Feature Photo By: Chris Arias – A group of students in Ms. Thompson’s 6th period ELA 1 class work together on a project. ELA stands for English Language Acquisition.
By: Chris Arias, Review Staff
Rangeview High School is no stranger to diversity as the school has a 69% minority enrollment rate. According to US News, minorities have become the majority– a trend that is also seen here at Rangeview. While many students were born in the United States, Rangeview also has a growing population of immigrant students.
Ms.Thompson, an English Language Acquisition (ELA) teacher, states, “Well, there are 215 students that are in the ELA program, some of which were born here, some of which were not. We have about 30 kids who moved in from another country this year.”
A majority of the immigrant students have come from Ethiopia, Mexico, and parts of Central America, as well as Vietnam, Russia, and Ukraine.
“The hardest (part about going to Rangeview) is English and it makes everything harder to [sic] me,”said Kelly Trinh, a student who came from Vietnam in April. “The best part is knowing many new things like their (different) cultures.”
Another student in the ELA program is Yoself Admassu, who came from Ethiopia in September.
Admassu says that the best part about coming to RHS is, “I get [sic] nice education and helpful teachers.”
Many students say that coming to the U.S from another country can be challenging.
“I think some struggle as far as kind of assimilating into [a new school] because they tend to be with the same kids all day. So like, if you’re a beginning level kid that just moved in and you don’t know any English, then you’re pretty much with the same kids all day, and you’re not really interacting with other students at Rangeview,” said Thompson, “…like there’s a pretty big Ethiopian population outside of just newcomers, I think they tend to support them and get better as far as their English skills.”
Immigrant students not only affect Rangeview’s demographic statistics, but they affect the culture and environment of Rangeview.
Regarding students from around the world, senior Charleene Gibson says, “I feel like they bring a lot more diversity to Rangeview as they’re from somewhere different than [people born in the US].”
Rangeview students have expressed that they find the school’s diversity to beneficial for creating a welcoming environment.
Thompson says, “I mean, [immigrants are] definitely a growing population in Aurora and at Rangeview; now, every fifth person that moves to Aurora is from another country. So it’s definitely changing the dynamic of the schools and what’s happening.”
Students are not the only individuals at Rangeview who have benefited from the spike in diversity.
“I would say it’s only for the better (because) at Rangeview High School, we have the luxury of seeing almost every walk of humanity in our school,” says Principal Fay.
As more and more people in America come from different parts of the world, APS and Rangeview continue to grow and change with each coming year.
