Starting seventh grade at her first American school, facing classes taught entirely in English , Alisson Ramirez steeled herself for rejection and months of feeling lost.
“I was nervous that people would ask me things and I wouldn’t know how to answer,” the Venezuelan teen says. “And I would be ashamed to answer in Spanish .”
But it wasn’t quite what she expected. On her first day in Aurora Public Schools in Colorado this past August, many of her teachers translated their classes’ relevant vocabulary into Spanish and handed out written instructions in Spanish. One promised to study more Spanish to better support Alisson.
“That made me feel better,” says Alisson, 13.
Outside the classrooms, it’s a different story. While that school system is striving to accommodate more than 3,000 new students mostly from Venezuela and Colombia, the city government has taken the opposite approach. City Council has tried to dissuade Venezuelan immigrants from moving to Aurora by vowing not to spend any money helping newcomers. Officials plan to investigate the nonprofits who helped migrants settle in the Denver suburb.