Second-graders Emmanuel Avelar and Sofia Amaya look over letters with their teacher, Melissa Christ.

Switching schools has barriers in itself, but for Piney Chapel Elementary students Sofia Amaya and Emmanuel Avelar, the English language is the biggest one.

The second-graders came from Honduras to Piney Chapel in March and spoke no English.

While the Piney Chapel faculty has worked hard to help the students learn a new language, their biggest and best resources have been other children.

“As a teacher, your heart is warmed when your class welcomes others in without thinking because that’s what you want them to do,” said Avelar and Amaya’s teacher Melissa Christ. “They love each other and care about each other.”

Fifth-graders Yahashi Vicente and Amy Vega, both fluent in Spanish, come to Christ’s classroom for 30 minutes each day and sit with Emmanuel and Sofia to take them back to the basics of the English language.

“We read them books in English and then in Spanish so they know what the book says,” Vicente said.

Vega said once the students understand what’s inside the books, the girls make Avelar and Amaya read it back to them in English.

Vicente learned English as a second language from her sister when she was about 4-years-old.

“She would say things in English and I understood, then I also watched Dora and Diego (popular animated characters) and that helped me learn too,” she said.

Vega said she too learned from her siblings.

Right now the goal for Christ is for Avelar and Amaya to learn the basics of English while learning their second-grade class material in Spanish.

“I have to start at their level,” she said. “Luckily we have great programs. It’s a very challenging situation because of the language barrier — you might see us doing two-digit subtraction and addition, and you may see one student learning the numbers in English. One of them may understand subtraction (in English) but can’t catch on to addition.”

Christ uses various resources in class to help the students — she makes instructional videos they can watch on YouTube, she sits them by some of the other Hispanic students in her class so they can help translate, and for hands-on practice, the students cut out letters in play dough.

Vega and Vincente have helped Avelar and Amaya for a month and said they take excitement with each new thing the second-graders pick up.

Christ said when she began her teaching career 12 years ago, she never thought she would be in this unique situation, but the experience and challenge has helped make her a better teacher.

“It’s made me more compassionate and understanding,” she said. “All students have different levels of understanding, but when you see them work so hard to learn, it makes me want to work harder as a teacher.”

Piney Chapel faculty members and students alike pulled together when Christ sent the first email asking for help, she said.

“Everyone responded,” Christ said. “Because of the atmosphere we’ve created, students want to help each other and see each other succeed.”

In just more than a month’s time, Avelar and Amaya have learned how to ask if they can go to the restroom, say the faculty’s names, ask for water and know what the cafeteria is.

“They’re constantly repeating what I say to them,” she said. “They want to know and just the fact that they can speak as much English at this point amazes me.”

By the end of the year, Christ said she wants Avelar and Amaya to be able to identify the alphabet, know some of the sounds of each letter and be able to recognize simple sight words.