https://www.nationalreview.com/news/classrooms-bulge-with-traumatized-migrants-as-border-surge-hits-the-schools/
The kids tend to show up in Garrett Reed’s classroom in shock.
Many have never been to a big city like Houston before. But now they’re here, in the United States, in Reed’s Wisdom High School classroom, with its smart boards and online learning hub. A school administrator hands each kid a laptop. Many haven’t used a computer before.
None of them speak English. Many don’t even speak Spanish, but rather K’iche’ or maybe Mam, indigenous Mayan languages from the Guatemalan hinterlands.
Many of the kids have just made the dangerous journey to the U.S. through Mexico, enduring a gauntlet of crime filled with thugs, thieves, and predators of a variety of stripes – gangbangers who recruit the boys, sex traffickers who prey on the young girls.
“They’re traumatized. I mean, not all of them, but most of them,” Reed said. “A lot of them just put their head on the desk and cry. That’s what happens. That’s fine. Just cry.”
When these “newcomers” arrive at Wisdom High, it is Reed’s job to teach them English. Reed is one of two English as a Second Language teachers at the school. But, he acknowledges, his job is much bigger than just teaching English. He also is a mentor and a protector, keeping an eye out for potential threats to his vulnerable students inside and outside his classroom.