Javier Orellana never considered going to college when he immigrated to Annapolis from El Salvador in 2018.

Following his move, he enrolled at Annapolis High School as a freshman with little knowledge of how to speak English. He participated in the high school’s English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program, which uses an integrated language development curriculum that includes other subjects such as language arts, science, math and social studies.

“I was completely lost,” said Orellana, 21, who graduated in 2021. “I didn’t know what my future plans were gonna be.”

In 2019, Annapolis High School ESOL teacher Mari Fernandez Lopez introduced Orellana’s sophomore ESOL class to the Chesapeake Language Project, an Anne Arundel-based nonprofit that connects English-learning, or ELL, students with resources and opportunities to explore higher education options after high school.

“I met one of the founding members, Tema Encarnacion, and then she asked me if I wanted to go to college,” Orellana said. “I thought ‘You know what? I think I’m interested. I do want to learn more.’ ”

The Chesapeake Language Project was founded in 2014 by Susan Eichhorn, an ESOL teacher at Old Mill High School, and three other Anne Arundel County Public Schools ESOL educators: Encarnacion and Erin Sullivan, then teaching at Glen Burnie High School and Kiran Sandhu from Old Mill High School. The teachers noticed a gap in opportunities for ELL students to even consider higher education.

“We would watch [our students] go through four years of high school with no ability to access higher education because of the cultural differences” within their family dynamics, said Eichhorn, who is now retired from the school system but volunteers with the program. “We were amazed by some of the kids that we were teaching and how smart they were. As teachers, there was little that we could do because you know, we’re high school teachers. We can’t follow them for the rest of the year. So they would end up just cleaning houses or working in restaurants and things like that.”

As of this school year, there are 8,914 English-learning students enrolled in Anne Arundel County Public Schools, with 2,090 enrolled in high school. Enrollment of English-learning students has steadily increased since 2018, according to county schools spokesperson Bob Mosier.

In the beginning, The Chesapeake Language Project solely raised money to fund scholarship opportunities. It has since evolved into a mentorship program to give students the help they needed to understand what goes into applying for higher education.

“We recognized that [fundraising] was not enough,” Eichhorn said. “We were educators, we didn’t have great skills at fundraising, you know, so we were trying to figure out better ways to address the issue, and we thought instead of [solely] raising money, we design a mentorship program and that changed the trajectory of everything.”

Orellana became one of seven students that participated in the organization’s pilot of the mentorship program.

Of the seven students that graduated as the program’s first cohort, 100% graduated with their high school diploma in 2021, said Sullivan, the organization’s executive director. Five of the seven students attended a four-year college in the fall following their high school graduation.

The program is mentoring 12 new students in their second cohort graduating this spring. Of the 12, two students have graduated early. The other 10 have completed the college application process and have received at least one acceptance letter from a higher education institution.

“The goal is if we can maintain this success rate that we see in these smaller cohorts, we think we can have a significant impact on the immigrant community as we grow,” Eichhorn said.

Members of the community are encouraged to apply to the program and take on what Eichhorn describes as a “parent role” that will walk their matched student through every step of the college application process: driving students to college tours, helping to fill out the Common Application and high school class selection. The program is currently accepting applications for mentors and mentees at thechesapeakelanguageproject.org/mentorship-program. Applications are due by March 31.

Eichhorn said their goal is to introduce English-learning students to the idea of higher education during their sophomore year of high school and help them get into more rigorous courses their families don’t know about, including AP, IB and Honors courses.

“[As an educator,] you realize parents help [students] with all of these little things in the college application process that [they] do during high school. [The students in our program] have none of that. Their parents don’t speak the language. They don’t know the culture. They’re just trying to get by,” Eichhorn said.

Following graduation, mentors are expected to stay in contact with their mentees during their first year in college. Sullivan said this expectation follows a proven theory that extended contact beyond one’s high school years maintains the student’s motivation to complete his or her degree as the mentors are able to identify barriers that may result in the student dropping out.

“While we are a small organization, we are really proud of what we were able to accomplish,” she said. “We are so proud of our students. I think that we have been able to develop an expertise that we can use to provide information to other institutions and organizations in Maryland that are working with immigrant students.”

In his time in the program, Orellana discovered an interest for politics. He took AP Spanish and Culture, AP Environmental Science and AP World History and was elected senior class president. In 2020, he became a public high school representative for Anne Arundel County’s first Youth Advisory Council.

“I got to learn and understand better my community and that was a really nice experience that I always will carry with me,” he said.

Orellana graduated in 2021 with Cum Laude Latin Honors and a 4.0 GPA. He earned cords to recognize his participation in Spanish Honor Society, National Honor Society and his role as senior class president. Currently, he is completing his second year at George Washington University on a full scholarship. He is planning to major in political science.

“If I go into politics I plan on focusing on establishing a better relationship between the United States and Latin American countries, starting with my country of El Salvador,” he said. “Perhaps working at the embassy, maybe consider being ambassador.”