By Kyla Calvert
The morning English lesson in Gwen Osgard’s classroom at Crawford High School is coming to an end and 17-year-old Phu Nguyen is practicing reading. Nguyen arrived in the United States from Vietnam in May. So far, she’s liking her classes here more.
“Yeah, I like school. It’s good. I’m happy,” she says.
Nguyen’s reading partner, 14-year-old Dulashi Adhikri, comes from Nepal and she feels the same way about her classes at Crawford.
They’re good, better than going to school in Nepal, she says.
Nguyen and Adhikri don’t move from classroom to classroom, having a different teacher each period like other students in the four high schools housed at the Crawford Educational Complex in City Heights. Most of their classmates spend all day in what San Diego Unified calls a New Arrivals Center. Their math, history and science classes are with the same English language teacher, who introduces them to the concepts and vocabulary they’ll use in mainstream classes the next year.