"You are in the US now, not in Guatemala."

"¿Cómo estás hoy?" I asked C, as she slumped down on a stool in the cafeteria. "Mal," she answered- bad. "Why, what happened?" She lifted her head up off of her binder and looked at me with tired eyes. "Hoy me regañó la maestra por hablar español. No nos permite escribir ni hablar en español. Me dijo que tengo que hablar inglés porque ahora estoy in los Estados Unidos, no en Guatemala."

She was scolded for speaking Spanish with another classmate. She was asking for clarification about something the teacher had said. Why the reprimand? There may have been a very practical reason, but the one expressed to C was that "you need to speak English; you are in the US now, not in Guatemala."

C and her sisters have been in the US for about 6 months. They came from Guatemala in late Spring this year, and she has been in my program since late April-early May. Students receive little if any content adaptation from classroom teachers for their language level. C and her older sister attend all of the same classes with their native English-speaking classmates. The only exception to this is that instead of an English class, they have an ESL class - English as a Second Language. Apparently it is the understanding of some educators that, although all classes from math, to science, to physical education are taught in English, the only class for which students who don't speak English need additional accommodation is the English class itself.

Please understand, I am not intimately acquainted with the explicit policies of the schools. I appreciate the complicated nature of having to serve students of such varying levels of English proficiency. I understand the reality of limited resources, especially as governments at various levels in this country seems bent on siphoning of investment in our future to pay the bills of the past. As a language-learner working on my second foreign language, I am intimately aware that in order to become functional in a second language, one must avoid relying on the native language indefinitely. I understand all this.

But for pity's sake, please don't quash the spirit of an 11-year old girl by telling her in no uncertain terms that, in order to succeed in this new country, she must not only learn the new language and culture, but leave her native ones behind.

Please, please can we just try to have a little compassion?