Students compare life in America to their lives back home
While learning English, immigrants discuss challenges and hopes for the future.
Senior Karina Contreras corrects errors found in passage in preparation for STAAR exam during reading class.
January 5, 2016
As thousands of people to move to Austin each year from different parts of the country, new students are also attracted to move here from different parts of the world.
Some of them have found themselves at Akins after recently immigrating from another country. It’s not an easy transition for many of these students who have not only left behind their friends and family, but often must learn a new language in a hurry just to understand basic things.
Akins provides an English Language Learners program for these students to help them ease their transition and support their unique academic needs. ELL reading teacher Sarah Barrentine said, “Sheltered Instruction for English Language Learners offers a comfortable learning environment where students can learn subject matter and English without feeling judged if they aren’t 100 percent fluent in their new language yet.”
Barrentine’s reading class has given many of these students a chance to share stories about how different school life is at Akins compared to what it was like in their home countries.
Junior Alejandro Sandres Quiroz, who is from Honduras, said he was very nervous when he first started school at Akins.
“It was so difficult because I didn’t speak English and all the students spoke English and I was so embarrassed,” he said.
One advantage of U.S. schools is that discipline problems are handled without resorting to corporal punishment such as teachers hitting students even for minor infractions. Junior Ngan Ha, who is from Vietnam, said that she has seen students left bleeding after being hit by a teacher in her home country.
“The rule in my school home country is very bad. They hit the students. Sometimes the student has blood,”said Ngan Ha, who is from Vietnam.
Sandres Quiroz said teachers in Honduras were also physically rough there.
“The teachers are different here, because in my country, the teachers are mean and they can hit you,” he said.
Another perk that school here has to offer is the fact that the students do not have to be afraid of violence while making their way to school.
“In Honduras, when you go to school, in the back of the school there’s a lot of gangsters waiting for the people because they want to hit the people and rob them,” Sandres Quiroz said.
Coming to America has given new hopes to these students.
“When we lived in Vietnam, my home country, we feel good, but the future was bad,” Ha said. “The country is very poor and need more money so that’s why we came to America.”
Sandres Quiroz said that when he was in Honduras he didn’t have hopes for his future besides working in a menial job tinting car windows.
“I just knew that I have to work and help my family. Now my hope is that I go to college and be an airplane mechanic,” Sandres Quiroz said.
