Luciana is a 9th grader who arrived in the U.S. in 2016 from the Dominican Republic. She wears a sparkly pink headband, has perfect attendance, and occasionally causes mischief.
I saw Luciana in her 9th grade English class. The students were reading an article about bullying. When the teacher encouraged Luciana to answer a question about the article, Luciana immediately turned to several Spanish-speaking classmates with a panicked look that said, “Please translate! Don’t leave me hanging here!”
Three times a year, our classrooms transform: round tables are replaced with rows of tablet-armed desks during the state testing weeks of January, June, and August. We call these desks one-armed bandits.
