Keller ISD Students Speak 58 Languages

Perhaps nowhere is the melting pot that is North Texas more evident than in the school setting.

People are moving to the Lone Star State in droves. Five of the nation’s fastest-growing cities are in Texas.

They move here from all across the country, and all across the world. For instance, in the Keller Independent School District students speak 57 languages other than English.

“It is amazing,” Keller ISD Director of Language Acquisition Mary Martin said. “We don’t have teachers who speak 57 different languages. We’re pretty good with Vietnamese and with Spanish. We can cover those, but our ESL teachers have learned how to accommodate for those languages through other methods.”

Martin said the focus for the district’s teachers is on big concepts, what she called the “need to knows, not the nice to knows.”

In addition, the students often embrace the challenge of learning despite a language barrier.

“They jump into English pretty quickly. English is very contagious. It surrounds us, so most of the kids have had some little pieces of English,” Martin said. “But we have to get them to take that risk and pull that limited level of English that they have into the academic language.”

Local

The latest news from around North Texas.

KELLER 2 hours ago

Hotel company raises white flag in battle against Keller ISD and parents

Dallas Wings 3 hours ago

City of Dallas approves multi-million dollar deal to lure Dallas Wings from Arlington

Properly serving English Language Learner students is a point of pride, according to Keller ISD Superintendent Dr. Randy Reid, but it is also a constant exercise in flexibility.

“The challenge with it is we typically don’t know when our kids are coming, or where they’re coming from,” he said. “And so you can do a lot of planning, but what you’re planning to do is be flexible.”

Languages spoken in the district include: