Paul Bass Photo
Barberia at Columbus soccer fundraiser.
Laura Barberia urged her students on to score a goal — as their families came together to help her meet her own.
Barberia is a beloved third-grade bilingual teacher at Fair Haven’s K‑8 Columbus Family Academy. On the side she coaches a soccer team there.
She has a new goal as well, which is to stay at Columbus. Which means staying in the country.
Barberia, 24, is up against a deadline. Her student visa runs out July 1. The school district is sponsoring her quest for a green card. It has thrown in $2,500 toward the cost. She needs another $7,000 to complete the application process.
Columbus parents are helping her. Sunday they held a fundraising soccer tournament in the school’s gym, bringing in $1,000, with Barberia on the sidelines directing Columbus’s team and cheering on the players. A school administrator threw in another $500. The parents set up this crowdfunding site to keep the effort alive online.
In Columbus‘s dual-language program, students take all their classes in Spanish one week, English the next. Talented dual-language teachers are hard to find. Which makes Barberia’s continued stay at Columbus all that more important to the community.
“We love Laura. She’s amazing,” said Joan Bosson-Heenan, one of the parents organizing the fundraising drive. Her son Samuel was in Barberia’s third-grade class last year, and as a result “his Spanish is incredible.”
“She allows the kids to disagree. Laura will open their minds and their hearts to discover and research and to to learn with joy,” said Columbus’s PTO President Fatima Rojas, whose daughter Ambar also had Barberia as a teacher.
It’s no coincidence that soccer figures in the fundraising drive or in Barberia’s work at Columbus. She came from her home in Spain to New Haven seven years ago to play soccer and to study at Southern Connecticut State University. She said at home she had fewer options for both academics and sports.
Pursuing an education degree, Barberia student-taught at Columbus. “I fell in love with teaching,” she said. Then she fell in love with the kids. “I love how happy they come” to school in the morning, she said. After her graduation, she came on full-time as a Columbus teacher. She is in her third year in the position.
Committed to Columbus’s educational approach, she returned to SCSU to pursue a masters in dual-language teaching. That enabled her to stay in the country legally through this academic year. But then her student visa will expire.
Superintendent of Schools Reggie Mayo said the system has sponsored a couple of other teachers for green cards as well, with $2,500 the set figure for financial help. “She’s a wonderful young lady,” he said of Barberia, “a wonderful teacher.”
Columbus Principal Roy Araujo seconded Mayo’s assessment. In addition to her classroom work, she coaches soccer for free on her own time, enabling the school to offer a program it otherwise couldn’t afford, Araujo said.
“She’s part of our family,” the principal said. And he’s hoping she can remain at home.
Michelle Liu contributed reporting.