PMS honors 30 newly bilingual ENL students with 'commanding' status

Astrid Medrano Ramirez was sitting in the front row of Poughkeepsie Middle School’s auditorium Thursday morning overhearing a conversation.

Ashley Villarrubia, one of the school’s English as a New Language teachers, was standing nearby explaining an ENL Commanding Ceremony means the honorees “have a command of English. Now they have two languages. They’re bilingual.”

The word caught Astrid’s interest: “I’m bilingual?” the sixth-grade student blurted with amazement.

“Yeah,” Villarrubia responded with a laugh. “You are bilingual.”

Thursday morning, 30 Poughkeepsie Middle School students celebrated earning that designation at a ceremony run by their ENL teachers and attended by their fellow ENL students and some family members. One by one, the students were called to walk across the stage by teacher Jonnathan Cepeda, receiving a certificate and a pen.

“This is a celebration,” Villarrubia said. “Quite a few of them entered the school having had basically no English skills and are now commanding.”

Astrid said becoming bilingual made her feel “proud.” She hadn’t thought about it until hearing the word from her teacher. “It will help me,” she said.

That’s an advantage each ENL student shares after earning a commanding designation, fellow ENL teacher Joyette Walton pointed out.

“When they enter the program, it’s perceived that they are at a deficit,” she said. “Now they’re bilingual.”

Roughly 600 students in the Poughkeepsie City School District are classified as English Language Learners. While that designation can include students of all backgrounds, the overwhelming majority enter fluent in Spanish and not English. In an ENL program, language arts and content-area instruction are taught in English using specific ENL instructional strategies. Students receive core content area and English language development instruction.

ENL students can show command of the English language primarily by scoring high enough on one or a combination of multiple statewide standardized examinations. The students who achieve that designation continue to receive ENL service for two years, though at more of a supportive level, to prepare them to thrive in general instruction.

Students can test out of ENL support at any time, and more Poughkeepsie students than the 30 honored Thursday have done so at the elementary and high school levels have done so in the past year.

“Some students spend years taking the test over, and over, and over again,” Villarrubia said. “The fact that they were good enough at the reading, the writing, the speaking and the listening, it’s an accomplishment – the fact that they were able to do well enough in a second language to test out.”

Part of the reason the fellow ENL students were invited to attend Thursday was to add motivation as they continue their educational journey. Many of the students who earned “commanding” were included in a video in which they discussed what they did to reach the designation and encourage others to do the same. While technical difficulties kept the video from playing in full Thursday morning, it’s included with this post above.

“You all can get ‘commanding,’” Villarrubia told the group during the ceremony. “You have to put in the time. Pay attention in class. Work on your English skills. Try practicing speaking to someone. Make sure you’re reading. Make sure you’re writing. That’s the way you get better – practice.

“This could be you next year.”