Sometimes the simple act of understanding can save a life. That was true for a high school multilingual learner featured in the Listenwise audio story “13 Reasons Why Not,” who coped with suicidal thoughts until her friend’s empathic words restored her hope.
ELD teacher Kursten Pickup assigned that lesson to her sophomore class at the Academy for College and Career Exploration (ACCE) in Baltimore, a middle and high school with a diverse student body, including many newcomers.
Standing in Another Person’s Shoes
Student Kathiuska Vergara, a newly arrived multilingual learner from Venezuela, connected with the lesson’s themes.
“I remember the line about the friend being ‘the bright light in my dark time,’” Vergara said. She herself had struggled with feelings of isolation and sadness. Finding a best friend who shared her experiences as an immigrant offered deep understanding. “I wanted others to develop that kind of empathy,” Vergara says, “to be able to put themselves in the shoes of another person.”
Inspired by the Listenwise story and her own experience, Vergara initiated a “change” project to promote understanding between students of different backgrounds at ACCE, especially those new to the country. She invited anyone at the school to share their story, either through voice recording or in writing, using a QR code she created. Dozens of multilingual learners responded.
Multilingual Learners, Multiple Perspectives
They described their struggles adjusting to life in the U.S.: learning a new language, enrolling in a new school, adapting to a new culture. Many shared feelings of loneliness and alienation.
One student reported that when speaking to family members in her native language at a convenience store, she was eyed suspiciously by other customers and felt she did not belong. Another student from East Africa who had spent 10 years in a refugee camp, told of being cruelly taunted by classmates.
Vergara and Pickup shared the students’ letters with gen ed students in an English class. They responded with enthusiastic, empathic letters of their own. Vergara said the outpouring of support bolstered the confidence of the multilingual learners. “They felt like they weren’t alone in the process of coping” with their challenges, she said. “They felt welcome, like they were not outsiders.”
The gen ed students, too, were transformed by the project. Vergara reports that hearing the narratives of fellow students and the challenges they face was “emotional” and “eye opening” for them. “You learn how privileged you are,” she says.
A Legacy of Kindness
The project inspired by the Listenwise lesson “13 Reasons Why Not” strengthened the ACCE school community in many ways. Pickup points out that the project allowed students to recognize commonalities rather than differences.
“Multilingual learners heard stories from others that validated their own feelings and experiences,” she says, “which brought them closer together.” She also notes how the program increased social awareness and cross-cultural understanding, a key SEL competency of the CASEL framework.
For her part, Vergara felt she accomplished her mission of helping new students begin to develop a sense of belonging and a network of support.
“Community is the space where you should feel you belong and feel comfortable being yourself,” Vergara says. “My goal was to make people feel the way I wanted to feel in high school.” Vergara hopes that the program’s legacy of kindness and community support lives on in the students’ lives that it touched.
