From Monday to Friday, seven hours a day, students come in and out of Highland High School. Taking different classes math, language arts, history, and more. Meeting new peers both older and younger while making friends along the way. They work hard learning new subjects and study for tests.
Many Highland High School students hold multiple conversations with teachers, counselors, and peers daily. Blessed with communication, they understand each other clearly and speak fluently. Yet, there are multiple students who cannot do this.
With 63 different languages that are spoken at Highland, communication becomes extremely difficult. Especially when you are trying to teach them new concepts in Language Arts, Math, and Science answering questions and explanations are hard to accomplish.
Not being able to communicate with anyone at school becomes challenging and often leaves a lonely feeling. To fix this problem, Mindy Smith (Highland High’s Student Specialist Resource) plans to invest in 1L air pods.
“These 1L air pods will act as a springboard for these students. We don’t want these kids to be dependent on them,” Smith said.
These air pods connect to a specific app on a phone that allows people to talk in two different languages. It will pick up what is being said and translate it for the listener. And on the app, it will write what the person is saying in their first language, and then below will write what was said in English. This allows them to communicate with teachers and peers as well as start to understand and see the English language.
“Being able to o communicate socially with peers will be incredible!” Smith said as this dream sparkled in her eyes.
The goal is for these students to learn English, concepts in school, and can communicate with others. These air pods will be a tool for them and a temporary resource that other students and refugees can also use in the future. Learning English is hard for everyone with wacky rules and foreign pronunciations. It can be difficult to learn it for the first time in High School, while others were introduced to this language in their early childhood.
The hardest part about this project is money. The district did not aid Highland in any way of providing money for them, so Highland fundraised their own money. And they did so successfully. Just this last week enough money was raised, and the school has now ordered these air pods.
The entire Highland staff is looking forward to using this resource as it will help every single student who have limited English skills but are hopeful to learn. With this resource it will improve communication between the students and teachers and make teaching a lot easier, so they don’t have to translate what they’re saying into 15 different languages.
“The kids should not suffer because they don’t speak English. These air pods will help break that barrier and allow these kids to achieve their goals,” Mindy Smith said.
