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In Academy School District 20, one student speaks Azerbaijani, an Ethiopian tongue, and three speak Tagalog, the language of the Philippines. In Colorado Springs School District 11, students speak languages ranging from Bosnian to Burmese, Hindi to Hungarian. There are 14 distinct African dialects. Welcome to the culturally chaotic world of English Language Learners — also called English Second Language — where students come from more countries than some people can name. About 2,500 students speak more than 46 languages in the Pikes Peak region’s two largest districts. |
Schools are required by federal law to provide programs for non-English-speaking students, and teachers who undertake the challenge relish in bringing communication to a classroom where students quite literally have spanned the globe. “We have all the way from university professors’ kids to laborers’ kids, to all the areas in between,” said Christina Clayton, ELL foreign language and migrant facilitator. “We run the gamut.” Most are Hispanic, but sometimes students come as refugees from war-ravaged countries. In Lewis-Palmer School District 38, where about 140 students speak about 30 languages, many are international adoptees, said Jalen Waltman, ELL facilitator. The programs are not taught by bilingual instructors, as a foreignlanguage class is usually taught. Instead, teachers use pictures, props, and acting to show students English words and expressions.
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