It’s first period on a Wednesday, and Alejandra is chewing gum, bouncing her foot, and goofing off with friends in a reading class for students learning English. The teacher—a substitute for the morning—writes vocabulary words on the whiteboard: “improves,” “silence,” “activists.” When she gets to “dangerous,” Alejandra springs to life. “Not safe!” she bursts out.
Danger is familiar for Alejandra, who declined to use her real name because she was involved with gangs in her home country of Honduras and is afraid for her safety even now—months after moving to Indianapolis and enrolling in the city’s first dedicated program for immigrant students.
In Honduras, Alejandra was involved with the gangs that have made that country perilous for young people. She lived with her father’s family after her mother fled the country when she was 2 years old, and her father was murdered by a gang before she was 10. After leaving school as a child, Alejandra worked taking fares on a bus before starting to sell drugs.
[For more of this story, written by Dylan Peers McCoy, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/ed...for-refugees/516444/]
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