Aprendiendo en Dos Idiomas

Moving to a new school can be traumatic for any child or teenager — navigating not only unfamiliar hallways and classrooms, but also an unfamiliar social environment of teachers and students with different rules and dress codes. Now imagine the teachers and students at the new school also speak a different language. 

This scenario is repeated year after year at area schools, primarily among students whose first language is not English, but Spanish. The Hispanic population in East Tennessee grew by 278 percent from 1990 to 2000, according to the 2000 census, with 39,000 Hispanic people currently living in the region, some second- and third- generation and not all Spanish-speaking. In Knox County, the number of Spanish-speaking students continues to increase at an “almost exponential rate,” says Knox County Schools World Language/ESL Supervisor Sharon Fischbach, who adds schools are “just keeping up” to meet their needs.

Lenoir City Schools have the second largest percentage of Hispanic students in the state. Maria, born and raised in Mexico, is one of  many who have met the challenges of attending school in a setting where both students and educators face a sharp learning curve. Maria, (who asked that her last name be withheld), came to the United States three years ago and moved with her family to Lenoir City, graduating from high school in May 2007. When asked if she thinks her school experience was different than that of her native English-speaking classmates, she laughs.

“It was different,” she says shyly. “It was easier for them.”

Enrolled in the  English as a Second Language class from her first day of school,  she now sometimes serves as translator for family or friends when someone’s kids are sick and need to see a doctor, or to interpret information in other settings. Although she says “(ESL) helped me … I learned a lot,” Maria still finds speaking in English a bit difficult, requesting to continue the interview in Spanish.

Elizabeth Corbett was Maria’s ESL teacher and is beginning her fifth year of teaching in Lenoir City Schools this month. She says one challenge among many for students learning in an English-language environment is “if they don’t understand the vocabulary, they don’t get the content or gist of things.
“My students know there was a World War II, they know Hitler was a bad man,” she says. “But in order to learn things, you have to go over it and over it, and that’s what mainstream classes don’t do — at least to the extent that ESL kids need it.”

Fishbach says another function of an ESL classroom is to assist students whose vocabulary is sufficient for a conversational setting to succeed in an academic setting, as well.  “While they may have [a basic understanding of English,] they don’t have academic English, so they have to learn a lot of vocabulary specific to biology or mathematics,” she says. “Just a term as simple as ‘multiply,’ they have to learn. Then there’s the whole issue of capitalization and punctuation. It’s a great deal to learn... It makes success in school a lot more difficult.”

Bringing in the troops
The Knox County ESL and World Language program has grown by 85 percent in the last five years, Fischbach says. There are currently 813 Spanish-speaking ESL students in the system, making up 60.2 percent of the ESL population.

“Five years ago I came to this position,” Fischbach says. “At that time we had 700 ESL students with 12 teachers. Today we have 1,350 students and 34 teachers. Five years ago we had no interpreters. Today we have five on-staff interpreters, four of whom are Spanish [speakers].”

In addition to hiring qualified professionals to facilitate communication with this growing population, the school board voted last year to cluster middle and high school ESL students, a move Fischbach says allows the schools to better meet the students’ needs. Five middle schools and five high schools are now designated ESL cluster schools, or schools which ESL students attend instead of the default school for their zone. ESL students in these schools receive transportation and special services.