ED tech and ESL

Last week was an emotional roller coaster to say the least. In my student teaching placement, the district happens to have a good amount of ELL students, predominantly from Ecuador. So one of my goals for this semester was to reach out to the ESL classes and integrate technology, the best I could. I was able to touch base with a middle school ESL teacher whose students were doing a biography on a musician and she wanted to use technology. What an awesome coincidence (the ride starts off)! On my first day with the students I told them we were going to be learning about Glogster. Nervous of course because they are new to me and I am new to them (little bit of butterflies like you’d get on a ride when you know the adrenaline is going to start rushing).Once the students knew that Ms. Zhinin knew and spoke Spanish, it went from 'Who's this lady?' to 'O ok, it's Ms. Z' and they were even more comfortable when I said my family is from Ecuador, even better.(The ride is fun again) When I was teaching, the teacher answered a call and told a student that he was wanted somewhere. When he came back he came with another student, a boy. The room got quiet; I mean you could hear a cricket quiet. Turns out the boy is a new student (I could tell by the scared look on his face) and everybody started smiling and small side comments. The teacher says who the new student is and wanted everybody to introduce themselves, first in Spanish then in English. As the students introduced themselves, I observed the new boy and slowly my heart started to break (the ride is officially not fun anymore), his stare seemed so distant, so scared, so...lonely. He would look at the other students and nod in acknowledgement, but you could see his expression, it still leaves me speechless, he was scared, he was new. When the students asked him to introduce himself all he could say was his first name and his age in Spanish, but you could tell that it was because he was shy, that something was not comfortable in him at least not yet. Later on in the day I told the teacher how I felt so bad for him being new and seeming so scared in the new school (trying to control this ugly gut feeling I had at this point). Then she told me that when the student was coming to this country he was caught at the border at was detained in Arizona for 4 months. 4 months, my jaw dropped (the roller coaster was in its part) and I was flushed with pain of sadness and anger at the same time. Sadness because I felt 'Of course this kid is scared he already knows what jail is like, what traveling illegally is like'. He has experienced things that the rest of our students who are born here will never have to experience and will perhaps never appreciate how lucky they are being born in this country and having the 'American dream' in their hands without as much sacrifice as this kid has. Sadness because of the pain his parents must have suffered knowing that their son was detained for 4 months, that perhaps they couldn't pay bail because of the economic situation now. Anger because of our government system. If immigration knows that this child is illegal, why not just send him back to his country instead of keeping him detained for 4 months, avoid traumatizing him, giving him this blank stare that I saw. Anger because this child is not at fault that his parents are bringing him to this country, why wouldn't our government pass the Dream act, perhaps this child will one day have the potential to have the American dream, to be a great inventor, to discover the cure for the deadliest diseases, but will he ever have the chance to do so?, because if he does not have a social security number, he will not get into a higher education or apply for financial aid to go to school.
An update: On Monday when I went to the same class to continue working on Glogster and the project. I was able to stay a bit more to catch up with the teacher as far a planning, since there was a quiz. The new student was exempt because he did not know the material, so the TA in the room said, “Oh, can he go on Rosetta Stone?” What a great idea, I thought. Ends up he couldn’t because it takes the district at least a week or two to set up a new child in the system. I mean c’mon really, 2 weeks! It’s February we need this kid to hit the road running, but how can we if we can even get him on a program to start learning the language.
I guess what I want to get out of this is: what do you guys feel/think? What have your experiences been like when a new child comes into your classroom? Because I don't know about you, but this was heartbreaking for me, how do you move on? how do you help? where do you start? it's February! how do start this new student on track? How can you even think of introducing him to technology when he doesn’t even know the language? Here I am introducing him to Glogster, trying my best to use Spanish without passing my boundaries because I am the student teacher in the room. How, how can I help this student when my forte is ed tech, not ESL at least not on paper?! I know this question may not have a simple solution, but I feel technology is great, but perhaps school systems need to be better at integrating in classrooms that are not general education, like an ESL class.