Diana Avila was born and raised in Mexico and came to the U.S. in 2019. She currently lives in Carpentersville, IL with her two children. She has a passion and talent for art and has expressed interest in furthering her education and hobbies.
She has been taking Multilevel English as Second Language classes for a year now and plans to continue in 2024. One of her biggest reasons for taking the class is so she could communicate better in English and advocate for herself and her children. When she first started, Diana had a lot of hesitancy in asking questions and volunteering because she was afraid of using the wrong vocabulary or pronunciation. As the time went on, thanks to the help from Udon Thao- CMAA’s ESL teacher and her effort, her English has improved significantly from Intermediate Level to High Advanced Level now. She advocates for other students and encourages them to participate, make mistakes, and to ask questions. She also reports feeling more confident advocating for her children at parent-teacher conferences. She has become a true leader and an amazing individual.
In addition, Diana created an Individualized Education Plan with CMAA Transitions Specialist Greg Freedman. She was looking for part time employment that would allow her to have a flexible schedule because of childcare. Greg helped her to sign up for Homeaglow, an app-based home cleaning program where people can hire someone to clean their homes, and they leave feedback. Diana got several jobs this way and became comfortable with the process; now she has several people that she is cleaning for on a regular basis, including our Elgin office. Moreover, Greg is very impressed by Diana’s beautiful paintings on the walls of her children's rooms. She is a very good artist. Greg has encouraged her to try and market her mural painting skills. In the future, Greg believes that she can turn her drawing ability into a career.
Diana’s beautiful paintings on the walls of her children's rooms
Everything is just beginning with Diana, but we all believe that she will create a wonderful story in the future with the constant companionship of CMAA.
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Update - Currently she has been hired as of September 2023 as a home health care aid at CMAA Elgin by Ket. She completed the 24-hour pre-service online training over one weekend. She started working as an HCA on 9/19/23 for a client in South Elgin. The client expressed that Diana is a lovely and hard-working person
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