Special Report: School districts, students who mainly speak Spanish face unique classroom challenges

Graduating high school with good grades is hard work, but it becomes even more challenging when you don’t know the English language.

When student Paola Espinoza’s parents moved to El Paso, she started middle school not knowing a word of English.

“It was like really, really scary,” said Espinoza.

Clint Independent School District Superintendent Juan Martinez knows first-hand what Paola went through. Martinez first came to the U.S. From an extremely impoverished town in Mexico. As his peers at El Paso High were picking out colleges, he couldn’t even read.

“You can just imagine being in a classroom where you don’t understand 99 percent,” Martinez said.

Martinez was an ESL student, a label that means English as a Second Language. But he pushed himself to graduate from UTEP with a Master of Education. Martinez, who was destined to fail, instead became the superintendent of CISD.

“If I was able to do it, from such a low socio-economic status, with a single mom, raised by grandma,” Martinez said, “no one was as poor as I was in this country — and I was able to accomplish what I was able to accomplish — they can do it too. They can accomplish even more. And the whole goal is to focus on their success.

Region 19 Executive Director of Armando Aguirre says anywhere from a third to half of all students in the Tornillo, San Elizario and Clint school districts don’t have a strong foundation in English.

Yet the state will still hold them responsible for getting students to pass their grade level and state exams, or face penalties.

“They need to learn all their content in every area, including math, science, social studies,” Aguirre. “And then you have then you have the idea of having to learn a second language on top of that. It’s very difficult task. It’s a doable task.”

In Clint, Martinez said the entire district’s performance goes down by 10 percent because so many student have limited English proficiency.

“But that should not be the determining factor for a student to succeed or not,” Martinez said. “A test will not determine their future.”

Region 19 is overcoming the odds, out-performing the state’s average for Spanish-speaking students in nearly every category.

“That speaks highly of the work that is being done in districts like Tornillo, Clint, but also El Paso ISD and Socorro,” Aguirre said.

Aguirre said teachers are trained to progress slowly. In elementary school, more of the instruction will be in Spanish, so students can understand the subject matter. A smaller portion of the day is taught in English so they can learn the language.

That method is flipped in high school. Most of the day is spent in English, then follow up on what they learned is in Spanish. By using both languages, these students won’t fall behind their classmates.

At Clint’s Ricardo Estrada Jr. High, teaching a room packed with ESL students was giving results. So they put in to two instructors, one to teach, another to provide personal attention, ensuring students aren’t just mimicking but comprehending.

It took Paola just a year to learn English. As a ninth grader, she’s even enrolled in AP classes, including AP English.

“It was hard, pero, I’m getting there,” Paola said.