Chapter 10: Peru: A Nation of Contrasts, Diversity, and Complexity

Gabriela Moreno is a 7th grader in a U.S. school. She was born and raised in a well-kept middle-class neighborhood in Lima, Peru and has been in the United States for seven months. Gaby, as her family calls her, is a quiet teenager with an infectious smile. Although she appears attentive in all her classes, by the end of the day she seems tired and uninterested.

Earlier in the term, Ms. Ball, her science teacher, thought that since Gaby spoke so little English she probably did not understand much of the content.

“Boy, was I wrong,” said Ms. Ball. “While Gaby can’t put sentences together, she sure knows scientific terms and concepts. I didn’t realize this until Ms. Rosales [a bilingual paraeducator] gave me a list of many cognates in English and Spanish for our unit on natural selection and adaptations and explained to me that many scientific terms have similar spellings in English and Spanish.”