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New Americans moving quickly to college track
November 8, 2005

AURORA - It started with a visionary new charter school for young immigrants sharing a building with a local college. It’s quickly growing into a collaboration of educational resources and a big opportunity for local students – many for whom opportunities have been too few and far between during their short lives.

The New American School catering to the education needs of 16- to 21-year-old immigrants in the metro area has been operating at the Community College of Aurora’s Lowry campus since 2004. It became an Aurora Public Schools charter school in August, and since then has worked closely with CCA to begin giving some of its students a taste of higher education, with the hopes the students’ appetite for college-level learning grows.

About a dozen of New America’s 300 students at the Lowry campus are now enrolled in a two-credit ceramics class every Saturday morning at CCA. New American School pays the tuition for the class, which charter school and CCA leaders hope to be the first in a lengthy partnership of various classes.

“I guess some of the students at the school had expressed interest in an art class, so we got something together,” said Cindy Vinson, the visual arts coordinator for CCA who is teaching the Saturday morning class of New America Students at the college’s CentreTech campus in central Aurora. “The main idea is to expose them to college, and for them to take a first step toward higher education. They are going to have a couple college credits after this class, and that can give a young student who never thought about going to college some great confidence.”

Most of the students in Vinson’s class are from Mexico, although others come from countries like Vietnam and Ecuador. Aurora’s New America School enrolls students born in at least a dozen different countries and on five continents. The school has staff members fluent in Spanish, Arabic, Vietnamese, French and Chinese. The school offers mainly night classes so those students could work jobs in the day and pursue their high-school diplomas, equivalency tests and vocational degrees during the evenings.

CCA and the school have been collaborating to create a “middle college” warm-up for students who might not normally pursue higher education.

“You see them come to campus a little lost and overwhelmed by everything, even on Saturdays when it’s quiet here,” Vinson said. “These are kids who appreciate every opportunity they have and are some of the hardest working students I’ve seen. Even though they’re overwhelmed at first, they get through it. I think they are realizing they might want to give this college thing a try.”