The school system in Aurora, Colorado, is striving to accommodate more than 3,000 new students mostly from Venezuela and Colombia. Teachers have been helping them by translating vocabulary and handing out written instructions in Spanish. Outside the classrooms, it’s a different story.
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The fear first became apparent on a routine trip to the grocery store back in the spring. Torres was standing in line holding a jug of milk and other items when she moved a little too close to the young woman in front of her. The woman — a teen who spoke Spanish with an American accent — told Torres to keep her distance.
The next week, when Bocaranda refused to pay, the government workers stabbed him in the bicep; the one-inch scar remains visible on his left arm. The men threatened to kill Ramirez and her young son, who were both at the food truck that day. Bocaranda sold the business, and the family, including Torres and Alisson, all fled to Colombia.. In Mexico, they crossed the border in Juarez and turned themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol.
The schools reached out for advice and training from the district’s central office, which recommended a strategy called “translanguaging.” That means using Spanish at times to help students make meaning of the English lessons and conversations happening around them. On a Wednesday in September, Alisson and her friends were sitting at a round table in the back of Emerson’s class. They spoke Spanish among themselves as Emerson spoke to the rest of the class about the drawing he was projecting on the large screen in the front of the class.
While teachers try out new Spanish vocabulary, English-speaking students show a range of responses. Some seem bored or annoyed by their teachers’ sudden interest in speaking Spanish in class. Bilingual students appear proud when they can help teachers trying to use more Spanish in class. Wesdyk rarely smiles and remains serious as she runs the class. Perhaps that’s because the students are far more unruly than in Alisson’s others. Wesdyk acknowledges the relative chaos, but says it’s because the Spanish-speaking students are more comfortable in a class that’s almost exclusively Latin American immigrants.
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