Anchorage is home to some of the most diverse public schools in the country. The school district relies on specialized programs to support its many students with language needs.
English Language Learner teacher Mona Grib reviews student work in a class on Friday, Nov. 8, at West Anchorage High School.
These students, whose primary language is not English, are not a small part of the Anchorage School District student body. Spanish, Samoan, Filipino and Hmong make up the largest speaker groups, according to survey results, with close to 2,000 Spanish speakers and nearly 1,000 Hmong speakers. Yup’ik, Russian, Korean and Lao make up the next largest speaker groups, with more than 370 Yup’ik speakers and over 150 Lao speakers. Iñupiaq, Arabic, Nuer and Albanian each have under 100 speakers.“If there’s war in the world, if there is trouble, if there’s trauma, we see it,” she said. “We have Ukrainians and Russians.
In 18 of the district’s elementary, middle and high schools, the student body speaks a collective 20 languages at home, the survey shows. “But a lot of our kids are also born in the U.S.,” she said, adding that the primary language of enrolled ELL students is English. “Their parents speak both their home language, and English. Maybe the students’ primary spoken language is English. We have students who are coming in from another country speak five languages, and they’re learning English as their sixth. We have students who have never spoken their language, but their parents or their grandparents speak nothing but that language.
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