In eighth grade, Pedro Marra’s parents told him and his brother Vinny they were going to pack everything up from their home in the bustling city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, for a new opportunity in Iowa City. He had no idea what to expect.

Iowa City is an epicenter for people coming to the U.S., whether for an opportunity at the University of Iowa, a fresh start, or to escape violence and poverty in their home country. Over the years, Iowa City has welcomed many people from all over the world — often with kids who attend the Iowa City Community School District.

With an influx of new people coming to the country in the past few years, the district has seen their English Language Learning, or ELL, and international student populations skyrocket, causing strain on the system.

“Fourteen percent of our Iowa City School District population is representative of ELL learners, and our goal right now is to really support all of our students so that they feel 100 percent welcomed when they enter all of our buildings,” Carmen Gwenigale said.

Gwenigale, originally from West Africa, moved to Iowa to attend grad school and started teaching Spanish at Iowa City West High in 2002. For the last four years, she has served in an administrative role as the director of curriculum.

In her capacity, she works to support all students.

“Part of my job is to meet the needs of all of our diverse students within the district, and then just in collaboration, work with other district directors on how to best support all of our students through curriculum, through effective teaching practices,” Gwenigale said.

Gwenigale has seen firsthand the growth of the district ELL program. When she first arrived at the Iowa City Community School District, she said there were less than 200 students across all schools in the program. Now, there are over 2,150.

“We have about 71 different languages and cultural backgrounds in our district right now, and so another element is just really to ensure that our teachers, as well as our administrators and in our district team for all, we’re all culturally proficient,” Gwenigale said.

Even though Marra was an international student, he wasn’t an ELL student because of the language foundation from his home country of Brazil. After taking an oral and written test and being permitted to attend traditional classes, he was sent to Northwest Junior High.

Despite his foundation in English, Marra said he still needs to learn a lot.

“Many factors can influence language learning, including age, types of motivation, the training and experience of the instructors, access to materials, and understanding context, location, such as whether they are learning the language in a community where the language is spoken or not,” Melissa Meisterheim, the director of ESL programs for the UI, wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan.

Meisterheim earned a graduate degree in linguistics from the UI. She has taught English as a Second Language programs at the university since 2007.

Meisterheim, like Gwenigale, is part of the machine that supports students on campus who may have language differences — the same support Marra relied on when he was thrown into normal classes.

“I remember this American studies teacher I had in junior high, and he would say, ‘Even though he’s Brazilian, he’s still doing well in American studies exams’ in front of the class,” Marra said. “They were all very encouraging.”

With the teacher’s support of his situation, even in standard classes that were not a part of the ELL curriculum, Marra could improve his English just by being around English speakers.

“There were times when a teacher wouldn’t understand what I was saying, and it would become awkward, but as your English improves, those instances become more rare,” Marra said.

Now a second-year med student at the University of San Francisco, that support is what helped Marra work his way through many years of schooling.

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Gwenigale said even if international students don’t need the support of an ELL curriculum, there is still support in place for students like Marra.

“We’re able to best support them with classes that meet those needs and then building curriculum around their language levels, which can help them continue to grow in their language proficiency while they’re here in our district,” Gwenigale said

Although Marra’s story is not rare at Iowa City schools, as more and more non-English speakers enter the doors of Iowa City’s 29 schools, more languages and more diverse needs have to be met, creating a unique challenge for ELL teachers.

“We have so many students in just different spaces of their learning when they arrive, and so being able to provide that individualized support for each of our students as they’re coming in is not so much a challenge as an opportunity,” Gwenigale said.

According to Gwenigale, the Iowa City Community School District has a large number of Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, French, and Swahili speakers. The district is also experiencing an influx of students from countries currently experiencing unrest.

The Sudan and the Congo are both in civil wars. Many citizens are dropping everything to escape the wars and immigrating to new areas all around the world. Iowa City is one of them.

“The goal is to really continue to help our students grow however we get them and however we can support them,” Gwenigale said.

Part of this support and training that teachers go through at the Iowa City school district is called Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol.

According to the Institute of Education Sciences, the program is a framework for delivering instruction not only to ELL students but also to all students who need it.

Gwenigale said this program helps others not in an ELL program.

“It also really does help other students in the classroom who also have some specific learning needs. So, regardless if they’re ELL students or not, these different strategies also help them succeed in class,” Gwenigale said.

With the influx of students, the teacher’s patience and training aim to help not-native English speakers like Marra succeed in a new country.

“My teachers were very understanding whenever I struggled with English,” Marra said.