Two Tucson students earn state award for English language learning

When Makula Kaba and Francisco Josue Valencia Velderrain moved from Ivory Coast and Mexico, respectively, and began their journeys as new students in Tucson, neither knew how to speak English.

The two recall how challenging and difficult it was to move to a new country during their freshman year of high school, enroll in new schools and try to make new friends, all without being able to speak the language around them.

But fast-forward to their senior year, and Kaba and Valencia both received 2022 Student Success Stories recognition from the Arizona Department of Education for their noteworthy success in English language acquisition.

“I was speechless; I didn’t know what to say. I was very excited, but I was also in shock,” Valencia, a senior at Palo Verde High School, said of the moment his teacher Joanna Goldberg told him the news.

“I didn’t know it was meant to be a big thing, and then when we went there, I saw there were many people, and it was an extremely big event,” Kaba, a senior at Catalina High School, said of the awards ceremony that took place at the JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort in December.

Kaba and Valencia were among four students to receive the Arizona Student Success Stories award last year. The other two, a sixth grader and a high school senior, attend schools in the Phoenix area.

Makula Kaba

Kaba, whose native language is French, was nominated by her English Language Development (ELD) coordinator Wendy McFeely.

Kaba said she had lived at a refugee camp in Ivory Coast, western Africa, for most of her life and moved to Tucson with her family in 2019.

“Most of the time, I would avoid to communicate with somebody,” Kaba said of her first weeks in Tucson. “The only words I knew were ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ so even if I didn’t know what you were saying, I would just say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

Due to the civil war in her country, she said, she hadn’t been in school for about five years before arriving at Catalina High. So, in addition to not knowing how to speak English, she was behind in other subjects such as math and science.

She started her freshman year by focusing on learning English and practicing simple math equations, such as multiplication and division. By her sophomore year, she was taking regular science and math courses that her school offered.

In her free time, she created her own French-English dictionary, where she would write and practice words and phrases that she thought would be useful at the moment. She also dedicated a lot of time to reading books she borrowed from her ELD classes.

“I would read a lot of books. I don’t even like to read, but I would do that all the time after school to improve my English,” she said.

The pandemic interrupted her in-person schooling during her sophomore year and, looking back on that time, she said she felt less shy interacting with her classmates on camera than in person.

“I was very reserved, so they didn’t actually know I was going to Catalina,” she said. “Then when school opened, I met them in person, and we started being friends and getting to know each other.”

She noted that she became even more confident in her English skills when she managed to earn a good score on her first Arizona English Language Learner Assessment test, which measures students’ English language proficiency based on state and federal requirements.

“That’s when I became more comfortable about talking and expressing myself. I felt like I can still do something even though I’m still learning,” she said, adding that earning the Student Success Stories award made her feel even better.

“To be recognized for your good job and hard work, that’s a good thing,” Kaba said.

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Francisco Valencia

Valencia, whose first language is Spanish, was born in Nogales, Arizona, and grew up on the Mexican side of the border in Nogales, Sonora. He was nominated for the award by his teacher Joanna Goldberg.

He said he moved to Tucson in 2018 because his parents believed that completing his education in the United States would be best and would open more doors for him. So he moved to live with family in the area, including his older sister, who was also a student at Palo Verde High School at the time.

He said he knew a few words of English, but it wasn’t enough to speak in full sentences or carry a conversation.

“My first day here, it was the worst. I didn’t know anyone, not even the teachers and I didn’t understand them,” he said. “At first I didn’t want to be here, if I’m honest, but I knew it was the best for me so I tried and now I love it.”

Valencia said he was able to manage the social aspect of school a bit more smoothly by hanging out with his sister and her friends, most of whom spoke Spanish. But, he said, putting himself out of that comfort zone was crucial for him to master a new language.

“People told me that if I only had friends who spoke Spanish, it was going to be a struggle for me to learn English,” he said. “So I tried to speak with more people who only spoke English.”

Like Kaba, Valencia started his freshman year with ELD classes and relied on his phone’s translation app to communicate with his teachers and peers in the classroom. By his junior year, he had already transferred out of the ELD program and was taking regular English courses.

He said he focused on reading books, as well as researching and studying various English grammar rules at school and in his free time to improve his conversational skills. He also watched movies and TV shows with English audio and Spanish subtitles to try to pick up what certain words and phrases meant.

In addition to his school work, he said, he was dedicating more than 20 hours of his free time to improving his English skills each week. When he heard that he had received the state’s Student Success Stories award, his whole family celebrated that his hard work was paying off.

“My sisters told me I deserved it because they knew everything I had gone through. My parents were even more proud. My mom even cried,” he said.

He said his parents were unable to accompany him at the award ceremony because the pandemic has delayed their process for renewing their expired visa.

Now that he can carry full conversations in English, Valencia said, he loves his school and community.

“School is not easier, but I really like the community around me. There are a lot of students from other countries and I really like talking to them and learning about them,” he said. “Tucson is also a lot more calm and pleasant than Mexico, so I enjoy that.”

When asked about their advice for other non-English-speaking students, Valencia and Kaba shared the same sentiment.

“Don’t close yourself off in a circle of people who speak the same language as you because that’s going to make things harder,” Valencia said.

Kaba agreed, saying: “That is the hardest part” — branching out — “but if you try to avoid it, you will stay in the darkness of ignorance.”