Island Park Student of the Month learned English in a year

Silvana Llerena had almost made it through her first day at Lincoln Orens Middle School; she had just one more class. The sixth-grader walked into the school library, where she thought it would be. The students and teachers inside turned to look at the girl who wasn’t supposed to be there. They asked her what she was doing, but she couldn’t answer. She didn’t know any English.

Silvana, 14, said she remembers every detail of that terrifying day. It was April 24, 2015 — a Friday. Earlier in the week she and her mother had traveled 3,700 miles from Lima, Peru to Island Park. They had come to America with the hope that Silvana could get a better education.

Fast-forward two years, and Silvana, now an eighth-grader, sits upright, with her straight dark brown hair perfectly parted to one side. She looks confident, because after a year of intensive language study, Silvana, named an Island Park Student of the Month in February, is fluent in English. Now, she believes she can do anything.

“Did you tell him how you used to cry all the time?” her aunt Tatiana Hayes quipped while sitting in the Long Beach Road home they share.

“Oh yeah, uh,” Silvana said, stumbling.

“You don’t have to quit so easy,” Hayes said she told her. “Why are you going to quit? You just came here.”

Silvana said her mother, Claudia, sensing her discouragement, told her she would learn English in a year. Despite only understanding a few words herself, she mandated that her daughter watch American movies and television shows, and to read and write exclusively in English.

For the entirety of seventh grade Silvana took English as a New Language courses twice a day. It was then that she started to make friends, she said. She met other non-native English speakers who were able to help her navigate everyday life, and her speaking and understanding skills steadily improved throughout the year.

She still struggled with writing, however. “Essays are the worst!” Silvana remarked. But she overcame that obstacle as well, and said she enjoys writing poetry and fan-fiction based on books she has read. Her favorite author is young-adult fiction writer Margaret Peterson Haddix, and Llerena is currently making her way through Haddix’s “Shadow Children” series of novels.

Silvana took her ENL assessment test — a five-hour exam — before entering eighth grade, and it determined that she would now need to attend one ENL class per week. She has consistently been on the honor roll and most recently she was given the Island Park Student of the Month award for February. With her immediate goals accomplished, she now looks to the future.

“I always base everything on quotes,” she said, and recited a famous adage from the 19th century American banker J.P. Morgan. “Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see farther.”

Silvana will be heading to Long Beach High School in the fall, where she plans to study Italian, then French, Chinese and Japanese. “Because I want to understand what everyone has to say,” she explained. “If I can learn a language as difficult as English in a year; I can do it again.”

Inspired to help others who are experiencing the same difficulties she did on that April afternoon two years ago, she is currently mentoring another recently arrived Spanish-speaking student at the school. “This is not the only person I’m going to help,” she said. “I’m going to help a lot of people who don’t have the language to communicate.”

Despite not yet being in high school, Llerena is thinking about university scholarships. Her dream is to attend Harvard University, and she believes it is within reach.

Sensing the interview was ending, she cycled through a handful of sayings, trying to sum up her newfound philosophy. Eventually she came up with one that encapsulated it succinctly: “Everything’s possible if you put enough effort into it.”