Browse Items (20 total)

As part of Kelly Pope’s investigation of the interaction of American public school systems with Latino students, Ramirez offers her opinion on what resources American public schools are lacking for parents who don’t speak English. Ramirez is the Vice President of an organization called Immersion for Spanish Language Acquisition (ISLA), and was…

Cristina Granados describes immigrating to the United States through the Visiting International Faculty Program. She obtained a bachelors degree in Colombia where she also taught in a university level psychology department. Cristina describes the price of immigrating, but says that the support from the church community and her students has made her…

Melody Wharton was born in Venezuela, but moved to Miami, Florida with her family when she was seven years old. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami and later moved with her husband to Watts, California where she worked as a teacher for two years. She moved to Chapel Hill to work as a dual language teacher and today she is…

The interview was organized around several major themes: the basic understanding of a dual language program (Spanish and English) and what it does for students, including things such as how students are accepted into the program and the track they are on; the class of Nicole Lansdale how and the positive and negatives that come with having a mixed…

Luzma Henao is a second grade teaching assistant who arrived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1998. She is originally from Colombia, Medellín where she worked for the University of Antioquia. Luzma discusses her motivations for moving to the United States, her experiences working for thirteen years in the Carrboro-Chapel Hill school system, the…

Magda Corredor has worked at Durham Public Schools in Durham, N.C. since 2000 as a school counselor. Because she is bilingual in English and Spanish, she works primarily with Latino students and families. Corredor works primarily as an interpreter during parent-teacher conferences and at meetings for the Exceptional Children's Program, which serves…

Mercedes McCurley, a native Colombian, works as an interpreter for the ESL (English as a Second Language) program at Durham Public Schools in Durham, N.C. Upon starting her work in 2006, she quickly realized that Latino parents need more than just basic translation; they lack basic knowledge of how the American public school system works and many…

Joshua Sawyer is a high school mathematics teacher at Northeastern High School in Elizabeth City, N.C. He is originally from Camden, N.C, and is a product of the North Carolina school system. In 2002, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Biostatistics and a minor in Jazz Studies. Since then, he has…

Carol Gates is a speech therapist with Wake County Schools in North Carolina. She has worked in this profession since 1990, and has worked with Wake County for fifteen years. After spending four years at the middle and high school level, she now works with elementary school children. Gates was born in Durham, N.C., and has resided in the state…

Shaunna Jeffries is a fourth grade teaching assistant in the dual language program at Carrboro Elementary School in Carrboro, N.C. She assists two teachers at Carrboro Elementary with both of their classes, taught in both Spanish and English. Because of her own experience in a dual language elementary school program, Jeffries decided to work in a…