An all-time highlight of my career at IHS was the morning the WISE GUYS did their event as a culmination of their WISE project. Ek Eh Pru, Paw Le Paw, Sharka and Luay Gay are four students who came to Ithaca from Burma and were in the English as a Second Language program (which I will officially be working in next year) and did the first-ever collaborative WISE project. They wrote books and songs for children in English and Burmese to help make sure their little siblings and cousins who are growing up speaking English also have a bit of Burmese. I mentored Luay Gay who came to the US from Thailand after being displaced in Burma as a small boy. He spoke no English in October but picked it up amazingly, even writing in his journal something I doubt any WISE student ever wrote, "For my project, I learned English..." It was an honor to see him lead the kids in songs in both languages.
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