Mays is not your typical inner-city school. According to statistics, Mays has a diverse group of students. From foreign exchange students to immigrants, there are a wide range of nationalities represented.

According to registrar Eric Thornhill, 3.4 percent of the school’s population is non-African American. Nearly 3 percent (2.9 percent) are Hispanic, Thornhill said. Other groups represented are Asian, white and biracial.

“Most of our Hispanic students are Honduran or Mexican,” Thornhill said. Some of the students are speaking English for the first time.

Mays requires students who don’t speak English as their first language to take a state-mandated test known as the WAPT, which is mandated by Title 3 of the No Child Left Behind Act. The WAPT score determines the student’s eligibility to receive language services from the school.
English Speakers of Other Languages or ESOL, is a federal mandate requiring schools to service children who score lower on the WAPT test, Adrienne Woods, ESOL specialist, said.

Woods teaches Mays students who are enrolled in her ESOL class language arts skills, including language-reading, writing and listening and speaking. She also helps the students understand academic language across subjects.

“I teach the students terms and vocabulary used in science, social studies, language arts and math,” Woods said. The greatest struggle Woods sees isn’t with speaking, she said. Students struggle with other skills.

“It’s a little hard to learn in other classes, but this class helps,” sophomore Marcos Vasquez said of Woods’s class. Students like Vasquez are the minority at Mays, unlike where they attended school in their homelands.

Woods works to make the adjustment easier and to help the students feel comfortable around others.

“Socially, I try to help them become more approachable,” she said.

She forces them to meet and interact with others through class activities, including a project that required students to interview someone who doesn’t share their cultural background. The purpose was to help the students understand how other cultures feel toward them.

The activity, the teacher said, was also meant to help her students and those they were forced to interact with.

“It is a mutual reaching out,” Woods said.
Immigrant students sometimes face difficulties with other students and teachers not understanding them, teasing them or not giving them the same attention as the other students.
Woods said it is a two-way street for African American and immigrant students to understand and communicate with each other.
“I haven’t experienced any racism,” senior, Deysi Gallo said. “Other students help me and correct me, and they are all very helpful.”
Adapting to life since coming to Mays has been hard for Gallo. In her small village in Mexico, customs were different from what she sees around Mays.
“Now that I’ve been here, I enjoy homecoming games, prom, the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving,” Gallo said.