Schools scramble to welcome new students to Colorado | News, sports, work

Dylan Martinez-Ramirez gives a high-five to his teacher Aliah James after school on August 29 in Aurora, Colorado. Associated Press

AURORA, Colo. — Entering the seventh grade at her first American school with classes taught only in English, Alisson Ramirez braced herself for rejection and months of feeling lost.

“I was afraid that people would ask me different things and I wouldn’t know how to answer,” says a teenager from Venezuela. “And I would be embarrassed to answer in Spanish.”

But it wasn’t exactly what she expected. On her first day in Aurora, Colorado, public schools last August, many of her teachers translated their classes’ essential vocabulary into Spanish and handed out written instructions in Spanish. One vowed to learn more Spanish to better support Alisson.

“It made me feel better,” says 13-year-old Alisson.

Outside the classroom, it’s a different story. While this school system is struggling to accommodate more than 3,000 new students, mostly from Venezuela and Colombia, city officials have taken the opposite approach. The City Council tried to dissuade Venezuelan immigrants from moving to Aurora by promising not to spend any money to help the newcomers. Officials plan to investigate nonprofit organizations that have helped migrants settle in suburban Denver.

When Aurora’s mayor spread controversial claims that Venezuelan gangs had taken over an apartment complex, former president and current GOP candidate Donald Trump exaggerated the claims at his campaign rallies, calling Aurora a “war zone.” He said immigrants are “poisoning” schools in Aurora and elsewhere with disease.

Trump has promised that Aurora, population 400,000, will be one of the first places to launch his migrant deportation program if elected.

This is what life is like for a newcomer to the United States in 2024, home of the “American Dream” and conflicting views on who can achieve it. Migrants arriving in this polarized country are confused by its divisions.

One thing seemed obvious to Alisson’s mother, Maria Angel Torres, 43, as she moved around Aurora and nearby Denver looking for work or running errands: Some organizations and churches were eager to help, while other people were deeply afraid of her and her family.

The fear first surfaced during a routine trip to the grocery store. Torres was standing in line when she got a little too close to the young woman in front of her. The woman – a teenager speaking Spanish with an American accent – told Torres to keep her distance.

“It was humiliating,” Torres says.

And when Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman – and then Trump – started talking about Venezuelan gangs taking over Aurora, Torres didn’t believe it. But it’s important for her to stay away from dangerous people. The only reason her family left Venezuela was to escape lawlessness and violence. They didn’t want it following them here.

In addition to Alisson, Torres has an older daughter – 27-year-old Gabriela Ramirez – whose partner owned a food truck in Venezuela. Government employees there extorted a bribe from him. He paid them the equivalent of $500, or about half a week’s wages, to continue operating.

When Ramirez’s partner later refused to pay, government workers stabbed him in the bicep and threatened to kill Ramirez and her infant son. He sold the company and the entire family fled to Colombia.

A little over two years later, they headed north through the Darien Gap on foot. In Mexico, they crossed the border in Juarez and reported to the US Border Patrol. They all have deportation hearings in 2025, during which they will have the opportunity to present their asylum case.

Aurora is used to educating immigrant children. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, more than one-third of residents speak a language other than English at home.

But the arrival of so many students from Venezuela and Colombia who didn’t speak English caught some Aurora schools by surprise. In some schools, teachers have as many as 10 new students, or one third of the class.

When Aurora Hills High School principal Marcella Garcia visited classrooms that spoke only English, she noticed that the new students didn’t speak anything. District headquarters recommended a strategy called “translanguaging.” This means that you sometimes use Spanish to help students understand English lessons and the conversations going on around them.

Before the school adopted this new approach, teachers could interrupt conversations between students in Spanish. Now they say students are encouraged to help each other in any language they can.

After spending most of the day in mainstream classes, Alisson and her new peers took part in a class titled Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education. These are the only classes that are specifically designed to help new immigrants speak English.