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After a year of virtual learning due to the coronavirus pandemic, many students across Michigan have struggled to keep up with their work. This is especially true for students who are learning English for the first time.
A summer program from the Lansing School District wants to fix that by bringing back in-person learning opportunities, so English language learners don’t fall behind.
Marisa Solis arrived in Michigan from Mexico this past February. She said she came to the U.S. looking for a better education.
Back home in Hidalgo, Mexico, Solis said she didn’t have access to the same kind of resources she has here in Lansing to learn.
The 16-year-old is an incoming junior at Everett High School in Lansing. She lives with her aunt and uncle.
She said when she first arrived in Michigan, she didn’t expect to have to learn English from a computer at home due to pandemic restrictions.
But she wanted to make the best of this opportunity.
“Pues si lo hago pues si aprendo voy a tener un futuro mejor del que pudo tener en otra parte de donde vengo y que pues he pasado algunas cosas mas peores … es lo que me motiva."
Solis said she’s endured much harder things than learning English, and she knows if she can learn the language well she will have a better future, better than the one she could have had where she comes from.
And she said knowing that is what motivates her.
While learning English in a pandemic hasn’t been easy, Solis said being a part of the Bilingual Education Summer Tutoring (BEST) camp through Lansing Public Schools has given her the confidence she needs to start the school year in-person this fall.
In the district, students like Solis, who are English language learners, make up about 17% of the student population, according to 2020 data.
Every June, these students have the opportunity to enroll in the camp to help them receive social and emotional support. They also have a chance to recover any failed credits and to prepare academically for the new school year.
Claudia Cabrera-Rodriguez is a teacher for the program. She said this year they’ve been focused on getting bilingual students used to being back to an in-person setting.
“So, after a year of staying home for COVID, a lot of our students, especially our bilingual students had a hard time keeping up with the online format and just keeping up with all the adjustments to working from home," Cabrera-Rodriguez said.
She said navigating virtual schooling for these families created new barriers.
“Them trying to keep up with not only the English language barrier but also the new expectation of using technology to the level that we do, not everyone has those experiences or knows how to use a computer."
While this year, the program had a heavy focus on academics, the students also had the opportunity to spend time doing extracurricular activities. Things that many of the students had never done before.
One of these involved receiving swimming lessons at the YMCA of Lansing.
This part of the program was tenth grader Silvia Mwiza's favorite part. She’s originally from Uganda and immigrated to the United States with her family nine years ago.
“Swimming is something I always want to do for fun, and I am not a good swimmer, so I knew I had to take that class for me to learn some stuff when it comes to swimming," she said.
Every year, Cabrera-Rodriguez likes to survey the students before and after they receive the swimming lessons.
She said she had a student this year who was very fearful of getting into the water.
“It was cool to hear her go from feeling afraid and nervous to feeling really happy and confident and go to the pool as much as she can for the summer," she said.
Students, Mwiza and Solis said what they will remember the most about this summer isn’t the school work they caught up on.
It’s the in-person connections they made after a year of having to learn from home.
