The best thing about Charlottesville High School is how much diversity we have. In previous years many clubs and programs helped English Learners. When the pandemic hit, it affected each person in this world in different ways. However, English Learners are facing the most difficult time of their lives now. In past years, each English Learner used to receive a lot of help from many programs and clubs like Culture to Culture, Multicultural Mentors programs, and International club. Now all the ELs teachers, mentors, and tutors are doing their best. To see how these programs are doing this year with helping the English Learners, I decided to interview an EL teacher who was a sponsor of a club and some mentors who used to help last year and this year as well. 

Kara Menfi is an EL teacher at Charlottesville High School and I have asked her a few questions about the programs this year. She said “I think it’s hard for mentors to help the new mentees because they have to stay at a distance which makes it difficult to show them what to do on the computer.  Also, when a student doesn’t have a cell phone, has technical issues, or is in a busy home, communicating with them can be very difficult despite speaking the same language as their mentor.”  She also mentioned how hard it is to help EL students especially when they need someone near them to teach them about the technology. Doing school all through Zoom is hard for everyone and mostly ELs. Kara Menfi said, “ELs aren’t getting the same help as previous years, mainly because learning a language is so much harder when you’re not in person to have authentic interaction and collaborative learning, etc.” 

For this year she said, “The Multilingual Mentoring program is the main organization that has been operating and trying to help new ELs since the beginning of the year.” It is an organization to help newcomers as well as ELs 1 and sometimes ELs 2 if needed it.  This year there are not as many clubs or organizations as there usually are in the past years. Some clubs and organizations are getting started slowly, like international clubs. Also, the EL teachers are thinking of offering online meetings for students who speak the same language, so they can chat about any problems they face. As Kara Menfi said “They’re trying to start offering online meetings for students for conversation in their native languages, such as the Latinx Club that had its first meeting last week. We hope to start more languages next week.”

As a president of The Multilingual Mentoring program at Charlottesville High School, I talked to all the mentors that were participating last year and this year as well. I asked them about what is the hardest thing they are facing this year and what are some of the problems they are facing this year? They responded that it is so hard. Last year they were able to communicate more with their mentees and were able to help them. This year they are finding it so hard to help their mentees through Zoom since English learners students are having a lot of challenges getting into Zoom and many times they are having difficulty with technology and internet problems.  

In conclusion, we are all hoping that the vaccine will help to decrease the cases and that we all get back to learning together. Many English Learners had many challenges this year but with the help of these teachers and the tutors and mentors, they will get over all these challenges next year.