Speaking English means more than learning words, which is why Morgan Community College is offering a course in pronunciation.

For many immigrants, it can be hard to even hear the kinds of sounds that Americans use in speaking their version of English, because not every language uses the same sounds, said teacher Ruth Tryon.

On Tuesday, the class was studying the “V” and “B” sounds, which can be difficult to differentiate, she said. They sound the same to those who do not use them in their native tongue. (more…)

The 15-student class is the home to Orland Park School District 135’s English as a Learned Language program, also known as English as a Second Language.

The three-year-old program is designed to help students who have little or no English speaking skills learn the language. It runs through the junior high school level, but it is only in kindergarten that it is taught as its own class.

School officials noticed a need for the program when one year about 30 kindergartners who spoke a language other than English enrolled in the district. (more…)

Curious students inside the English as a Second Language class at the Santa Cruz Adult School pick up old desk phones and pretend to call each other as they recite lines of dialogue. They giggle good-naturedly at each other as some stumble through the exercise.

Ranging in age from 18 to 67, the students are Chinese, Mexican, Filipino, Salvadoran and Guatemalan — brought together not as much by a common language as by a common goal. The dozens who attend the free class each day as work and family obligations permit are all striving to learn a skill that will make life more simple in Santa Cruz County. (more…)

One school district will send two administrators to Spain next month to recruit two bilingual teachers to teach its growing number of students who speak Spanish as a first language.

“We were not able to find a certified teacher. We had a couple of failed attempts,” said Don White, superintendent of Troy School District.

The need is huge. The number of ELL students is on the rise and there is a shortage of people who can teach them.

In one year, the state saw an increase of 26,000 ELL students. In 2006, there were 166,000 ELL students compared to 192,000 ELL students in 2007, said Robin Lisboa, division administrator for ELL for the state board of education.

The state board estimates that in the next three years 1,226 bilingual teachers will be needed statewide.

Eveline Bacon’s favorite part of the day is teaching English to non-native speakers. Through coordinating and teaching Integrated Com­munity’s English as a Second Language classes — which began September 2008 — Bacon can reach people directly and see firsthand if her work changes lives for the better.

For some of her students recently, however, change has come, for good and bad, whether they like it or not. “Most of the husbands (of the women in ESL classes) work in construction, and right now, that’s really slow,” said Bacon, Integrated Community intercultural ESL program manager. “A lot of the husbands are unemployed. The women realize now they need to get a job, learn more English.” (more…)

More than 250 of the roughly 2,000 teachers employed by the Amarillo Independent School District have at least 25 years of experience. They are rare at a time when most teachers leave the business within the first five years. A few of the veteran teachers in Amarillo ISD shared some secrets behind a fulfilling career in education.

Warren Whittington, 67, started teaching 45 years ago when South Georgia Elementary School was a brand new campus. He moved to Eastridge Elementary School in 1970 and now teaches English as a second language. (more…)

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City schools are using a $600,000 Toyota family literacy grant as a positive way to help immigrant families.

Three city elementary schools are participating in a forward-looking program to help non-English speaking Hispanic students and their parents improve their English language skills.

If the effort matches the success other cities have experienced with the program, it will ease the path toward higher student achievement and ease their parents’ path toward assimilation into American society. (more…)

Kalamazoo Central High School English as a Second Language instructor Cesar Gonzalez knows first-hand how tough chasing the American dream can be for immigrant parents.

With Erin Fleming, an English-as-a-Second Language instructor at Maple Street Magnet School for the Arts, Gonzalez is currently teaching six weeks of basic computer classes to bilingual parents of Kalamazoo Public Schools students.

The computer classes, started in 2007 by KPS Bilingual, Migrant & World Languages coordinator Manual Brenes, started last week and attracted 56 people –16 more than Brenes could accommodate. (more…)

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