Every Child Coming to America

Every Child Coming to America is a testimony of how much English language skills are developed when culture is represented and reflected in the new-found educational experience of the young teen immigrant. As a result, the journey to America is portrayed vividly in their own words and according to how they experienced the journey to the new world.

In the acculturation process, students grow silent as they digest and internalize the experiences of the new-found culture. In Every Child Coming to America, their voices come alive. These are their stories; told by ex-ESOL (ESL) students themselves who arrived with hopes, dreams, and much uncertainty, and graduated from high school with a clearer vision and purpose of the present and upcoming days ahead.

The stories published in this book were submitted as scholarship essays in an application for a scholarship. The students who submitted the essay or a modification of it received a scholarship. In some cases, full-ride scholarships. As a complement for teachers and students, I included basic guide questions used to facilitate the writing process of a winning scholarship essay (coming to America experience).

In the words of the scholar, Dr. Luis "Tony" Baez, "they are young people that give you their most personal, and often soul-searching descriptions of the challenges of arriving in a different educational system, a different language and culture, and who survived and attained relative success." Their stories became treasures---described and narrated in their own terms which helped them cross the bridge to further academic, college and career and personal success.