Monday, September 05, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

New school eases transition to life in U.S.

Recent immigrants taught academic survival skills in addition to English

Teresa Ryan teaches a class at the Global Community High School at the Morris Academy, 3801 E. Washington Ave. Photo by Gary Thompson.

It's not just about learning English.

New arrivals at the Clark County School District's Global Community High School are being taught the fundamentals of academic survival, American-style.

"We're here to help them get acclimated to a new country and a new education system," said Mike Barton, the school's principal.

The Global Community High School is on the campus of the district's Morris Academy at 3801 E. Washington Ave., near Pecos Road. It opened last week to serve teenagers who've been in the United States for less than two years and aren't fluent in English. Because it's a school of choice, students from throughout Clark County who fit the criteria may attend.

The school now has only freshmen. It will add an additional grade level each year until it serves grades nine to 12. Barton said the school enrolls 50 students now and can serve up to 300 students this year. New enrollment will be accepted throughout the year.

"It makes sense to do this here," said Edward Goldman, associate superintendent of the district's Education Services Division. "We have the population for it."

According to the district's 2004-05 accountability report, 21 percent of its total enrollment was made up of students with limited proficiency in English. No information was available on how many of those students were new arrivals from other countries.

Ethiopian freshman Misiker Mengisto's first week of school also was his first week in Las Vegas. His family moved here from Chicago, where they had lived for about a year.

"The school is very nice," said Mengisto, dressed in the white polo shirt and khaki trousers that are the program's standard attire. "I would like to stay here."

Jaime Humberto, a newcomer from Tijuana, Mexico, wasn't comfortable speaking without a translator. But the 15-year-old knew enough English to smile and answer when asked how he liked the school.

"It's cool," Humberto said on Wednesday, while eating lunch surrounded by his new friends.

Throughout the school day, students are immersed in English while taking their academic classes. They're also instructed in English as a Second Language, to speed their way to fluency.

In addition, the school requires them all to participate in an acculturation class, which acquaints them with living skills. They're taught the basic English phrases they'll need to function. They're shown how to use public transportation. They'll learn where to go to get a library card and myriad other details of day-to-day living that Americans grow up knowing.

"It'll take us a year to see how much the kids have grown and their language has increased," Barton said when asked what will show the school is succeeding.

The biggest advantage the Global Community High School can offer to students is its size -- acculturation teacher Teresa Ryan has 15 students in her fourth-period class, roughly half the number of students found in an average high school class. The school has 13 teachers who've taken special training to prepare them for instructing the school's population of new immigrants. Goldman wants to keep the student-teacher ratio as low as possible.

"That's one of the problems we have in the bigger schools," Goldman said. "These kids come here, and they're thrown into schools with 3,000 other kids. It's got to be a shock to them. They don't speak English. They get lost. The idea here is to keep it small."

Goldman said the idea for the school sprang from reports of similar efforts in other public school systems with international populations. Before beginning the school here, Barton said he was able to observe the operations of the Newcomer School in Long Island, N.Y., an alternative high school for recent immigrants.

At the Global Community High School, student language skills will be closely tracked. Every eight weeks, students will be tested to measure their language progress. Although all of the school's students are recent immigrants, Barton said, they're not all at the same place academically.

"We have kids who have formal transcripts from schools in their country," Barton said. "Others have had an interrupted education. We have one student (from Mexico) who went to school by video, or tele-teaching, where he didn't have any direct contact with his teachers."