[News] WCSD might cut English classes for non-native speakers

[Angel of Death]

When Dalila Estrada was 16, she moved with her family from Durango, Mexico to Truckee, California and enrolled as a junior at Truckee High School. She did not speak much EnglishMy first week I cried every day before and after school, thinking that school was not for me,” she told the Washoe County School District board at last week’s trustees meeting.A year after Dalila’s family landed in Truckee, they moved to Reno. She enrolled at Hug High School—again as a junior. Her English was deemed insufficient for 12th grade.When she read her schedule and learned that she’d been placed in the advanced English class, she figured it was a mistake. But her teacher, Dawn Adams (now Assistant Principal at RISE, WCSD’s school for adult education) saw things differently. As Dalila recounted the conversation in a recent phone interview, Ms. Adams told her, “I hear you speaking Spanish. I hear that you’ve been educated. I hear how fluent you are in the academic language that you’re using to describe situations. And that’s going to help you in the English learning process.”For the next two years, Dalila took dedicated English classes, where non-native speakers work through the complexities of grammar, pronunciation, and syntax—and often rely on their teachers to help them navigate the adjustment to a new life in a new country. In the education world they’re called “EL classes,” and the students who take them are called ELs—“English learners.”In Nevada, the graduation rate for ELs is 42.6%. (For non-ELs, it’s 76.6%.) Dalila was among the graduates. As she prepared to enter adulthood, unsure of her options, Ms. Adams helped her look to the future.“I can tell you, Dawn has been my mentor since high school,” Dalila said. “She was the one to apply for me to go to college. I had no idea what to do, where I was doing. And she was like, ‘Yeah, you’re gonna go to college.’”“And so I did,” Dalila said. “And I can tell you that relationships with those teachers and with those people have made my career.” She earned a degree in secondary education, with an endorsement in EL and a minor in teaching English as a second language. In 2018, she completed a masters degree in equity and diversity in education. Today, Dalila teaches English at Nevada State High School, a charter school in Reno.