Student is completely illiterate

Hello everyone I am a 9th and 10th grade ESL teacher, as you can tell by my title I have a student that is completely illiterate, to make matters worse not only is she illiterate in English she's illiterate in her native language Somali. This means that during class she can't really participate because she doesn't know at all what's going on. I'm new in this role I picked it up as a long term assignment and it's not where my licensure lies but I've been giving it my all. However with this student I'm stumped, I can't use translation software that we have because she can't read it, she doesn't understand the text to voice translator we use. The only words in English she knows are yes and no. She can't even sign her own name without copying it. She's 16 and broke down in class the other day because she had no idea what's going on. I'm really lost on what to do, I have 15 other students who I'm working with in this class and I can't focus on single student. Yet I feel terrible cause this isn't her fault and she should not have been passed through the system like this. Anyone have any advice? submitted by /u/OkConsideration1003 [link] [comments]