Published July 25, 2024
Twenty years after helping launch District 214’s International Newcomer Academy, Mario Perez is still seizing every opportunity to refine the Academy’s mission to welcome global students and facilitate their introduction to a new language and culture.
The most recent example came with Perez’s mid-June participation, with 19 other U.S. educators, in a European Union Workshop in Brussels. There, he learned more about what democracy looks like and how it works in Europe and the European Union itself, in addition to leading a professional development discussion. Forum attendees also focused on the importance of thriving democracies relying on accurate information. They delved into means of equipping students with the skills to distinguish facts from misinformation and disinformation.
For District 214, the European connection is increasingly important. When it opened in 2002, the Newcomer Center (later renamed as Academy) primarily served students arriving from Mexico and other Central American nations.
In recent years, as new global crises have compelled families to leave their homes in search of safety and opportunity in this country, the Newcomer Academy’s enrollment has swollen, from 35-50 to more than 200. An increasing number and percentage of these students arrive from war-ravaged Ukraine and other Eastern European and former Soviet bloc countries.
“We provide a cultural and language cushion for students arriving in the Northwest suburbs with little to no acculturation or language, and with unique needs, often with trauma experienced in either their country of origin or en route to the United States,” Perez said.
At the Newcomer Academy, students wade into a new culture and language while still honoring their own heritage. They take on a full academic schedule, working with dedicated teachers and staff. “We have incredible teaching assistants; some speak up to five languages,” Perez said. “We have social workers and counselors who have done an incredible job of supporting social and emotional well-being.”
After one or two years of study at the Newcomer Academy, students transition to one of the District’s six comprehensive high schools.
Perez’s dedication to updating the Newcomer Academy’s work is hardly new. In 2018, he traveled to Germany as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow to examine the ways in which that nation was integrating refugees and asylum seekers in their late teens - youths with little formal education or understanding of German language and culture. He came back to District 214 with ideas concerning vocational pathways that simultaneously taught work skills and an unfamiliar language to teens while integrating them into their new environment in healthy ways.
In 2016, Perez earned a spot among Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms, which took him to the Republic of Georgia. There, he led workshops on the ways in which District 214 supports students, including neurodivergent youths. In 2017, Perez worked with the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, developing digital lesson plans addressing the Holocaust and genocide for use by teachers nationwide.
Perez’s work on enhancing the experience of newcomers extends to his own ongoing academic work. He is currently writing his doctoral dissertation on the non-traditional ways that immigrant fathers support their sons through high school in ways often overlooked by mainstream educators. By year’s end, he will have earned a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a focus on Educational Policy and Global Studies.
Throughout all of his teaching and professional development, Perez and the Newcomer Academy remain focused on the needs of incoming students, a commitment he says is equally shared by all Specialized School educators in District 214.
“I’m so impressed by the work everyone here is doing to support vulnerable students,” Perez said. “I’m only one of many at Forest View working within our specialized schools – the Newcomer Academy is one of four. There are so many people here doing unbelievable work and going above and beyond consistently for students.”
In addition, Perez said, Newcomer students play a role in promoting improved understanding within the District and wider community. A pen pal campaign pairing Newcomer students with those from the District’s comprehensive schools created the opportunity for 214 students to better understand the hopes and fears of recently arrived students. The effort prompted one Prospect High School student to conclude: “My pen pal from the Newcomer Academy is a teenager, just like me.”
Similarly, Perez has brought Newcomer students together with longtime residents at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library and elsewhere for conversations that humanize the new students.
