Flora Weinem

P. Gardner

Promiscuous Meatball Dipers

May 3, 2023

Door Open To A New World

Dear s

I remember the first time I walked into Brighton high school, I had no idea where I was

going. It was the first day of freshman year in 2019. All I knew how to say in English

were “What’s your name?” and “How old are you?”. It took me some time to learn how

to ask where the bathroom was, how I could get to my classes, and what I needed to do

to get lunch. I did have a lot of support at home, which I think was what kept me going,

but I had to learn my way around Brighton High School. Eventually, I started learning

English and found a lot of great people that helped me, but I could just see that they had

little to no awareness of what was actually going on in my life, and how hard it is for

students who do not know English to go to school, and how much motivation you lose

over the days. Why I am telling you this is to explain why I have chosen this topic to be

my capstone project and hopefully be able to help people that are going through what I

went through. Spreading more awareness to the administration, teachers, and other

students about ESL students is essential to a school that has a really large number of

immigrant students. My proposal is for the Brighton administration to provide staff

meetings once or twice a year with the purpose of spreading awareness about ESL

students, bringing guest speakers who are experts and professionals on the topic is the
idea and preparing teachers to receive ESL students in their classes. After those

meetings have begun; teachers will write reports to be able to, at the end of the year,

compare ESL students' progress in the following areas: Attendance, Grades, and

Participation during class. Following up on that, my idea is that some of the students

that are taking the ‘Peer Tutor’ class help out ESL students during that class time.

These peer tutors would also be asked to report back to the administration comparing

ESL students' progress. This project has the potential to open doors to ESL students

since we have the resources for it at Brighton High School. I sent out a survey to people

who have had/are having the experience of going to high school in their second

language and I asked the question “Tell me about a moment when someone made you

feel uncomfortable when you were learning English “ and this anonymous response

stood out to me “All the side eyes, on my senior English class I refused to read in front

of the whole class because I did not feel comfortable, the teacher embarrassed me for

not wanting to read” and I am a strong believer that things like this can be stopped from

happening at our school once we start spreading more awareness.

Works cited:

Flora Weinem. Non-English speaking students. Salt Lake City, Utah: Brighton High

School.