Since 2009 I’ve been shepherding high school seniors out the front door in time to walk across the stage in a cap and gown at graduation. Sometimes they barely make it. The students who glide through 12th grade aren’t the ones whose stories linger. It’s the ones who barely make it, the immigrants who will make their families proud, who worked hard for a Maryland State Diploma.
On Monday, Cee sat in my ELD Seminar class, uncharacteristically glum.
“Miss!” (that’s how they address me) “I don’t think I can pass Modern World History. I don’t think I can graduate this year.”
“Have you talked to the teacher? What assignments are missing? Who is your teacher? I will email them to find out.”
In a mixed class, where only a handful of seniors sit among sophomores and juniors, the teachers aren’t always aware of the urgency of grading an assignment that can make or break a senior’s chance to walk across the stage with the rest of their class. The teacher got back to me. Cee was passing the class with 64% D — enough to earn credit and be on track to graduate. Now all that remained was Credit Recovery for English 12A and English 12B, an online self-paced class. I emailed the teacher to ask about what he else needed to do. She unlocked the last Edmentum Unit Test so he could work on it during Seminar class.
Eff skipped Seminar the last week of school. He works full time as a cook in a fancy local restaurant — he showed me pictures of his plating technique. Since he’d already passed every class, he was focused more on accruing extra hours at work to pay rent and utilities — a reality for many older immigrant students. Except he didn’t realize that he still needed 25 more Student Service Learning hours, a Maryland State graduation requirement. Another teacher and I scrambled to work with his counselor and administrator to get him the hours necessary.
Getting seniors across the finish line seems harder this year. Maybe because I’m at a new school with a different demographic than my previous school. It seems hard to believe they didn’t know about SSL hours, or how much work they needed to complete for a class, but when students are the first in their family to graduate from high school, you can’t assume they’re getting any help navigating the school system from Mom or Dad.
Other factors define the hardships faced by the class of 2025 — the English Multilingual Learners in my school, in my district, right now. And some of what I’ve seen is disturbing.
In August 2024, the district changed how it evaluates international student transcripts. In a move that sounds equitable, but is deeply flawed, they began awarding credits to students from other countries who took English in their home country — without first determining a student’s level of language proficiency. In the past, international students were given a placement test to determine what classes to take. It sometimes meant that older students were put back a grade level so that they could acquire better English. Now those students are placed in mainstream content courses, like Math, Science, and Social Studies, without adequate language support. They struggle to keep up because their academic English skills are still developing.
As a result, this year, for the first time, we have newcomer students graduate with a high school diploma who can not read, write or speak English. And I’m worried that it’s only going to get worse. Dee is such a student. I got to know him second semester, when he’d already stopped coming to class. I called home, talked to his guardian, met to his counselor, emailed his administrator. He was completely discouraged because he could not understand what we were doing in class. So we made him a deal. If he finished the final Common Writing Task, we would give him a passing grade (60%) so he could earn credit and graduate.
English Multilingual Learners (we used to call them ESOL students, but that was deemed “deficit language” so we switched the acronym to EML) need explicit language instruction by a qualified teacher. They also benefit from smaller classes, where the teacher can guide them through an often-incomprehensible landscape of grades, credits, and SSL hours. They also need enough time to learn.
I wish we had more hours of instruction for these students. But for Cee, Eff, and Dee, a Maryland State Diploma is a meaningful achievement. For me, helping seniors cross the stage in their caps and gowns is one of the most rewarding jobs I have ever had.
Eva K. Sullivan 