Even though Salida High School is mostly an English speaking school, there are also students who come to our school who are learning English as a second language. Each year it is regular for us to get around two English language learning students, but this year our school has gotten many more students than we have gotten in a while. Even though our school hasn’t had this many English language learning students, our staff is excited to face this challenge. 

There is a very complicated process that goes into helping the new students get settled into our school. Maggie Falcony is our school’s English language learning coordinator. She works with families and students and she helps them figure out their paperwork to make sure we can get them enrolled in our school. Falcony navigates helping the students know which district they’re in and she helps them enroll into it. 

Then, it turns to our counselors to figure out what the students’ background in school is. They figure out what or if the student had been enrolled in school before. Even if the student had been enrolled in school, most schools from out of the country typically have different transcription compared to our school. So if the student had been to school in another country, the counselors try to figure out what level the student would be at in the Salida high school. Also to contribute, the Salida high school has different language versions of our maps testing to gauge where a student is in terms of skills. And that really helps find out where to put a student in terms of grade level.

Falcony helps the students by having meetings with them every day and having small group English learning lessons in order to aid these students in learning English quickly. Falcony works to teach the students the English language for our school. 

While the student gets settled into our school, Cooksey explains, “their goal is immersion, finding community, and learning English.” 

This is the way for an English learning student to feel like they are fitting into our culture as an American school. For the first six months that the student has been in our school this is what the staff pays attention to. After the student has completed the goals of immersion, finding community, and learning English; the staff starts to focus on the credits and career pathways of graduation to help them prepare for their futures. This process for English language learning students can be different lengths and different time periods for each student. It is possible that they could stay for another year at our school after the required four years, though it is not essential for a student to stay an extra year. Mostly each of their processes are different so it may also be unbeneficial for a student to stay longer than needed.

Cooksey says, “For the first couple months that a student is at Salida high school, our main concern is learning English.” A student needs to learn English as quickly as possible to be able to fit into the Salida High School‘s curriculum. 

When a student from a different country comes to our school they may feel really left out and isolated. They may feel this way because everyone around them speaks a different language that they don’t know. The staff really encourages a student to join an extracurricular activity to help the student feel more comfortable in our community. Even though there may be a language barrier there would still be similarities through the extracurricular activity. When joining a club or sport a student may find a sense of belonging because they have found something that they could do to connect with their peers without knowing the full language yet. Joining an extracurricular activity can also help the students learn our cultural norms in our country. Joining an activity also speeds up the process of a student learning English because they are surrounding themselves with people who may also be learning English as well.

We are so grateful for the English language learning students that have transferred to our school this year. Thank you to the entire school and staff members for making these students feel like they are at home and our school.