One of the best ways to understand what it is like to be an English-language learner in a U.S. classroom is to hear the stories of immigrant students. In this article, the authors use these stories to determine what steps teachers can take to help their students triumph over their struggles with a new culture and a new language. This article presents the personal histories of immigrants so that educators can better understand their experiences. This research technique--called narrative inquiry--requires that the stories be told only by individuals. While the stories clearly involve interpretations of the facts, it is these interpretations on which identities are founded and through which lives are shaped. The stories shared are those of language learners in the U.S. school system, and they show that language learning is a "complex, contextualized, and narrativized experience." (Contains 32 notes.)