The threats were made during lunch, amid the noisy chatter of students in the Patterson High School cafeteria. The group of 9th grade boys wanted cell phones and money. Most of their targets were immigrants who didn't speak much English. You're not supposed to be here, jeered the bullies. Go back to your own country. One girl was shoved to the ground. Several kids handed over their cell phones or money, without resistance.

A summer English for Speakers of Other Languages class. (By Sofia Silva)

It was the beginning of last school year, and the victims didn't tell teachers; they feared further harassment. But when fellow immigrant students who were upperclassmen heard about the incidents, they took action.

With permission from Principal Laura D'Anna, six members of the Latin Pride club -- all seniors -- donned the uniform black T-shirts that all freshmen wore and went to the cafeteria during the 9th grade lunch period. The seniors quietly walked around the tables and encouraged Latino students to tell school officials about any problems and reassured them that fellow classmates would support them. A Spanish-speaking Baltimore City police officer talked to the victims' parents. School resource officers held small-group sessions on conflict resolution with the freshman class.

D'Anna made several announcements over the intercom, referring to the harassment. She said the school had zero tolerance for such behavior.

Soon afterward, five bullies were identified and suspended.

To some students, the incident revealed much about how Patterson is adjusting to its diversity. The immigrant kids have as much say at the school as anybody else.

"Some people think they are better than us because we're not from this country. That's not right," said Bayron Cruz, an immigrant from Honduras and senior who helped lead the Latin Pride initiative. "When we organized our group, and we had the support from the principal and everybody else, it was like, 'OK, yeah.' I felt proud."

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"Patterson High School spreads its wings across the world," declares the sign just outside the central office. Walk the hallways and you might hear as many as 22 different languages, from Arabic to French to Russian to Yoruba, a language in Nigeria.

Patterson is by far the most diverse high school in Baltimore. Many of the city's refugees and immigrants have been drawn to Highlandtown and other East Baltimore neighborhoods because of affordable housing. In previous generations, the immigrants at Patterson were Polish and Greek.

These days, ten percent of the more than 1,600 students are Hispanic. Like most city schools, the majority of students are classified as African Americans. But at Patterson, it's a term that the school has to use to count students who arrived recently from the war zones of Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, and Congo.

Patterson has about 200 students classified as limited-English speakers. That's twice as many as in all of the other city high schools combined, according to Jill Basye-Featherston, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) curriculum specialist for the Baltimore school system. (Many others have taken ESOL classes, but transitioned out after a couple of years. The school system does not track those numbers.)

The challenges at Patterson are just as varied as its students. About 67 percent of the kids, immigrants and non-immigrants alike, qualify for free and reduced lunch. Many students, particularly those from immigrant and refugee families, hold after-school jobs and feel pressured to drop out of school to earn a living. Some students have never attended school before coming to America and are illiterate in their own languages.

Last year, a few kids from Somalia who had spent all their lives in a refugee camp had to be taught how to hold a book. They had never seen one before.

Because of these challenges, Patterson's future is in doubt. Test scores are so dismal that the state has targeted the school for takeover. Last year, the school system announced plans to split up Patterson into smaller schools. Patterson has received a year's reprieve as officials hold public forums on restructuring the school.

Despite these troubles, administrators and many students say that diversity is the school's biggest asset -- and is lifting its reputation. Ann Flagg, resource developer at IRC Refugee Resettlement of Baltimore, says that when refugee families move out of the Patterson district, they request that their kids remain in the school. Because Patterson is so diverse, their kids don't stand out so much.

"Patterson High School has been an incredibly supportive place for our young people," Flagg says. "They understand that these kids may not have birth certificates. That's an experience that they're used to."

D'Anna, the principal, says that even with the influx of students who speak little English, test scores have improved, although "they’re not where they should be." She says the students have made gains in areas that can't be measured by test scores.

"They come to us and they don't speak any English and they become acclimated," she says. "Our kids help each other along and form friendships and bonds. They learn about each other's cultures. That's an education in itself."

It's a sentiment echoed at the Patterson depicted in the popular movie and Broadway musical Hairspray, produced by Baltimore native John Waters. In the movie, Patterson student Tracy Turnblad, who is white, leads the charge to integrate a television dance show in 1962. Black teenagers, who go to another school, are allowed on the show only once a month.

Adults call Tracy's dream of integration "dangerous," but the kids learn how to dance together. At the Patterson of more than 40 years later, a more mixed group of kids is still trying to find their groove.

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Mambo Emmanuel reads slowly, his slender fingers pointing to the words on the page. Every few words, he pauses, stymied. He reaches for his Arabic-English dictionary.

It is a hot, humid morning in July, and in the un-air-conditioned classroom, Emmanuel is one of a dozen students attending a summer school class at Patterson for extra help in English.

Emmanuel, 17, came to Patterson last September after spending more than six years as a refugee in Egypt, living in a crowded apartment building. He, his mother, and two younger sisters had left Sudan, where ethnic groups have been fighting for years.

Emmanuel -- who will be a junior this school year -- speaks Arabic and a tribal dialect of Sudan, but knew little English when he arrived. The first weeks were scary. "I don't know nothing; I don't know how to get to the classes," says Emmanuel, speaking softly. "There are so many classes."

But then, he said, he met students from Yemen and Morocco, who spoke Arabic. And all around, other students like him were learning English, too. He fit in.

This summer morning, one word that has him stopped is "advantage."

It is "maslaba," in Arabic, he tells his classmate Iftin, who is from Somalia and doesn't have a dictionary handy.

"No, what does it mean?" laughs Iftin, 19, who goes by one name and doesn't speak Arabic. "Tell me in English, English."

Emmanuel thinks, grasping for an English explanation. "It is if you have something better," he says finally.

"Okay," Iftin nods and smiles. "I have something good; you have something better."

To Dianna Ford, who heads Patterson's guidance department, the students may be able to rely on each other, but it's only a patchwork solution for their needs. Ford, who has worked at Patterson since 1999, says that the school has long lacked adequate interpreters, ESOL teachers, and training for other teachers. "When I came here, we had two ESOL teachers," Ford says. "They needed more ESOL, or these kids were not going to finish school."

Ford, who is African-American and grew up in West Baltimore in the 1960s, says the situation reminded her of her own youth during the civil rights movement. She remembers that her high school teachers assumed she wouldn't go to college, and that her mother had to demand that she be placed in college-prep classes.

The lack of services for immigrants is "another form of discrimination," she says. "It's amazing what I had to do to say we are not meeting the needs of this population."

This school year, Patterson is getting more help. Three teachers qualified to teach ESOL will join the staff, bringing the total number of ESOL teachers to seven.

School officials had been so excited by the addition that they had planned to create an International Center to group the teachers and resources for immigrants and refugees in one wing of the school.

But those plans are on hold for now. Ford says that an overflow enrollment of 600 9th graders -- twice the number expected -- means no extra space will be available. It's yet another setback for Patterson.

Basye-Featherston says that the school system has done the best that it could with limited resources. The influx of immigrants from Africa and Latin America has been relatively recent in Baltimore, compared to other big cities. There are about 1,400 children in the school system currently classified as limited-English speakers.

"We have not done a perfect job, but we have been making a diligent effort to improve services," Basye-Featherston says.

In the meantime, the school staff uses creativity to make do.

Once, Ford sent two African girls on trips to an elementary school with students enrolled in a program for aspiring teachers. She says she figured the girls could learn some phonics and basic English while observing the elementary school classes.

Ford says she constantly recruits bilingual volunteers to help translate at parent meetings. Some recent volunteers: her brother, a reference librarian who speaks Spanish, the daughter of a school nurse who speaks French, and students from local colleges. Often, Patterson students are called on to translate for each other -- a violation of school system policy.

Ford has no misgivings. She gives the students credit for community service. With limited resources and students who speak so many languages, "what else am I going to do?" she asks. "We need to help these students. My thing is, we're going to graduate you. We're not retiring students from school."

Last year, when a boy from China kept cutting class, Ford asked another student who spoke Mandarin Chinese to talk to him. It turned out that there had been a mix-up with the boy's paperwork for free lunch, so he didn't eat in the cafeteria. He was so hungry that he left school in the afternoons to go to a nearby convenience store. After Ford and her appointed student-helper found out, the principal fixed the problem. The boy didn't cut class again.

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Like many students, Matthew Horner says he was overwhelmed when he came to Patterson on the first day. But it wasn't because he didn't know English. Matthew is white; he grew up in Anne Arundel County and Baltimore. Until then, he didn't realize that Baltimore even had much of an immigrant population. "It was interesting," said Matthew. But he socialized with mostly white kids because "I naturally went toward people I knew."

Promoting tolerance hasn't been hard. School officials and students say that racial conflict is rare. But sitting at the same cafeteria table and forming friendships is another thing.

White kids hang with white kids. There are tables full of African Americans, others for Latinos. The African immigrants will mix with kids from the Middle East and Asia, but that's because most are refugees. Even in classes, students say, there isn't as much mixing as one would hope in a diverse school.

But with time, some kids say their experiences are changing. Matthew joined the soccer team, where he was one of two non-immigrants. He took Advanced Placement Spanish, where nearly all the other students were Latino. One of his soccer buddies noticed Matthew was having problems keeping up with the work. Both started going over their Spanish homework during lunch. They even looked like mirror images, Matthew with blond hair and a goatee and Kevin Lopez with his dark brown hair and goatee.

These days, Matthew, who is now a senior, says that most of his friends are Latino and some are African. He can carry on conversations in Spanish and is even thinking of a career in Spanish translation.

"Most of them are just like me -- they work in their spare time, and after school they play sports," Matthew says. "It's hard to introduce yourself to a person who doesn't speak your language or to talk to people who are different. But once you're introduced to one person, they get to know you and introduce you to others."

Brenda Moreno, a senior who emigrated from Mexico about five years ago, says that because Latino students tend to stick together, it can hurt their language skills. Many speak Spanish exclusively to each other.

But, Moreno says, the alternative of going to a school with few Latinos is worse. Moreno spent her freshman year at Western, where she says she felt isolated and depressed. She didn't feel like participating in class or socializing.

At Patterson, she made friends and gained confidence. And there are so many other immigrants who don't speak Spanish as well as white and black Americans that her English has improved. She talks to non-Latinos about her culture and she became a leader in the Latin Pride group.

"My classmates, they're all the time asking me about things like how to salsa," she says with a giggle. "It's nice. I like it. They're trying to get into our culture and know us more."

At soccer games, it becomes more obvious how different Patterson is from other schools. Many of the other schools' players are white; at Patterson, even among the African players there are differences -- they hail from Senegal, Liberia, Ivory Coast, and Sudan.

In August, Patterson played Archbishop Curley High School, a private school in Baltimore, in the championship game of the Essex Community College Summer League.

The Curley team comes onto the field wearing matching black shorts. The Patterson boys wear different colored shorts and shabby yellow jerseys. Curley's goalie and other players shout out instructions during play. Patterson players rarely talk; Coach Harry Martin says he suspects that they tend to focus on playing and gestures rather than speaking because their English is shaky.

In the first half, Patterson is on fire. They score two goals, and the teammates on the sidelines are a loud cheering section. Curley's only goal comes from a penalty kick.

During the second half, Patterson falls apart. Curley wins, 6-2.

Martin tells the players that he doesn't know why the hustle in the first half fizzled out. Why did they stop working hard after Curley started scoring? The players hang their heads.

In some ways, just getting on the soccer field together was a victory for Patterson kids, who have escaped from war and poverty. Friendships have formed across racial lines, until it's "just one big family," as Austin Saunders, a non-immigrant says.

Yet the setbacks at Patterson are daunting -- the low test scores, the lack of resources and the prospect of the school shutting down.

Martin tells them to reach for more: "You're going to face a lot of issues in life and when something goes wrong, you can't stop. You have to keep at it."

They put their hands together and yell: "1, 2, 3, Patterson Pride!" There's a new season ahead.