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A melting pot of 22 nationalities, Phoenix school helps refugee families adjust to life in U.S.
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Principal Lynette Wegner works with a student at Valencia Newcomer School in Phoenix on April 27, 2023.
With a large number of Spanish-speaking students, many Arizona schools teach English as a second language. But for the Alhambra Elementary School District in Phoenix, which is home to refugees from across the globe, the language challenge is much greater. That’s why one school is specially designed to acclimate newcomers and their families.
Lynette Wegner is principal of Valencia Newcomer School in Phoenix.
“We have students from The Congo, we have students from Afghanistan, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Turkey,” Wegner said. “The list goes on and on.”
The school serves about 140 students from kindergarten through eighth grade. They speak a total of 18 languages and come from 22 different countries.
The school was born a few years ago, out of a need Wegner and others saw in the community.
“For students who are newcomers that have recently resettled in our community, they just needed some more support,” she said.
Not only did they need the academic and language support, but help for their families who are still getting used to living in a new country.
“My counselor teaches our families how to take the bus system,” Wegner said. “So she’ll have them meet here and they’ll actually go and ride the bus and learn how to navigate through the city, things as simple as using the washer and dryer and electrical appliances, we give classes on that as well.”
Parents come back and tell Wegner that their kids are reading the mail for them or translating during medical emergencies.
Bridget Dowd/KJZZ
Fifteen-year-old Abdul Nazari poses for a picture at the Valencia Newcomer School in Phoenix on April 27, 2023.
Fifteen-year-old Abdul Nazari is a perfect example of that.
“When I say to my dad, something in English, he’s just so excited,” Nazari said.
"When I say to my dad, something in English, he’s just so excited."
— Abdul Nazari
Abdul’s family is from Afghanistan and he’s been attending the school with his two sisters for about six months.
“This school is so good for me because when I first came here, I [didn’t] speak English,” he said. “I did not understand what people say to me, but when I came here, [after] four months, I [speak] English so good.”
The school also works with community partners to provide families with furniture, clothes and hygiene products.
“Families come in on the regular and they can quote, unquote shop as much as they want,” Wegner said, walking through a room full of clothing and other donations.
Bridget Dowd/KJZZ
Valencia Newcomer School in Phoenix specializes in providing support for students who have moved to the U.S. from other countries. They keep a room full of clothing, hygiene products and other donations for their families.
There’s even an immunization clinic, as many of the families don’t come to the states with complete health records. And Valencia Newcomer teachers are all trauma-trained.
“As you transition from one country to another, you can imagine, even if it’s a positive one, there’s still some level of trauma as they’re trying to navigate through this new country,” Wegner said.
Wegner is strategic about the people she hires, making sure her staff members believe in the school’s mission and look like the students they serve.
“If you don’t feel comfortable working with refugee children, if you don’t feel comfortable working with immigrant status or students who are undocumented, if you don’t believe that they should be here and get the same equitable education that every other student should get, then I don’t want that person to be integrated in our school system,” she said.
As Valencia is a choice school, resettling families are given the option of attending their neighborhood public school or getting the extra support. If they choose Valencia, the student goes through a screening process to see how much English they know already before being placed in a classroom.
“From there, they are screened every 15 days - we call that progress monitoring - to make sure that we know exactly where they’re at and what skills they need to move to their goal for language development,” Wegner said.
Students are put in small groups for language instruction several hours a day in addition to their math, science and social studies lessons. Of course, Wegner said, the kids learn from each other too.
“I have students who are from The Congo that are speaking Spanish right now,” she said. “It’s really interesting that once they start developing English, then they start sharing their culture and their language.”
Bridget Dowd/ KJZZ
Hamisi Uzaramba is a teaching assistant at Valencia Newcomer School in Phoenix. He speaks more than five different languages.
Hamisi Uzaramba is in his first year as a teaching assistant at the school.
“I speak a lot of languages,” he said. “I speak French. I speak English. I speak Arabic Swahili, Kinyarwanda, [and] Kirundi.”
He said he feels blessed to be part of a school that’s dedicated not just to the education of its students, but to helping other human beings, no matter where they come from.
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