Summer school is underway in districts across the metro, and in St. Paul, they’ve found a unique way to help students who speak English as a second language.

At Dayton’s Bluff Achievement Plus Elementary School in St. Paul, they are using bilingual and trilingual high school students from around the district to work as “summer language assistants” in some of the elementary schools. 

There are 21 summer language assistants working in the district — they speak languages ranging from Spanish to Somali to sign language.

It’s a pilot program and not only do the summer language assistants get paid, they can earn college credit.

Finding bilingual help for summer learning is always one of the biggest staffing challenges and this program fills in the gap.  But most importantly, these assistants know how it feels to try and learn a different language.

“My first language is Hmong, and I remember being a younger kid it’s always hard to ask for help,” said Tristan Lee, an 11^th grader working as a summer language assistant.

“I had a lot of great role models in elementary school and I want to be that role model for other kids,” he said.