While creating a presentation as part of staff development training last October, ESOL teacher Aziza Simmons and English teacher Dr. Portia Rhodes stumbled upon an interesting fact about the student body.
They discovered that students here speak more than 20 languages representing 37 countries from around the globe.
“You would think Starr’s Mill looks like a white school,” said Simmons because 80 percent of the student body is Caucasian and the remaining 20 percent is a composite of Hispanic, Pacific Islander, Asian, African American and other races. Yet, students speak Arabic, Igbo, Tagalog, Gujarati, Urdu, Swedish, Hindi, Patois, and Albanian, among several others from countries like Botswana, Ghana, Lebanon, Albania, Peru, the United Arab Emirates, China, Nigeria, and Russia, and more. These languages don’t include the many inherent dialects.
Who are these students? He or she may be “that kid” you see in the hall on your way to fifth period, a lab partner, a teammate, a friend, or anyone else who looks “average” or lacks an accent. They are not just the ESOL students.
“It’s really interesting for teachers to realize ‘I can’t judge by looks,’” Simmons said. While these students speak fluent English, several of them stay connected to their roots by speaking their native tongue at home.
“Sometimes I speak Dutch at home. However, it is mainly my parents talking in Dutch, and then me responding back in English,” said sophomore Annefloor de Groot. De Groot, who said she is often mistaken for an American, moved here from the Netherlands when she was eight because of her dad’s job. She was born in a town known as The Hague, where the government is based.
At first, de Groot said she had a lot of trouble adapting to a new life and learning a new language. “Some of my first thoughts when I moved here were that everything was so much larger,” de Groot said. “Also, it was pretty scary because everyone around was speaking gibberish and I was like, ‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying.’ ”
De Groot learned English mainly through the ESOL program at Braelinn Elementary and also by trying to communicate with those around her.
“It was definitely frustrating not being able to understand anyone, and I had to use my hands to talk to people,” she said. Now that she knows English, de Groot has taken on learning another language, French.
“I have discovered many educational activities and sports, and I have joined the debate team, which I really enjoy. They don’t have anything like that in the Netherlands.”
In fact, many students, like junior Andy Kim, said they came to find many new opportunities here they didn’t have in their country. Kim, who speaks Korean and Japanese and is currently in ESOL, moved to the U.S. from Seoul, South Korea, when he was 13 .
He said in South Korea everything is academic-oriented whereas here he “had more opportunities to play sports or participate in the arts.”
Like Kim, sophomore Carmelo Gonzalez, who is from the Dominican Republic and is currently is the ESOL program, said he enjoys his new freedoms and opportunities. He also found something he didn’t think was quite right.
“Something that I don’t like in schools here is that people divide themselves,” he said. “You see a group of whites, a group of Hispanics, a group of African Americans, and others, but in the Dominican Republic, we’re all pretty united.”
Simmons and Rhodes discovered that some faculty members speak Croatian, Arabic, French, Dutch, Italian, sign language and more, and they represent countries like Puerto Rico, Morocco, Belgium, Germany and France.
Simmons is from Fes, Morocco, and speaks English, French, and Arabic. When she was 26, she moved to the U.S. after getting accepted at North Carolina State University in Raleigh as an English major.
“Even though it was 22 years ago, I still remember it like it was yesterday because it was unreal, and my shock period lasted for a very long time,” she said. Simmons said it took her a long time to adapt.
“I lost 17 pounds at first because I lived on bread and jelly for three months because it was the only thing that tasted like something I had at home,” she said. “I also remember being really scared to answer the phone because I couldn’t understand people and I was very scared of socializing because I didn’t understand how to behave,” Simmons said.
As an ESOL teacher now, Simmons notices some of her old fears in her students and said she notices that they are better at adjusting than she was even though she was an adult at the time.
“I think that’s why I love my job so much because I see a part of myself in them, so I approach it from a personal angle,” she said.
French teacher Valerie Hughey is from Vouziers, France, and moved around often because of her father’s job in the military. The family moved to Del City, Okla., when she was 15.
Like these students, Hughey had her struggles in the U.S. such as learning English without the help of any ESOL classes.
“Being an ESOL teacher is rewarding. Every day I see the struggles and the rejections they get from kids in the school because they’re different, and I know what they’re going through,” she said.
Students are often singled-out because of these differences or because they have a “funny accent,” often making them subject to name calling and false, degrading stereotypes.
“You don’t brag about your culture because you don’t want to stand out and you don’t want to be judged,” said Hughey, who was a victim herself.
Simmons, however, had a different view.
“I used to be embarrassed and not want to show it but I dont think its was the judgement as much as me not being confident in my culture,” Simmons said.
However, is knowing another culture and language what sets these students and teachers apart or what benefits them, the most?
Knowing a foreign language, or even two or three, and knowing different cultures can open up many doors, especially when it comes to getting a job and applying for college. Many employers look to hire bilingual or trilingual employee, depending on the business.
Hughey agreed that knowing a second language means job security and “it makes you more accepting of other people,” she said. Also, the majority of college and universities require at least two years of foreign language, but some like Ivy League schools may require three to four years.
“It definitely connects their brains in different ways. It increases their intelligence, a different kind of intelligence. It adds to their personality and enriches their experience,” Simmons said.
However, learning a foreign language in school continues to get more difficult as more and more language programs fall victim to budget cuts every year.
“I think it’s a shame because it does not give you a rounded education,” said freshman Savannah-Baynham Smith.
Smith, who moved here from England and speaks a dialect of English known as Cockney, said students should start learning a foreign language as soon as they can and in elementary school.
Multicultural club helps increase awareness by getting the students involved in global causes and exposing them to the music, languages, traditions and overall culture of countries around the world through creative projects and activities.
Although groups like the Multicultural club help expose students to other cultures besides their own, many think greater measures could be taken such as offering more foreign languages like Portuguese or Arabic or through and setting up long distance learning labs in which the students learn the language from a teacher via video. Also many suggested that in order to raise awareness on the school’s cultures students could do class projects on other countries or have an international week where students dress up in clothes representative of their culture or bring in a few traditional dishes.
Rich culture is not necessarily something found on an adventurous journey to exotic lands halfway across the globe, but rather in the crowded halls of Starr’s Mill where students who pass for the average American teenager just might surprise you.