SELMA, Calif. – Amal Qasem pulls up a mathematics app on her phone that she programmed, then displays the computer coding that went into its creation — a sequence of data that resembles a line of colorful puzzle pieces.
She understands this complicated computer conversation in cyberspace exceptionally well although she's just 15 years old and still learning to speak English.
Amal finished making her app — which earned a perfect score in her computer science elective class at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Selma — days before her peers.
In another class called Newcomers, where Amal is learning to speak and write in English, the eighth-grader fittingly sits at a desk in front of a large poster of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Amal was at the top of her class in Yemen before fleeing civil war in her home country and coming to Selma in December 2017. She's continuing to excel in the United States with help from teacher Efraín Tovar.
She's become a success story for what is possible with technology and passion.
In Newcomers, she's learning English alongside 20 other students born in six different countries who speak Spanish, Arabic, Punjabi, Hindi and Zapotec as their first languages.
Tovar communicates with them with help from translation software and literacy applications. Educators from other schools frequently visit his classroom to watch his innovative approach to teaching. He said he's the only Google-certified innovator, trainer and administrator in California to work with newcomers.
