When sophomore Bhavana Rupakula immigrated to the United States from India at the age of 13, her expectations were high. After years of seeing the country depicted on television, Rupakula said she had an image of what she thought the United States was in her head and experienced several cultural shocks after immigrating here.

“I thought (America) was like quintessential big houses and neighborhoods and suburbs and stuff, and I expected everything to be really close together,” Rupakula said.

Rupakula is not alone in being an immigrant student. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, as of 2021, the number of immigrants enrolled in public school was 11 million – almost one out of four students, and more than double the percentage from 1990.

According to counselor Casey Danubio, immigrant students are a common occurrence at this school.

“(We get immigrant students) often,” Danubio said via email. “This summer and fall we have enrolled more students from a variety of countries than ever before.”

Many immigrants face a language barrier when they move from one country to another. Sophomore Qing Luo is among them. Luo said she was fluent in Chinese—she barely knew a word of English when she first moved to the United States at the age of 9.

“The first several years (were) kind of difficult, because my language is not that perfect,” Luo said. “Sometimes I couldn’t understand what my friends and my teachers (were) saying.”

Danubio said the counseling department at this school aims to connect multilingual learner students with a global connection student.

“(Global connection students) are handpicked current students who are either newer to America themselves or who English is not their first language,” Danubio said. “We always attempt to match (the) same language. We also use the language line when communicating with parents and the student if need be.”

For her part, Rupakula said, while she spoke a lot of Hindi and Telugu at home, she faced no language barrier when moving to the United States.

“English is technically my first language, although it’s not my mother tongue,” Rupakula said. “Out of all the three languages I know, I’m the best at (English).”

Still, Rupakula said although she didn’t face a language barrier, she was scared of being around her peers soon after her move, but she also said she was pleasantly surprised by how welcoming her friends were.

“I was pretty surprised (by how kind people were),” Rupakula said. “Everyone was really nice to me. I definitely expected some mean people, but all the people I interacted with were pretty nice.