Guest Post: Chemistry & the Students from Elsewhere

The Friday before spring break, the handful of students who haven’t cut out early or taken off for Eid are sharing some of their favorite new words gleaned from their independent reading: black hole, sound barrier, bookies, puppets, dime, wrist, Wyoming, information. We talk about what each of these mean, write sentences, consider what new worlds they allow us to either glimpse or explain. They dream up a reality to probe. My students are all between fourteen and eighteen years old, new to the United States from what feels like everywhere, and learning English with the approximate average literacy level of a first grader. Like any child, their approach to language learning is curious, open, data based—in a word, scientific. We have just wrapped up stoichiometry, or the “recipes” unit. You remember: How many grams of CO2 do you need to make 71 grams of C6H12O6? Some students speak math very well and this they like. Some students speak math very well but their sibling was just deported…