For Gabriela Zamora, an 18-year-old senior multilingual learner (ML) at Newcomer Academy, the clamor of everyday life in Cuba can, at times, be nostalgic. The weather, too — regularly hot and sunny unlike Louisville’s meteorological inconsistency — she misses on occasion.
True the hardships of Zamora’s home country, which is currently in economic crisis, can be explained through the 15 percent drop in gross domestic product since 2020, or the estimated 40 percent of the population that consumes fewer than 2,100 calories a day — the average American’s caloric intake is over 3,600 — yet in coming from a place where the out of step electrical grid has led to concerning levels deforestation, proxied by the common practice of burning wood and charcoal to cook food, Zamora believes she, and other Cuban and Latino immigrants, can face the new hardships that seeking refuge or opportunity in the US demands, with a smile on their face.
Louisville — and most of the US for that matter — has a majority English speaking population. Even so, since 2017, Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) has seen a 125 percent increase in the number of ML students, most of whom are immigrants. At 11,000 students, they now make up just over a fifth of JCPS’s student body.
After migrating to the US from Cuba in May of 2024, Zamora found that breaking the language barrier was one of the most difficult aspects of integration. “We come with a base, but not a good one,” Zamora recounted, “We learn some words, like hello. It’s little things. And when I arrived at the airport, they started to talk to me in English, and I didn’t know how to answer, and I was like, hey, what’s going on?
She did, however, find solace at Newcomer Academy, a sixth through 12th grade school in JCPS, that specifically targets the ML community. Students, who are recent arrivals to the US, often stay there for one to three semesters until they gain a proficiency in English and then, depending on their grade level, either graduate, or transfer into another middle or high school to continue their education.
Scott Beldon, a resource teacher at the school, finds that in learning to adjust to the US, representation is important at a place like Newcomer. “More than half of our teachers are international themselves; have that experience of migrating to the United States and acclimating to American culture and the American school system,” he explained, “So our teachers have not only experience in teaching content, but also have lived through personally, the experience of acclimating to this culture, and can therefore support and help guide our students through that process.”
“Teachers, they are not only there to talk and talk and talk, they’re part of your family. They feel like that. They do. They give you support. They make you feel like you’re in a good place. They are always there for you,” Zamora reverberated.
Adeline Thaler, Newcomer’s athletic director, and former ML teacher with experience in various schools expressed teachers’ role at Newcomer as creating a sanctuary for students — a place of fellowship, guidance and safety. “One of us will always help them with something they need, food or clothing,” she said, “Besides just teaching them English, which is really freaking important, and English is a really difficult language, we’re just making sure that they know that they’re welcome and loved.”
Zamora agrees. “They understand very well, even if they are not immigrants, what we feel and how to make us feel better,” she voiced, “The school is not a place that you go to learn. It’s like a refuge. You go, you feel better there, you learn, you make friends.” She sees the value in education as one of the most important support systems for providing immigrant MLs with guidance and opportunities in their new home. Nevertheless, somewhere like Newcomer, which she wishes immigrants all over the US had, community and understanding can be just as valuable.
While Newcomer is the focal haven for newly-arrived ML students, the vast majority of English learners eventually advance to other schools throughout JCPS. With as many as 549 at Southern High and as few as four at J. R. Graham Brown School, experiences throughout the district vary.
At Iroquois High, for instance, although the school is 44 percent ML, much of that population includes American Sign Language students, often born in the US, who do not have the same experience of acclimating to American culture as immigrant MLs do. Thaler has observed that there and at similarly diversified places, the school-wide dynamic can be very different than at Newcomer; at Iroquois, students who she would normally see laughing and conversing in her ML periods, while in their mixed classes, could seem very reserved to their other teachers.
When together, on the other hand, as with at Newcomer, ML students naturally bond with one another.
Rebecca Hassett, an ML teacher at Seneca High School, described the support that communities like the Hispanic, Afghan and African Student Unions provide at her school. “Just being with people who understand their language is great — people who understand where they’re coming from; and then, they can have some pride in their culture,” she said.
Still, this sense of community often transcends ethnic lines. “Even cultures that normally hate each other usually get along in this realm,” Thaler said; because despite their numerous differences, they all share at least one thing in common: leaving their home, and finding a new way to live in America.
However diverse, interchangeable to Louisville’s immigrant ML population are the strong threads, reaching from their former home to their new one, of their cultural identity. And, just as a cluster of threads form a knot, an abundance of cultural threads in one city can also make ties that are hard to undo — not that many would like to untie those knots, MLs and native Louisvillians alike.
“I came with a very strong culture, very big family,” Zamora remarked, “They are always trying to keep their traditions and ways to live with them. But even in coming, at the Newcomer Academy, I’m living with American people. So I gain vocabulary. I gain ways to live in my home. Sometimes I’m talking with my mom in Spanish, and I say between sentences: ‘like, okay, so’” In Zamora’s eyes, she believes that this cultural exchange is beneficial on both sides.
Thaler, Hassett and Beldon do as well. They see the value in what they give; education, guidance and support; and love the work, food, music and attitude that ML students and their families bring.
Zamora, too, holds that this love and acceptance comes from both sides. “The Louisville community, they actually have a really great acceptance of Latin students,” she described, “I really like that, because I have not faced any person yet that treated me bad, just for me, Latina. And that is something that I really like, because they are American. People always try to make me feel like home, that I’m part of them, so I really appreciate that.”
To Zamora, language, for the time and effort — and US citizenship requirement — it takes, is a worthwhile exchange. “I can talk with my neighbors. They can tell me histories about their lives,” she said, “I have work and the people that go there are mostly American people, and they are veterans of the world. And as a history lover, I love to hear all the history that they have to tell me.” Her ability to speak — understand, to be heard, and be understood — Zamora maintains, deepens shared a sense of cross-cultural connection and worth.
And what she and other Cuban immigrants bring to the United States, as a comfort to themselves and for other Americans, Zamora thinks make all the difference. “They just don’t bring loud noises to their street. They bring their happiness to them. They make, they just make the life here made better,” she said, “they treat you as a family, even if they don’t know you. And it’s not only if you are Cuban, too. They treat Americans that way.”
This goes beyond Louisville’s lost federal recognition as a sanctuary city in late July of 2025, Coming after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Chicago and Portland, Mayor Craig Greenberg decided to end restrictions on 48 hour detainment practices of criminally prosecuted immigrants, officially removing the status.
Subjection of immigrant populations has risen substantially in those throughout the US that continue to be known as sanctuary cities since President Trump took office in early 2025. Daily ICE arrests have more than doubled from the 2015 to 2024 average of 350, to 746 between January 1 and October 15, 2025 according to Reuters. This incursion has been centered on major sanctuary cities like Chicago, Portland, San Francisco and New York and, especially recently, Minneapolis and Los Angeles.
While a similar increase has not happened in Louisville, the shockwaves reach at least nationwide. Thaler and Hassett feel that their immigrant ML students, aside from the anxiety they think this must cause, still have the experiences and tenacity to back them up.
Zamora, who looks to the future where she hopes to study bioengineering in college and continue her journey of learning as long as she can, who is a Cuban immigrant and ML student at Newcomer Academy, who loves to listen to her neighbors’ life stories and the word “so,” believes that Americans would miss her, Latin people and immigrants as a whole.
Despite the fact that 59 percent of ML students in Louisville, like Zamora, are Hispanic, culturally, the city flourishes so many more. “If you drive down South Preston, there’s a lot; you can see a lot of Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish speakers, of all, like the Latins, the Hispanics, you got the Cubans, and we’ve got the Central Americans. We’ve got the whole group, everybody, Islanders, non Islanders, and they find their pockets,” Thaler pronounced.
And Zamora does feel that she can speak for the vast majority of Cuban and Latin ML immigrants that come to Louisville: of their grit and determination, culture, and humor too. Yet, while she can summarize the experience of a large scope of Louisville’s ML community, Zamora does not believe she could even begin to express from the point of view of any other part of the diverse remainder of immigrant MLs, what and how they endure.
“I think that there are many assets, cultural assets: food, culture, clothing, entertainment,” Beldon acknowledged, “But I think if I had to sum it up, the most valuable asset I see is having a different perspective, a different perspective on how to solve a problem, a different way of collaborating, different way of seeing an opportunity that didn’t exist before coming to this country, a perspective that is different based on our own personal experiences, backgrounds, challenges and an embracing of the opportunity that’s available in this country.”
Yet, whether it be through language barriers, misrepresentation, xenophobia, marginalization, persecution, ignorance, fear, silence, racism, bigotry, hate — or all of the above — the real danger is not divergence.
The real danger is when that perspective goes unheard.
