The National Teacher of the Year, who teaches English and math to newly-arrived refugee and immigrant students at a high school in Washington state, hand-delivered letters from her immigrant and refugee students to President Donald Trump before a White House event in her honor on Wednesday.
“I personally handed the letters to him and relayed to him that I hoped he would come out and meet my immigrant and refugee students to see how much they contribute to our nation and he told me that he would try to come out,” teacher Mandy Manning of Spokane, Wash., told ABC News.
Manning said the president accepted the letters and directed his staff to put them on his desk where he could read them later. She said while some of the letters are very supportive of the president, others have very pointed messages.
“One letter is from a student who comes from an African nation, and she communicated that she hopes he would be very careful about the language of immigrants because his language has an impact on how people treat her,” Manning said. “She has encountered situations where she has been told to go back to Africa.”
Manning said that she viewed the White House event and meeting with the president as an opportunity to possibly affect his view of the immigrant community.
“The way that I look at is, it was an opportunity to share my students’…
