ESL ceremony: Year-end gathering brings together Bexley's multilingual students, families
This year marked the first time the Bexley City Schools’ English as a Second Language program had a ceremony for those students.
About 25 students participated in the program and attended the May 17 ceremony at the district’s Community Room at the central office Cassingham complex.
“We’re working to build up the visibility of the program as well as the supports, so that students are seen for who they are and the needs that they have and the ways that we can support them and their families, because they’re a very small group in Bexley,” said Alison Nakasako, an ESL teacher. “One of the big things is connecting with families and bringing those families into the schools and making them aware of what the schools do and can do to support them.”
The district previously had only one ESL teacher for all grade levels, but in recent years the program has expanded, Nakasako said.
Nate Maier works with students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and Nakasako works with six- through 12th-graders.
Students who participate in the ESL program represent a wide variety of nations and languages, Maier said.
“Spanish is always a main language, but depending on year to year, the languages really do vary,” he said, adding that Bhutanese, Russian, Albanian, Arabic, Romanian, Hebrew and French are just some of the languages the students speak.
“We’ve had Swedish kids,” Nakasako said. “You just get students from kind of all over, which makes it very fun to work with them and makes it, for them, a really good experience.”
The families migrate to Bexley for many reasons, Nakasako said, and the program’s participants were fewer in number at the outset of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
“Before COVID, we would get children whose parents were doing sabbaticals at (Ohio State University), so we’d get a lot more move in and move out,” she said. “Our program is probably smaller now than typically, but I think we saw a little growth. I think it’s starting to build back up because people are starting to move around more for all sorts of reasons.”
Valeria Naranjo, a sophomore from Costa Rica and native Spanish speaker, said the ESL program has not only helped her learn English but also to feel welcome in the community.
“I think they have really good ways to teach their ESL students – a lot of support, activities, et cetera,” Naranjo said. “They have being really understanding about my situation. And, of course, we have a great teacher, Ms. Nakasako. She’s just amazing, really supportive and always there for when we need any kind of help.”
The ESL program offers English instruction and support services through numerous activities, from study halls where students can receive bilingual homework help to small group study sessions, Maier said.
“Just as diverse as the languages are with our kids, the needs are equally diverse,” he said. “We have students that we work with who speak very little English. We have students that we work with that might be completely proficient with their speaking (English), but maybe their writing might be a little behind.
“We work directly with the students, we work directly with their teachers to help support their teachers, and then also we work to support the families, to bring the three of those together.”
At the celebration, Nakasako and Maier recognized students for the progress they made in acquiring English-language skills. The event was a potluck in which students and their families brought food that represented their cultures, from Mexican, Costa Rican and Chinese rice dishes to Middle Eastern hummus.
Earlier this year, the ESL program arranged a visit to a Columbus Crew game to help the families get to know each other. The ceremony provided another opportunity, Nakasako said.
“We have parents who speak very little English, and they don't necessarily know the other families in Bexley who maybe speak the same language as them, but also speak little English,” she said. “That’s kind of what made my evening – first, seeing all the students hanging out together. They were outside having fun, playing together. But then seeing the parents sit and talk in their languages to other parents.”
“I think it’s important for us to set up these events that bring everyone together,” Maier said. “One of the beautiful things about our program is we see a lot of growth with our students.
“What that means is we can have a year where we could have a student who could test proficient (in English) and move out of the program. So we really want to have a framework in place to, even after exiting the ESL program, to keep them as part of our multilingual community and include their families and continue to include them.”
For information about the program, visit sites.google.com/bexley.us/els.
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This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: ESL ceremony: Year-end gathering brings together Bexley's multilingual students, families
