Lehigh High students tutor multilingual learners at Meadow Elementary

Students from Lehigh High School's Latinos in Action program visit Meadow Elementary once a week to work with multilingual learners, district staff and teachers said.

The visits pair high school students with younger pupils for skill-based activities and a short exit assessment, staff said, aiming to help classroom teachers when language barriers arise and to boost confidence on both sides.

Jackie Beers, curriculum coach at Meadow Elementary, said the program "partnered with Lehigh High School, the Latinos in Action. They come once a week, and we have put together some skill based activities for our multi language learners to use with the high school students. They come in and they do the activity with them. They do an assessment at the end, kind of like an exit ticket so that we know where they fall in their learning, and then they actually go into the classroom with a lot of them to help bridge that gap when there's a language barrier for our teachers and our new students that have come in." Beers described the arrangement as serving both instructional and community-building roles.

The program also appears to benefit the high school volunteers. Jen Guiber, an English Language Development teacher at Lehigh High School and adviser to Latinos in Action, said the visits help older students feel competent and valued. "It is fun for them to see, like, oh, I know this, and I can do this, and I'm proficient in English, and I can share what I know with the kids at the elementary," Guiber said.

A Lehigh student identified as Fabiola described the personal rewards of volunteering. "Because it's literally an amazing feeling that you just have knowing that you can help people," she said, adding that having been new herself made her want to support younger students: "For me, I came here, and I was scared, terrified of just learning English. And then knowing that you can be a help for them, that you can make them feel secure about it and have them just have the little help that they need." The student also confirmed she has been in the U.S. about a year.

Beers said teachers use a short exit ticket assessment at the end of sessions to identify where each child falls in their learning; the district did not specify the assessment content, success metrics or whether the program has formal funding. The transcript indicates the visits occur once a week and are run as part of the schools' regular activities.

No formal board action or vote on the program was recorded in the provided transcript. Staff and teachers described it as an in-school partnership between Meadow Elementary and Lehigh High School that emphasizes peer mentoring, language practice and confidence-building for both elementary and high school students.