It’s early afternoon in Juliana Santos’ fourth-grade class in Framingham, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. Today, her Portuguese immersion students at Potter Road Elementary School are learning about similes and metaphors.
“Examples are ‘busy as a bee’ and ‘sparkle like a diamond,’” she tells the class in Portuguese. “In English, you use the words ‘as’ and ‘like’ to do this.”
Santos has been a teacher for 10 years, but she’s brand new to Massachusetts. Last fall, she moved from São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. She’s here because of a new district program that recruits bilingual teachers and helps them get H-1B work visas.
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