(teacher and student speaking in foreign language) - [Michelle] It's not your typical classroom.

- This is to practice.

(Smaylin speaking in foreign language) - [Michelle] Smaylin Reyes works with multilingual learners in Providence at the Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts, a charter school known as TAPA.

- Book.

Book.

- Book.

(Smaylin speaking in foreign language) - [Michelle] Students like 17-year-old Christian Lopez.

- Active, active.

- Active.

- [Michelle] He moved to the United States from Guatemala last year.

Learning English has been hard.

Words, he says, are not often pronounced the way they look.

- I don't know how to say that.

- Excellent.

- [Michelle] 12-year-old Angel Herinoso can relate.

He left the Dominican Republic two years ago.

When you came here, how much English were you speaking?

- Zero, I knew how to say hi, good morning, and gimme five.

- [Michelle] Both Angel and Christian attend TAPA, where Reyes has seen an increase in multilingual learners.

She oversees the school's program.

One in four students here is learning English.

- A lot of my students have cousins that are coming to this school because they got good experience here.

So I think it's becoming maybe like familiar with other people because of the support that they provided here.

- [Michelle] And the charter school isn't alone.

The number of English learners in Rhode Island has gone up by 76% over the last decade.

The state's Education Commissioner, Angelica Infante-Green, says there are more than 19,000 multilingual learners in Rhode Island.

- We've seen growth in places like North Providence, Cumberland, places that don't traditionally get this population.

Newport most definitely one of the grow, one of our districts that has the most growth.

So it's an interesting dynamic for us as a state.

- What's driving that increase?

- We have a lot of families that have been here for a while now and they're bringing family members.

We also have seen an influx in the last few years in terms of migrants coming over.

And also there's industry, there's work.

- [Michelle] Reyes is works closely with many children of migrants.

She does pull some of them out of class to help them learn English, but she says it's only for about 15 minutes a day.

Instead, most of her time is spent assisting non-native speakers as they're immersed in classes with fluent English speakers.

- When we pull out a student for an hour or two, just to focus on the English language, they're missing the core content, which is science or humanities.

So if we keep pulling them out for those classes, when you get the test, for example, or PSAT or something, they're missing that content already, so they're gonna fail the test.

- [Michelle] 14-year-old Iverson Rivas left the Dominican Republic in 2020.

He says when he began at TAPA, he felt behind, compared to the majority of the students in his class.

(Iverson speaking in foreign language) - [Michelle] Before coming here, Iverson attended a public middle school in Providence.

He says he had a teacher there who repeatedly yelled at him for not speaking English.

(Iverson speaking in foreign language) - [Michelle] Commissioner Infante-Green says experiences like the one Iverson had show the misconception that exists around how long it takes to learn another language.

- That, to me, speaks to the training that we need to continue to do.

It's not just on how to develop language development, but also understanding how language is developed and really having sensitivity training.

- [Michelle] Statewide, about 5% of public school teachers have the certification to work with multilingual learners, commonly referred to as MLL students.

Why are there so few teachers qualified to work with MLL students and how do you change that?

- Well, I think part of the challenge has been that there has been an influx from 2015.

The numbers have grown exponentially.

So I think we also have an older teaching force here, workforce.

We have been incentivizing teachers by paying, primarily in Providence, giving them about $8,000 to go get their certificate in second language development.

That's some of the things that we are doing, and also giving incentives, giving bonuses, really making this a priority area.

- So what's nice here.

(speaking in foreign language) - You use it, you say it here, and you give the definition here.

- [Michelle] Michael McGuigan teaches ethnic studies to middle school students at TAPA.

Despite speaking little Spanish, he still translates his slide presentations to Spanish, the most prevalent home language of multilingual learners in Rhode Island.

- It's never been an explicit requirement.

I think TAPA really encourages teachers, whenever possible, to do that.

And they do have Spanish-speaking staff.

I've reached out to Spanish-speaking staff numerous times with my slides and stuff like that, asking for help.

- [Michelle] It's more work from McGuigan, but he says it makes a difference.

- They are smart kids, and if you were to teach them in their own language, they would be able to produce just as good a work as any English-speaking kid did.

And I think, as educators, we have to respect that.

That means giving them content in their own language.

I think it also means accepting content in their own language, as a teacher.

- [Michelle] Rabia Hos would like to see more teachers get certified to work with non-native English speakers.

She sits on the state's Multilingual Learners Advisory Council, and also teaches at the University of Rhode Island.

She says there's a common question she's asked about teaching English learners.

- Do I need to speak the language of the students?

No, you're teaching them English, so you don't necessarily have to speak.

I mean, it will help to form a connection, to learn a few words, phrases, in their native language.

- [Michelle] By learning how language development works, Hos says teachers can recognize cases where students need extra support.

- Everybody says math is a universal language, but that's not so, right?

We have word problems.

So you are teaching the language of math.

So essentially, every teacher is a teacher of multilingual learners.

- [Michelle] Hos says Rhode Island needs to do more to improve outcomes for English learners.

She points to a report released by the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council in October, which found Rhode Island still ranks well behind most other states in the country that provide funding for multilingual learners.

For years, Rhode Island spent about $300 per student.

It nearly quadrupled to about 1200 this fiscal year, but still lags behind neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut.

- To this list criminal.

- Excellent.

Good job.

These are difficult words, but you guys are doing a really good job.

- What's at stake if more money is not put into helping these students succeed?

- Many of them are gonna fall through the cracks in education, especially at the older level.

If we want to support students, MLLs, we need to have rigorous programming.

We need to have alternative realistic pathways.

- [Michelle] And Commissioner Infante-Green says the news isn't all bleak.

This past year, the General Assembly nearly quadrupled funding for multilingual learners from $5 million to $19.4 million.

And she's requesting an additional $20 million in funding for English learners.

- This is extremely important, especially when the population is declining across the state, our student population, this population is growing.

So this is who's going to be here.

This is our workforce.

- [Michelle] Infante-Green is also encouraged by the latest results from the Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System.

It showed students who exited a multilingual learner program in the past three years are performing better than the state as a whole in English language arts, and they're neck-and-neck in math with the statewide average.

- This population, and everyone needs to understand this that is hearing this, they tend to outperform everyone.

When you know more than one language, you actually perform better, and we have data to show that.

We weren't seeing that data in the past, but we're seeing it now.

- Still when it comes to native English speakers and English learners, scores show the majority are not proficient in English language arts or math.

But even though the MLL students who had recently exited the program were doing better than the non-MLL students, - Yep.

- Neither population of students is really performing well.

Would you agree with that?

- Well, so I would say the MLLs, absolutely, because they are, their definition is that they don't have a complete grasp of the English language, so we don't expect that to be the case.

Does the whole system have to move forward?

Absolutely.

- [Michelle] There are plenty of other challenges that remain for this growing student body.

Many feel the stigma of not being fluent in English, students like 13-year-old Sophia Peres-Quavas.

She remembers an experience she had at a middle school in Providence before she came to the Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts.

- One guy told me that, "Go back to your country."

I was like, "What did?"

And that's why, one of the reasons that I changed.

I changed 'cause I really like here.

- [Michelle] Discrimination is one of the many hurdles a number of English learners face.

Some have to work to help their families make ends meet.

Others don't know when, or if, they'll see their loved ones again.

- I was at a school, a middle school, three weeks ago in Providence, and the kids were so excited 'cause I was speaking to them in Spanish.

They were just elated.

I asked the kids, "Well, what do you miss about home?"

And about four or five kids, I have to tell you, broke my heart, and I'm talking about like 11 and 12-year-olds said, "I miss my mother."

And that's really hard.

That's a real sacrifice for a family to make for their kid to be in a better environment.

- [Smaylin] Raise your hand.

- [Michelle] Christian Lopez says he's lost contact with his mom and several siblings in Guatemala.

He lives in Providence with his dad.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Michelle] He's focused on learning English, but admits it's a struggle.

He doesn't have a computer.

He spends a lot of time translating material on his phone.

(Christian speaking in foreign language) - [Michelle] TAPA's multilingual coordinator, Smaylin Reyes, says it's important that educators be patient.

- Learning a language, it's a skill that takes time.

I tell my kids, "Never be ashamed of your accent.

Never be ashamed where you're coming from.

And being bilingual is a skill."

Our students can be very successful when they graduate from high school and they have both languages.