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!”
“Miss, can I leave at 1:30 to go to a job interview at McDonald’s?”
“If you elect me, you can bring your cell phones to class.”
In one of our English as a New Language classrooms,* students were given index cards with the task “Describe yourself in six words,” and then instructed to post the cards on a bulletin board. The cards said so much: “I miss my friends in Vietnam,” “I want to be a doctor,” “I think more than I speak.” One was written by Carlos, who came to this country last year from the Dominican Republic: “The things are not so easy.” 
I started my teaching career in September 2000 at Intermediate School 33 in Brooklyn, a school that has since closed. I was hired to teach 8th grade English at the same time as Sara Milstein, both of us recent college graduates who quickly became friends.
Miguel,* a 12th grader, has the peacock of backpacks, a thing of color that is wildly beautiful and proud.
Classroom 325 