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Can you imagine being a newly arrived EL right now? It’s freezing 
, your English is very limited because people don’t talk like they did in your English classes back in your country. You had all As and only spoke to the teacher in English. Now you feel dumb.
, your English is very limited because people don’t talk like they did in your English classes back in your country. You had all As and only spoke to the teacher in English. Now you feel dumb.
You want to learn English and be super fluent, no accent! But in your classes the work is hard and the language is hard and if you want to pass it means using your language just to get through the assignments. Translate tools help, but take forever and sometimes don’t make sense
If you were in person you could ask a classmate or use nonverbal cues from what’s happening around you to learn language and the work in class. That’s not happening now. It’s so hard. The teacher just talks on and the captions don’t keep up.
You just tune out sometimes because it’s not meant for you, that’s clear. And your just trying to keep warm. Did someone call on you? You don’t know because your name is the same as another student. You hope they don’t take away participation points!
Sometimes the teacher says just turn in what you can. You used to try to do everything but it’s hard and so much work, so you just wrote ‘I don’t understand’ and turned it in. That’s after weeks of not knowing how to turn something in in Google Classroom. You got a low grade.
When you see an assignment in classroom, you can’t work on it right away because you have to make a translated copy, work on that, translate it back, copy paste, and turn in. It looks like you’re not working but it’s more work than ever + lower grades, and not learning English.
On top of that the WiFi bill is overdue. The pandemic makes it hard to earn a living and w/o documents there is no relief money for the family. You’re living with relatives and helping their kids during the day do school too. It’s noisy and hard to focus, but it’s not lonely.
In your country mom was a nurse but she can’t work here because her school isn’t recognized here. She really wants you to go to college here, but right now you don’t know English and feel like a failure in school. But when you get grades you have a B. 
You know you don’t know anything. You know you haven’t turned in much work. Is school that easy here? Or is the teacher feeling sorry for you? You don’t understand this. And you don’t think you’ll ever get to college this way. 
What you know is that no one cares if you understand the work in school, and you can get a B for saying you’re present and turning in assignments that you don’t have any idea about but you wrote something, anyway. And you’ll try again next year.
Maybe even more confusing is that your English teacher speaks Spanish and doesn’t teach language, but skills to help you understand in other classes and to write in academic style for high school. This place is crazy.
Standard disclaimer: the above tweet is based on a combined 20+ years of teaching. (Except the last tweet. That one is all me, baby)
