From Alexandra Sobiech: Gissella Pinos, a 16-year-old ESL student at Wellstone International, decided to continue her education despite her father’s death and her pregnancy. Pinos’ father came to the United States at the age of 16 from Ecuador to find work and eventually brought his family to join him in Minnesota. Last year, her father committed suicide, and shortly after, Pinos discovered she was pregnant. Pinos writes in her essay that her now nine-month old boy is what kept her family out of deep depression. “I wanted to show the girls that being a young mother does not have to take you out of school,” she says. “That’s something I have to show my baby boy. I can go to school.” She says that her father was an influence on her decision to stay in high school, because he never had the opportunity. Pinos says she wants to continue onto cosmetology school to make her father proud. “He’s going to see me have a better life,” she says. She writes in her essay, “To be a young mother did not steal my youth, however, it gave me a new perspective, to be with my son.” Pinos primarily speaks Spanish, only beginning to learn English four years ago. “I think all my efforts have been worth each second,” says Pinos.  Photo: Gissella Pinos refines her essay during a writing class at Wellstone Senior High School on Monday, Oct. 29, 2012, in Minneapolis. (Credit: Anthony Kwan)
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From Alexandra Sobiech:

Gissella Pinos, a 16-year-old ESL student at Wellstone International, decided to continue her education despite her father’s death and her pregnancy.

Pinos’ father came to the United States at the age of 16 from Ecuador to find work and eventually brought his family to join him in Minnesota. Last year, her father committed suicide, and shortly after, Pinos discovered she was pregnant.

Pinos writes in her essay that her now nine-month old boy is what kept her family out of deep depression. “I wanted to show the girls that being a young mother does not have to take you out of school,” she says. “That’s something I have to show my baby boy. I can go to school.”

She says that her father was an influence on her decision to stay in high school, because he never had the opportunity. Pinos says she wants to continue onto cosmetology school to make her father proud. “He’s going to see me have a better life,” she says.

She writes in her essay, “To be a young mother did not steal my youth, however, it gave me a new perspective, to be with my son.”

Pinos primarily speaks Spanish, only beginning to learn English four years ago. “I think all my efforts have been worth each second,” says Pinos. 

Photo: Gissella Pinos refines her essay during a writing class at Wellstone Senior High School on Monday, Oct. 29, 2012, in Minneapolis. (Credit: Anthony Kwan)

From Alexander Holston: Students come to America with greatly varied levels of scholastic education depending on the circumstances that brought them to the US. Students whose families immigrate to the US for work or higher education have often had some schooling, and often already speak at least rudimentary English. Refugee families, however, often come with no formal education and in some cases come from cultures where oral tradition dominates written language. Others have spent years in refugee camps, or come from areas where access to schools was difficult or nonexistent.  This was certainly the case during the latter half of the 1970s when the first waves of Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees began to arrive in Minnesota. While many of the earliest arrivals arrived with some schooling, many others came with little to no literacy, which presented obstacles to language acquisition. But these language limitations didn’t necessarily translate to hands-on work. According to Janet Benson, who became an ESL teacher at Edison High School in the late ’70s after working for years as a home economics teacher, doing could be more effective than saying. “Most everyone but me had a language background,” she said. But instead of being an impediment, Benson said her background helped her more than any language program could have. “It was very family oriented,” Benson said, referring to home economics, “and I could pick up on that much more quickly and realize the importance of that far sooner than people who did not have that background.”  Another early ESL teacher at Southwest High School, Wanda McCaa, said one of the most important parts of teaching English was finding ways to allow students to express themselves non-verbally. Many of the Hmong girls, she said, were already accomplished with needlework and sewing. “They could just whip up an outfit,” McCaa said. “Home economics was just a Godsend to them.” Not only did classes like home economics and woodshop give foreign students a chance to express themselves, she said, but they also gave American students a chance to learn about cultures other than their own.  Perhaps most importantly, the teachers were able to incorporate American life into the foreign students’ lives, helping them with acculturation. So even though the home economics teachers were monolingual, McCaa said, “[they] became wonderful bilingual teachers.” Photo: ESL students, Edison High School yearbook, 1981
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From Alexander Holston:

Students come to America with greatly varied levels of scholastic education depending on the circumstances that brought them to the US.

Students whose families immigrate to the US for work or higher education have often had some schooling, and often already speak at least rudimentary English.

Refugee families, however, often come with no formal education and in some cases come from cultures where oral tradition dominates written language. Others have spent years in refugee camps, or come from areas where access to schools was difficult or nonexistent. 

This was certainly the case during the latter half of the 1970s when the first waves of Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees began to arrive in Minnesota. While many of the earliest arrivals arrived with some schooling, many others came with little to no literacy, which presented obstacles to language acquisition.

But these language limitations didn’t necessarily translate to hands-on work.

According to Janet Benson, who became an ESL teacher at Edison High School in the late ’70s after working for years as a home economics teacher, doing could be more effective than saying.

“Most everyone but me had a language background,” she said. But instead of being an impediment, Benson said her background helped her more than any language program could have.

“It was very family oriented,” Benson said, referring to home economics, “and I could pick up on that much more quickly and realize the importance of that far sooner than people who did not have that background.” 

Another early ESL teacher at Southwest High School, Wanda McCaa, said one of the most important parts of teaching English was finding ways to allow students to express themselves non-verbally.

Many of the Hmong girls, she said, were already accomplished with needlework and sewing. “They could just whip up an outfit,” McCaa said. “Home economics was just a Godsend to them.”

Not only did classes like home economics and woodshop give foreign students a chance to express themselves, she said, but they also gave American students a chance to learn about cultures other than their own. 

Perhaps most importantly, the teachers were able to incorporate American life into the foreign students’ lives, helping them with acculturation.

So even though the home economics teachers were monolingual, McCaa said, “[they] became wonderful bilingual teachers.”

Photo: ESL students, Edison High School yearbook, 1981

From Michael Zittlow:

Scott Hall, an English learner teacher at Harding High School in St. Paul, has seen where many of his students come from.  

Hall owned a business in Madison with his wife before the two joined the Peace Corps in Nicaragua.  After teaching English there, the couple found their calling.

“We thought, ‘Man, we should do that when we get back to the states,’” Hall said.

Hall found work teaching in New York, and moved to St. Paul with his wife twelve years ago, when the district was recruiting English learner teachers to serve a growing refugee and immigrant population.

Since coming back to the U.S., he and his wife have traveled to many of the places their students come from, including countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, and Thailand.  Hall said seeing kids in refugee camps makes him appreciate the opportunities English learners have in St. Paul.

“In the camps, there are certainly no computers.  Sometimes, they’re just writing on slates, like old time school houses,“ he said.  “A classroom there probably has 50 or 60 students.”

After 15 years of teaching, Hall still learns constantly from his students.

He remembers when a student who spoke Arabic had a birthday in class. Hall asked her to write “Happy Birthday” in her native language on the board. Looking at the Arabic script, Hall said he realized once again the challenges facing English learners, who are expected to copy English writing often.

“It was an eye opener,” Hall said.  “If I had to copy Arabic on the board, it’d be a mess.”

Hall’s ability to connect with his students makes a difference in their learning, said Zena Stenvik, a supervisor at St. Paul’s English learner department.

“He welcomes his kids, he smiles at them, he gets to know them, he talks to them and asks them where they’re from,” Stenvik said. “He provides a safe and welcoming environment for his kids, and that’s the basis of them achieving academically.”

Hall’s classes are filled with students at varying proficiency levels who speak more than a dozen languages. They get English instruction from Hall while also learning other academic subjects like folktales and water systems. Hall’s students are the forces that keep him teaching.

“You have students who really want to be in school,” he said. “You have students who don’t like breaks that much, they want to be here, they’re eager.” 

From Alli Sobiech:

In the Minneapolis school district, there are four programs for English language learners in Kindergarten through fifth grade. Which program would you choose?

  • Heritage Language & Cultural Classes — Spanish, Hmong and Somali students have the opportunity to develop knowledge of the student’s home language, history, and culture. Students get to study their home language, history and culture for one period per day.
  • Early Exit Transitional Dual Language -- This program teaches key curriculum in Spanish. Eventually, the program moves to English so that by the third grade students have grade-level skills and knowledge
  • One-way Developmental Dual Language — This program develops full English and Spanish language learning. This program also spends the K-3 years teaching classes in Spanish, and every year after more is taught in English. The result is proficiency in both languages.
  • Two-way Dual Language (Spanish only) — Native English and native Spanish speaking students learn both languages together.  Language arts and reading classes are taught in the student’s home language and English.

Source: Multilingual Department, Minneapolis, MN

From Alexander Holston:

In the course of researching the history of ESL programs in Minnesota, I found this statement in Northeast Minneapolis’ Edison high school’s 1981 yearbook:

During the school year, more and more new faces were seen at school. The reason was Edison’s new LEP, Limited English Proficiency, program. The students in this program are recent immigrants from Southeast Asia. The two main ethnic groups are Hmong and Vietnamese, each with a different language. These people left their homes in Vietnam and Laos when they were threatened with war and communism. They came to refugee camps in Thailand and eventually found chances to come to the United States. Now they are adapting to a new environment and a way of life they find both enjoyable and challenging.

Here at Edison, our program began with 12 students. By early February, the program had 60 students and was expected to grow. Upon arriving at Edison, LEP students spend much of their time with Mr. Carter, learning basic things about English and getting aquainted [sic] with the school. Soon after, they are assigned to a bilingual teacher, and the ESL teacher. The ESL class, English as a Second Language, is taught by Mr. Schweppe and is all in English. The rest of their day is spent in regular classes.

It’s a simplistic telling of a much more complex story. By 1981, refugees and immigrants from Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand had already been in Minnesota for six years. Initially, all of these students attended either Southwest secondary school (today Southwest High) or Audubon Elementary School in South Minneapolis. 

But rapidly increasing ESL student populations, as well as issues of fighting between the different ethnic groups, forced the district to split them into different schools; the Vietnamese students stayed at Southwest, the Hmong and Cambodian students went to Edison high and the Lao students went to Roosevelt high.

Going from lost to found

From Michael Zittlow:

Kyaw Kyaw Lwin knew he had to learn English when he got lost in a Minnesota winter.

Thirteen-year-old Kyaw Kyaw (pronounced Joe Joe) had just arrived from a refugee camp in Thailand with his family the day before.   He only knew a few English words.  Jet lagged, he fell asleep at his cousin’s house.  When he woke up, he thought he could remember the way back to his parent’s new home.  Wearing just a light jacket on a cold March day, it took Kyaw Kyaw six hours to find his parents, after many unsuccessful attempts at asking for help from English-speaking strangers.  

“I thought, ‘I’m going to die here,’” Kyaw Kyaw said, when he felt the effects of the cold take over.

When he finally got home, his father told him how important learning English would be not just for his schooling, but also his survival.

“He said, ‘You are here.  You need to learn English, or you won’t be able to do anything,’” Kyaw Kyaw said.

He took his father’s advice to heart.  He committed himself to trying to speak English almost constantly in class.  “I became loquacious,” Kyaw Kyaw said.

Four years after not being able to ask for help in English to find his way home, Kyaw Kyaw is a senior at Humboldt High School.  Last year, he had one of the highest MCA-II math scores (a standardized test required for graduation) in the state.  He only missed one or two questions.

Next year, he plans on going to the University of St. Thomas or the University of Minnesota to study actuarial science.

His dream is to build a life where he can support himself and his family.

Fast Facts about ESL Students & Immigration

From Alli Sobiech:

According to the Minnesota of Department of Education, there were 64,623 English Learners in Minnesota between 2010 and 2011.

The St. Paul school district has a total of 114 languages spoken in the schools. Anoka-Hennepin school district runs a close second at 97 languages spoken in the district.

According to the Minnesota Department of Education, St. Paul has more than 13,000 limited English proficient students, the most in the state.

Jana Hilleren, Director of the Multilingual Department, says that there is one ESL elementary teacher for every 70 elementary English learners, and one high school ESL teacher for every 50 high school English learners in Minneapolis.

Martha Swanson, Coordinator of the New Families Center in Minneapolis, says that nearly one-third of families in Minneapolis do not speak English as their primary language.

The average GPA for English Learners across the nation in 2009 was 3.0, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Naturalization Service, there were 1,042,625 immigrants granted legal permanent residence in Minnesota in 2010.

From Anthony Kwan:

We went to Wellstone International High School in Minneapolis this week to observe Terry McDanel’s Fine Art Writing class for ESL students. We got a chance to talk to a few students after class and we’ll be returning next week to do more interviews. Stay tuned.


Pictured here: In the first photo, Wellstone student Jalal Geleta gets feedback on his paper during class Monday. In the second, U of MN reporter Alli Sobiech interviews Wellstone student Yamileth Sanchez.