First day of school offers challenges for English Language Learners

Starting middle school is a challenge for most kids, these kids are having a much more difficult day. They will never forget it, I am sure. - - Donna Poisl

 By MARGARET REIST / Lincoln Journal Star

First-day-of-school jitters take on a whole new meaning in Valerie Brown’s classroom at Park Middle School.

Just like everybody else wandering Park’s hallways Tuesday morning, Brown’s students spent their first day trying to figure out where they were going and who was in their class, how to open their lockers and navigate the lunchroom.

But they couldn’t ask for help, at least not in English.

Not long ago, home for many of her students was a Thailand refugee camp, or the jungles of Burma, or the desert of Iraq. Some had never been to school before they came to Park, and those who had had learned a different alphabet in a different language in a place immersed in a vastly different culture.
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