Overview
I teach at Newcomer High School, a San Francisco inner city public school which serves newcomer immigrants from all over the world. They have recently arrived in this new country, at times against their own wishes. All are teenagers in transition—to a new country, a new school, a new language and a new life. Some students are at risk and are suffering from culture shock. Some remember harrowing experiences of their journey to the United States. Others mourn the life, friends, relatives, and home that they have left behind. Some experience racism, ridicule, and rejection and feel a sense of alienation. I see that my students come to school to learn, to be safe, to be respected, and to find their identity and realize their dreams in the United States.s.
Newcomer is made up of multicultural, multilingual international students. Some have been in the United States one week; some have been here for one year. Students enter the school throughout the school year—a rolling admissions policy. Students stay at this school for a maximum of one year, transferring to a comprehensive high school either at the end of the first semester or second semesters.
The composition of the classroom is continually changing. Students at Newcomer typically come from the Asian countries of China, Vietnam, Japan, Cambodia, Burma, Mongolia, India, Philippine Islands, Thailand, Korea, and Indonesia. From Europe, students come from Italy, Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Lithuania. And from the Americas, students usually come from the countries of Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Dominican Republic, Columbia, and Brazil. Other countries typically represented are Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Iran, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. The rich diversity in the classroom is an asset that facilitates and shapes instruction. It is indeed a global community of children and therefore it affords a unique opportunity to promote understanding and acceptance. Students can begin to understand and respect each other and to recognize the universal nature of humanity.
There are multiple challenges in this international classroom where 100% of the students are English Language Learners. Many students have interrupted schooling in their home countries and may have attended school for three or four years and are just barely literate in their primary language. Others come with a transcript that demonstrates high achievement in typical high school course work. When registering, there is no diagnosis or assessment for students to determine a need for special education or gifted services. Therefore, students in the Newcomer classroom are mixed ability levels from preliterate to grade level and speak little or no English.
My focus in this curriculum unit will be on the bilingual (Spanish—English) history and primary language arts classes made up of Spanish speaking immigrants. It should be noted that among the Spanish speaking students there are those students who are indigenous, usually Mayan, whose primary language is not Spanish, but an indigenous dialect. Therefore, the poetry readings and short stories are either Spanish or English, as are the films. However the basic unit could be adapted to any classroom by the selection of English literature and a variety of international films with English subtitles.s.
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