Success Stories

It’s not that Lokelani had other plans. She just couldn’t get herself to go to class. “I just wasn’t coming to school. I was skipping classes constantly - Freshman year, sophomore year, junior year – just to go home and sleep. I had no interest in school.” She emphasizes, “even just the idea of school made me sleepy. So I just started falling behind.” Of her time at Econ River, she say, “I adjusted really quickly. I started to see that I could work faster – or slower – and found myself saying ‘maybe this isn’t such a bad idea.’ This school was the best fit for me.”

“The way I came to the United States,” he explains, “involved airplanes, boats, even walking. I had to pass through many different countries. And when we got here, I didn’t speak English. I was in 4th grade, and I tried my best to learn how to speak English, but it was hard.” Today, Brayan is fluent in English and while he speaks Spanish at home and though Econ River offers courses in Spanish, he insists on taking all his courses in English. “Learning English was hard, but I don’t just want to speak it,” he explains. “I want to sound like a native English speaker.”