Student conquers huge step by graduating from Clark High School

When Yoseph Shiferaw enrolled in Clark High School, just two days after arriving in Las Vegas from Ethiopia, the avid runner walked onto campus with few English literacy skills.

That was August 2012, after then-15-year-old Shiferaw decided to leave his mother in Africa to prove his independence, earn an American education and eventually offer her financial assistance.

Shiferaw moves one step closer to accomplishing those goals Wednesday when he graduates with a grade-point average of 4.6, ranking him in the top of his class at Clark.

“I know hardship. I know hard times. I saw my mom suffer to feed us, every day,” said Shiferaw, who recalled helping his mother sell spices at a market.

“That’s pretty much my drive: If I sleep too much, I want to punish myself,” he added. “No one’s going to feed you. You really need to put in the work and practice every day.”

Shiferaw credits his time selling spices for teaching him better sales techniques so he could collect better tips during the graveyard shift at a Subway downtown. Those tips will help him pay for tuition at University of Nevada, Reno, where he plans to study mechanical engineering starting this fall.

Now 19, he said he always loved math and called it “nature’s language” — but he stressed the need to master the English language first.

Last year, Shiferaw and 540 other students who attended Clark — nearly one-fifth of the entire school population — identified as an English language learner, or ELL.

“You definitely must learn English to understand any subject,” he said. “I practiced it, like every single day. That’s pretty much all I did when I got home.

“Instead of just sitting in the classroom and going home, I would come back after school (and) before school to ask for help.”

One teacher in particular he thanked for that help: Jennifer Jablonski, a longtime ELL teacher who left Clark last year for a job in Florida.

Shiferaw thanked Jablonski for “pretty much changing my life,” but when reached by phone Tuesday, she started crying and said Shiferaw did the same for her.

“I’ve taught thousands of kids, and there’s not thousands of Yosephs,” Jablonski said. “The teacher can only do so much and give everything that we think they need to succeed, but hard work is part of the formula.”

Contact Neal Morton at nmorton@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279. Find him on Twitter: @nealtmorton