Jaquelina Urbano
I am a mother of Durham public school students (Riverside and RN Harris) and a leader in the group United Latino Parents of Durham.
I’m active in this alliance because I think knowing more than just one language benefits the entire community. I became involved through my participation in another ally organization, ISLA. I hope to see changes and improvements to our children’s ESL supports at school. I went to Raleigh in June to participate in my first Advocacy Day at the General Assembly. We were all there united under the same cause of fighting for the wellbeing of all students. It is inspiring to see that you’re not alone in that struggle. At first I was nervous but being there all together as a group helped me overcome that. I plan on continuing to be active and will definitely attend future Advocacy Days. I enjoyed speaking directly with my legislators and sharing my hopes and concerns with them.
I’m going to continue participating because it’s important that people understand that learning English isn’t easy but we’re committed to supporting our children and want them to maintain their cultural identity and language.
Ginny Clayton
My name is Ginny Clayton and I’m a teacher at Cary High in Wake County. I’ve taught ESL for 12 years.
I don’t need to tell you that English Learners are in need of help. The NC Department of Public Instruction has been tracking data on this group for longer than I’ve been teaching. You know that their graduation rate is lower than that of any other measured group, in some cases far lower.
Allow me to use my experience to breathe some life into these statistics. You have the data, I have the kids in my classroom every day telling and showing me their struggles. They talk about the gangs in their home countries: “My teacher in El Salvador was murdered.” “My cousin’s hand was cut off.” “My father got death threats for prosecuting them.” They tell of surviving sexual assault on a city bus, in a park, in their own home. One boy cries at lunch over FaceTime. His parents on the other side of the world tell him a joke, and he laughs through his tears for their benefit. Another student has recently met his father for the first time in his life. The young man had spent years out of school taking care of his grandparents and running their farm while his father worked here. The boy is barely literate in his first language, but has a sharp mind and a broad vocabulary developed by listening to Bible readings in church. Now he’s here. He and so many others are ready to envision a future for themselves.
But realizing that vision is not easy. I can still picture the way a former student would listen carefully to my lessons while massaging her arms because working so many nights and weekends on a food truck had caused her to develop student painful tendonitis. She had no parents. No financial fallback, no cheerleader. Another was often absent on Mondays and Tuesdays because on weekends he traveled with his father to construction jobs. Upon returning he would always politely request his missing work and stay after school according to teachers’ availability to get caught up. His classmate is also frequently absent because he works nights in a restaurant kitchen, but he’s always ready for his tests because he takes his flashcards to work. He tells me he sits them on the cutting board while he’s prepping veggies. I tell him to please keep at least one eye on the knife. We teachers spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to instill grit into our students, but these kids have already got it, in spades.
Yet sometimes the emotional trauma, the stress, the physical pain and fatigue, hamper that intrinsic drive. They cloud that vision for the future. Which is why we must step up. English Learners need access to counseling in their first language and trauma-informed school personnel. They need to see adults in the school who look like they do. They need teachers trained in best practices for English Learners and class sizes which allow them to build relationships with those teachers. They need a school culture which celebrates and fosters a very enviable skill which they possess: bilingualism!