Mary

Mary is a 15-year-old 9th-grader in a medium sized Midwest town.  Born in Mexico,  Mary and her two brothers moved with her parents to the United States and have resided in the U.S. for four months.  She and her family lived in different states, but they eventually settled in the Midwest.   

Mary loves that people in the United States are really calm and it tends to be quieter in the city.  In comparison to Mexico, Mary finds that the traffic rules are much better than Mexico.  Some other differences that she acknowledges are the styles that people wear compared to her former school’s emphasis on wearing uniforms.

Mary thoroughly enjoys art and can identify with its beauty.  One of her favorite artists is Frida Kahlo. She loves that Kahlo made such a huge impact in Mexican art with her boldness and feminine work. Because of this passion, Mary loves art and history. She wants to someday become a history teacher or work in a museum. She is currently exploring her options for college so that she could be ready to apply next year. 

With Mary’s English language proficiency level being a 1.5 (WIDA), in order to build her English vocabulary and proficiency, her teachers encourage her to converse more with others and increase her reading. She enjoys learning and has made many friends at her current school. Mary receives one period of ESL instruction a day, and all other courses are mainstream courses taught by teachers without any specialized training or certification in working with ELLs.