More than 600 non-English speaking students attend public school in Boone County every day. With the students gone from home during the day, their families try to adapt at jobs in a community where the language is foreign to them. The students, assessed through the Access test each year, go to English Language Learner (ELL) classes daily based on their needs, but learning at school is only half the battle, according to Melissa Raper, family resource coordinator at Ockerman Elementary School.

Raper oversees the ELL program at Ockerman, where 117 of the school’s 675 students attend the classes. She said developing English at the student’s home is the department’s biggest challenge. “It is difficult if there is not a link between home and school, if there is not someone they can trust or communicate with,” Raper said. “It is a huge issue even for something as minor as their child participating in an intramural sport or something as important as having food, water, or where to go to get a driver’s license or a copy of an important document.” (more…)

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Alton elementary school students can now be part of a voluntary new program that teaches first- through fifth-graders foreign languages: Spanish, French and German. The program consists of holding the 30-minute sessions at Gilson Brown, North and West elementary schools in Alton and Godfrey. A $45 per-student fee funds the language program, and the money goes to pay for school supplies and to the teachers, who are retired educators or college education majors.

Theresa Willis, a parent, program coordinator and a French teacher, said learning a second language at 6, 7 or 8 years old is easier for students than to take on the courses in high school. “If you learn a language at a young age, it becomes almost permanent,” Willis said. “If you learn it in high school, when most of us learn a foreign language, your brain thinks about it in English; then you translate it the new language, then you speak it. (more…)

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Two public hearings for a bilingual charter school proposal many thought would be controversial caused little stir. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t talking about Vida Charter School; or even going to Hanover school board members and asking them to deny the school’s application.

Board member Mike Baker has received considerable community feedback. “What I’ve basically been hearing is that when people come to America, they need to integrate into the culture,” Baker said. A charter school is a self-managed public school that provides different opportunities than a typical school. Charter schools often offer innovative teaching techniques or emphasize one subject area, such as science or arts. The schools can be controversial, however,

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Many newcomers to the universe of English As A Second Language training are confused about the different abbreviations. Have you ever wondered why there are so many technical definitions and categories used in the field of English teaching and learning?

Here’s the latest — EIL, which is an acronym for English as an international language, and here is another — ESD, English as a second dialect.

Ever hear of TESOL? Some say it stands for Teaching English to speakers of other languages and is a “blanket” or “umbrella” term covering situations in which English is taught as a second language, as well as those for which it is taught as a foreign language. (more…)

Forty percent of students in the Delavan-Darien School District are Hispanic. That’s the second-highest percentage in Wisconsin, behind only a charter school in Milwaukee, according to data from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Teaching reading, writing and arithmetic when two out of 10 kids also are learning to speak English presents a list of challenges for the school district. But Ash said small-group interaction with a teacher fluent in Spanish—such as the “whole” and “hole” discussion with Noemy and Claudia—is putting English language learners on pace with their classmates who grew up speaking English. (more…)

Workers who speak English as a second language will have a job fair geared for them. WorkNet Pinellas launches its first bilingual job fair on Wednesday, Feb. 13 at the EpiCenter in Clearwater. A second one is scheduled for Aug. 13.

WorkNet decided to go bilingual based on feedback from its clients. “There’s such a diverse job market in Tampa Bay,” said Sarah Whitney-Mead, vice president of sales for WorkNet. Jobs requiring Spanish will be most prevalent, followed by French, Italian and Bosnian, Whitney-Mead said. (more…)

Middle and high school students with little to no school experience or ability to speak English might have a new option in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district.

The school board is considering creating a center for older immigrant children to give them intensive English lessons and basic elementary and classroom skills before integrating them into age-appropriate classrooms. Central office staff and English as a second language teachers are advocating for the more-intensive instruction.

Jose Nambo, director of English as a second language and Dual Language Services, described students who have no experience holding a pencil or sitting in a classroom who are enrolled in the district’s middle and high schools. (more…)

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Some adults enrolled in the program have first- through third-grade literacy skills. Others know just enough English to write their names. But in a couple of years, their command of English has grown to the point they are able to read the notes their children bring home from school and to take an active part in parent-teacher conferences.

Some, like Irma Adame of East Moline, even plan to go on to get their GED certificates. That is the goal of Even Start, a family literacy program offered through the East Moline School District, Black Hawk College and the East Moline Public Library. “We want to educate the parents so they can help their child succeed,” said Even Start director Cheryl Torres. (more…)