Historical classroom report by Karen Bynum. The source’s approximately 100 foreign students and 300 American students are not substituted for the separate school table’s 424 pupils. Statements about immersion and integration are the writer’s period observations and interpretations, not independent causal findings.
In the 1980-81 school year, the St. Louis Public Schools began a sorely-needed program of English instruction for their nonEnglish-speaking students.
This program, called English as a Second Language (ESL), is located in schools in the Skinker-DeBaliviere cluster, mainly Hamilton and Dewey Middle. Hamilton has one hundred foreign students representing eleven different nationalities, although the majority of the students are Indo-Chinese (Vietnamese and Laotian).
At Hamilton the program consists of two full-time teachers and two aides.
The children are placed in the regular classrooms according to their ages but also attend the ESL Center for English instruction part of each day.
Some of the ESL students have received excellent educations in their native languages and several speak two or three languages.
On the other end of the spectrum are children who have come from countries where there was no free public education.
These children may be 10 years old and have never attended school.
The ESL program does not provide instruction in their native tongues, so these non-English-speaking students hear English all day long.
It is a proven fact that this total immersion results in more rapid understanding of the new language.
The experience has also been a good one for the three hundred American students, most of whom have had no acquaintance with foreign languages.
As an example, in my kindergarten class the American children believed at first that the ESL children could not speak.
Now that they have become acclimated to school they are teaching others some Vietnamese words.
In Hamilton’s Christmas program were several acts presented by ESL students.
Many members of the fourth and fifth grade chorus can sing “Jingle Bells” in Arabic almost as well as the girls from the Sudan.
A group of older Vietnamese boys sang “Auld Angs Syne” in their native tongue and several Spanish-speaking girls sang their Christmas wish, much to the delight of the audience. Mr. John Bernard, principal of Hamilton, said he was wished “Feliz Navidad” by American students during December.
If racial isolation is a problem in St. Louis it is not apparent by looking at Hamilton School.
A visit would show you the “brotherhood of man” played out on a playground.
The ESL program has added a rich dimension to education in our neighborhood.
Originally published in The Paper, March 1982.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1982_03.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 7.
