A high school auditorium erupted with cheers as a group of older and younger students converged on the stage, melding a mix of Latin American art forms in a Carnival-style dance called “Los Chinelos.”

“He’s doing the iguana! He’s doing the iguana!” one student screamed, pointing to a classmate who broke out into a set of slithery floor moves as a group of girls draped in Guatemalan and Mexican flags clapped and circled around him.

It was Russellville’s third annual Hispanic Heritage Month celebration, and Brian Santos, a senior at the high school, wanted to make sure that this year’s production honored the wide range of Latin American cultures represented in his school district.

Russellville has one of the fastest-growing populations of Mexican and Central American students in Alabama. At the high school, nearly half of students now identify as Hispanic or Latino, and about 10% of students are multilingual learners who recently immigrated or who grew up in homes that spoke a language other than English.

“There’s such an amazing and beautiful culture that has been formed here, not just in our school system, but in our state and everywhere else,” Santos said. “And our goal is to persuade and encourage everyone else to see what’s out there as well.”

A group effort

The annual event started in 2019 after a suggestion from Spanish-speaking staff, including Edmund Martinez, who wanted to come up with a way to celebrate students and the growing diversity of the school.

For Santos, having more teachers who can help bridge language barriers, and who often share similar cultural backgrounds with their students, has made a huge difference in his own learning and in the overall culture of the school.

“We have so many students here who struggle with the English language, and [teachers] have all taken the responsibility and time and sacrifice to teach them,” he said. “But as well to never forget where they came from.”

Recently, the district has taken note of the impact of its multilingual educators – not just academically, but culturally as well – and during the pandemic, leaders nearly doubled their English language workforce with the help of COVID funds.

In many ways, Santos said, the Hispanic Heritage Month production was a symbol of that investment.

One by one, Santos guided his peers onto the stage as they read about various folk, Indigenous and contemporary dance styles, songs and customs from different countries and cultures.

Middle school EL teacher Carly Andrews gathered students days prior to turn the hallways of the high school into a grand art display, fit with ofrenda boxes, cardboard sculptures of Mayan temples and flyers with quotes from famous Latin American figures. Meanwhile, EL teacher Stephanie Mayfield created a PowerPoint and choreographed the quinceañera dance.

Bookkeeper Reyna Kirchner introduced guest speaker Ruby Villalobos-Adams, a local attorney who broke barriers in the courtroom as one of few Latina lawyers. Ana Perez Todd, a new English teacher, also relayed facts about Cuba, where her father lived before migrating to Russellville during the revolution.

Behind the stage curtain, Alma Martínez and Magda Lopez, a Spanish teacher and an EL aide, kept small children in line as they prepared for the Baile de la Conquista and Los Chinelos dances.

“It was a group effort,” said Mayfield, a veteran teacher, as she looked toward Lopez, the new aide, and Edmund Martinez. “Without them, we couldn’t have done it.”

Returning to teach

After the celebration, classes resumed.

Lopez, still sporting orange glittery eyeshadow, headed downstairs to help Perez Todd with her sheltered English class, which is a core class tailored for English language learners.

After teaching overseas, Lopez came back to her alma mater as an EL aide. Throughout the class, she helped students log in to their laptops, sometimes translating questions from Perez Todd and stopping at moments to banter with two boys in the corner, Byron and Bruno.

The two boys, Lopez said, are almost ready to transition to the traditional classroom. But one of them didn’t want to leave his peers – or the relationships he had formed with Spanish-speaking teachers.

“He needs to be pushed out, but he doesn’t want to,” Lopez said, giving Bruno a loving jab. “I told them they need to get more challenged.”

Upstairs, Spanish teacher Alma Martínez helped translate the English instructions on an assignment for a student. She has seven English language learners in the class of 22, she said, and she is able to use her bilingual background to help smooth over gaps some may face as they get used to a primarily English-speaking academic environment.

Behind her sat a copy of the speech she gave at the school’s first Hispanic Heritage Celebration in 2019. Every year, she shares the speech with her students, detailing her family’s journey from Chilpancingo in Guerrero, Mexico, to Russellville.

When she came to Russellville High School in 1995, Alma Martinez was one of just 15 Hispanic students to attend the school, she said. Of them, she and just three of her peers graduated on time.

High school was difficult, she said, but she had a teacher who pushed her to succeed. She finished school with As and Bs and passed reading and English, her hardest subjects.

“After that,” she wrote, “I started believing in myself.”

Alma Martínez joins several other bilingual staff who graduated from a district that was struggling to adequately teach English language learners.

The school’s newcomer program, which groups older EL students together, didn’t exist when Lopez was a student at Russellville. Edmund Martinez, who went to school in another district in the surrounding area, said a teacher repeatedly disciplined him – and eventually stuck him in a special education class – for speaking Spanish with his friends.

Now, he hangs a graduation gown in his classroom. It’s a reminder to his students, he said, that he won’t expect anything less from them.

“That whole experience was the reason I became a teacher,” he said. “Because I didn’t want to see other kids feel the way I was made to feel because I couldn’t speak English.”

Shifting the culture

Studies have long noted that a more diverse teaching staff can have profound effects on students of color. Researchers are still working to understand how educators with shared language and cultural backgrounds impact students’ performance and wellbeing in the classroom, but early research shows some promising results.

Two recent studies found that long-term exposure to Hispanic teachers significantly improved reading and math outcomes among Hispanic elementary students, and likely inspired more Hispanic high schoolers to enroll in advanced courses.

“It enriches the experience that young people can have when they see themselves reflected in faculty and staff and administration,” said Carlos Alemán of the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama, who has been advocating for more pathways to certify Hispanic and Latino teachers.

“But it also enriches the experience of students who don’t necessarily come from that background,” he added. “If we want to prepare our students for a world that is diverse, for a world that has different perspectives and viewpoints in terms of race, religion and ethnicity, then we need to be able to provide them with models of the folks that they encounter along the line.”

Superintendent Heath Grimes came to Russellville eight years ago from Lawrence County. Grimes is not bilingual, and most of the schools he had worked in previously were predominantly white.

Grimes spent the next few years filling in gaps in his own learning, and helping to change the culture at the district’s four schools.

“I really think that they thought that me as a new superintendent was going to come in and snap my fingers and change it back to Russellville from 1985,” he said. “And I couldn’t do that.”

Some white, non-Spanish speaking educators had grown frustrated with language barriers in their classrooms, he said, and at the school’s dwindling academic performance.

He gave them some time to adjust to his expectations. And then went to work bolstering professional development, adding seminars on school culture and adopting a “no excuses” mindset.

“I said, ‘Guys, I don’t want to hear about it any more. You’ve got until such and such date,’” Grimes said. “‘You can grieve, you can mourn. But after this date we’re going to embrace it and we’re going to celebrate it.’”

Mayfield, who is white and only spoke English at the time, was there during the shift. She took her first teaching job at Russellville 34 years ago, when the school population was almost completely white and had very few English language learners.

As the demographics changed, Mayfield learned Spanish – mostly with the help of a growing class of Spanish-speaking students – and said she took a more active role in meeting students’ needs.

During the pandemic, Mayfield said she and other staff visited students’ homes weekly to check up on those who weren’t turning in their assignments. She still fields messages from former students, offering advice for renting a house or filling out a traffic ticket, or just to say hello. And her room is always stocked with snacks, she said.

“Our rooms are the homes away from home,” she said. “They have a safe place at this school and that’s what we try to provide.”