Hillside High School -

The committee in charge of designing, revising this document for the year 2024-2025 consists of a multidisciplinary team and HHS staff who represent the interests of the community. This committee and policy will be updated annually.

1. Principal - Dr. Joshua Mallory

2. Diploma Programme Coordinator - Dr. Sanders Benkwith

3. Middle Years Programme Coordinator - Ms. Keshetta Henderson

4. District Director of ELL Services - Ms. Sashi Rayasam

5. Global Languages Department Chair/Spanish Teacher - Ms. Angelica Guerra

6. Spanish Teacher - Mr. Nelson Giraldo

7. French Teacher - Ms. Mykayela Ellis

8. Mandarin Teacher - Ms. Caryn Rossi

ELL: English Language Learners. Students whose first language is not English.

Language B: Language B is a language acquisition course designed for students with some previous experience of the target language. Students further develop their ability to communicate through the study of language, themes and texts. The Language B courses currently offered are Spanish, French and Mandarin.

Hillside High School provides a comprehensive instructional program to meet the demands of its students.  The school offers a limited number of Advanced Placement courses and the International Baccalaureate Programme.  The school is also the site for a specialized Business and Finance Academy.  

North Carolina uses the Future Ready Core as our course of study and this requires students who follow the College/University Prep Course of Study under Future Ready Core to earn 2 credits in a second language. Our IB Programme, which is likened to a school within a school, gives IB students the opportunity to go above and beyond what is required.  

As a school with an IB Middle Years and Diploma Programme, we see language development as a core piece of our students’ learning. Consequently, all faculty and staff are language teachers whose responsibilities include facilitating communication within their respective disciplines. The North Carolina course of study outlines standards that address reading, writing, listening, and speaking, which are key elements and communication skills. Hillside’s leadership team chose to focus on vocabulary, summarizing and higher order thinking as a school to help students effectively communicate across all disciplines.  This builds their language skills in English (the language of instruction at Hillside) Spanish, French and Mandarin. 

Our students are challenged in the IB English Literature course by taking the Higher Level coursework and in the Language B courses by completing level 5. Having a variety of diverse coursework in four different languages provides a link to understanding cultural diversity and the global dynamics of the world.  We  attract middle school students from the entire school district because of our lottery admissions process.  We also have a partner MYP school at Shepard Middle School.

Hillside High School has a diverse population of students. The language of instruction at Hillside High School is English. This constitutes the majority of school linguistic background for over 70% of the population. The current enrollment is 1409 students of whom 466 students come from linguistic backgrounds other than English.  The second most spoken language at school is Spanish at 415 students. 331 students are identified as English Learners. 

This is a list of the languages spoken at HHS for the 2024-2025 school year:

• Afghani/Western Pashto

• Amharic/Ethiopian

• Arabic (Egyptian/Lebanese/Syrian)

• Bengali/Bangla

• Burmese/Myanmasa

• Creoles & Pidgins (French)

• English 

• Farsi/Persian/Dari

• French

• Gujarati/Gujarathi

• Karen

• Kinyarwanda/Kinyamulenge

• Malay/Bahasa Malaysia

• Portuguese

• Sangho

• Spanish 

• Swahili/Kiswahili

• Tagalog/Filipino

• Wolof/Gambian

For the year 2024-2025, as stated in the Hillside High School Profile “Hillside High School 2024-2025 School Profile CEEB Code: 341-055” Hillside High School's current enrollment is 1409 students. The population in the school is distributed as follows:

Source: Hillside High School's Panorama Education data.

Source: Hillside High School's Panorama Education data

LEP = Limited English Proficiency

There are 328 students identified as ELL which makes up 23.3% of our school population.  As ELL students enter Durham Public Schools, they must go through an identification process.  Federal and state policies require students who speak languages other than English, to be assessed for English Language Proficiency. Students who speak other languages are enrolled centrally after interviewing families to verify their dominant language. If their primary language is not English they are assessed on the WIDA Screener to determine if they qualify for services. Students who are identified as ELL take an annual assessment called “ACCESS” until they exit from ELL services. If they do not qualify, they may not receive services. 

The purpose is to provide academic language support to ensure student success in their educational career.

Students in grades 9-10 can select 1 of 3 available languages - French, Spanish, or Mandarin Chinese.  Over the course of Years 4 & 5 students must complete up to Level 3 of the same language.  Within each of the courses students progress through the emergent, capable, and proficient phases as applicable and engage in the inquiry cycle to develop their conceptual understanding through an exploration of global contexts.  Students delve into the areas of communication, connections, creativity, and culture as they actively engage in learning and enhancing their skills based on relevant materials in the respective language.  MYP language is offered as a semester-long class and the number of hours meets the requirements for progression of learning for at least 50 hours of teaching time for each of the language acquisition classes per Year 4 and 5. Courses are offered at the standard and honors level for which students can receive an extra .5 credit weighting.

LANGUAGE A

Our Language A English Literature HL course develops students who are exposed to cultural texts with the ability to respond critically and thoughtfully in order to form their own literary judgements.  By understanding literary techniques, the students in our Language A English Literature courses are prepared to communicate orally and in written form, and interpret literary works with ease.  The texts in the literature course are chosen from 1. works in translation, 2. works written originally in English and 3.  a free choice of works.  Hillside High School traditionally has a 100% IB Exam pass rate in our Language A English Literature courses which shows our students are prepared for their post-secondary school options.    

LANGUAGE B

As stated by the IB Language B Guide, Language B language acquisition course is designed for students with some previous experience of the target language. In the language B course, students further develop their ability to communicate in the target language through the study of language, themes and texts. In doing so, they also develop conceptual understanding of how language works, as appropriate to the level of the course. 

Language B courses are offered at Standard Level (SL) at Hillside High School.

The development and maintenance of home languages for all learners is supported as follows:

• Students whose mother tongue is English further refine those skills in the language and literature courses through vocabulary development, language acquisition, grammar, and culture-based skills. Students are also given an opportunity by being offered a study in a second language over the course of 5 levels in either French, Mandarin Chinese, or Spanish. Proficiency is mastered as students engage in the six phases of language.

• Students whose mother tongue is not English receive additional assistance through various scaffolded instructions, including visual aids, sentence starters, guided notes, and modeling. The ESL department also provides additional support. In addition, each department has Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) trained teachers who support non-native English speakers.

Our district’s ELL Resource Center offers support to parents and students in their native language through ELL Community Liaisons, with most being Spanish speakers. The ELL Resource Center, and Hillside’s bilingual counselor, work with parents and students to ensure they are aware of all school and academic opportunities available to them and work with them to ensure parents are actively involved in their student’s academic success.  Hillside has at least one bilingual counselor, bilingual records specialist, and several Language B teachers who speak another language besides English. We also have support staff, such as custodial staff, whose native language is not English.  

ELL elective and English courses are offered based on placement testing during the enrollment process for identifying ELL students. The Global Languages department also offers a Spanish Heritage class for native speakers to support them with their various levels of Spanish literacy. 

Our school subscribes to the local Hispanic newspaper and most of the print magazine subscriptions have an online version of the magazine in which you can select many different options of language.  Our media center resources for Language B include 77 titles in Spanish, 5 titles in French, and 8 digital titles in Mandarin.  Most of our IB promotional materials are printed in Spanish as well.  Language dictionaries are available to students in their native languages. Our district ELL Department also ensures that we have access to translators during our district’s Choice Fair where we promote IB to the public. 

OTHER OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL LANGUAGE LEARNERS

• Our Global Languages department hosts an International Festival during the International Week festivities that allows students, teachers, and the community to explore our various diverse cultures.  

• Hillside provides at least one opportunity per semester to expose our students to other cultures and heritages.   

• Technology training for ELL students - Changing keyboard for languages.

Revision: April 2025