t seen in 15 years. By mid-year, most said they wanted to go to at least a two-year college. I want them to graduate with the skills to go on to any college or career.”

I asked the staff if ESL students are possibly at a disadvantage in a school where they are not surrounded by native-speaking students every day. Could IHSLP be giving them an unrealistic view of what life will be like after they graduate? Canales says no. “We have so much diversity, including students from Latin America, the Middle East, Africa. What our school does is train them to think about other people’s perspectives.”

IHSLP students might even be learning English more quickly than ESL students in other schools. Teachers use a transitional language program, moving from 30% English in the classroom during a student’s first year, to 50% in their second, 70% in the third, and 100% English their senior year. “By the end of this past school year, I could speak to any of my students in English and they’d understand, even if they responded in Spanish,” says Beato.

It’s a difficult time to be an immigrant in the United States, with regular reports of ICE raids near schools. It's especially harder now for refugees to come to the U.S. I asked Beato what it’s like leading a school full of immigrants and refugees just a few miles away from Washington D.C., where politicians are doing their best to bar and send home people like his students.

“It’s such an empowering place to be right now,” says Beato. “We’ve had many ICE raid scares in Langley Park, which is heavily Latino. But the kids still come to school because they feel safe, and our attendance rate proves that.” Born in the DR, Beato came to the U.S. at the age of five and began elementary school with limited English skills. “I grew up undocumented, and two teachers in high school advocated for me. They took my report cards and transcripts and went to delegate offices. ICE raids or not, I always my students, ‘education is the most powerful tool that no one can take away from you.’ Nelson Mandela’s words.”

The day after the election, Canales stopped instruction and had her students write letters to then-President-elect Trump about their immigration journeys and why they wanted so badly to become Americans. “I want students to feel empowered to tell their stories,” she says.

IHSLP teachers are clearly proud of their school, and not just for its high test scores. “We have the opportunity to give a great education to students who’ve historically gotten the worst education,” Canales says. “It’s different here because we’ve all chosen to work with immigrant students. It creates a different mentality.”