'With no guidebook or curriculum': Remembering Weymouth's first ESL teacher Peg Fasino, 95

WEYMOUTH − Well into her 90s, Peg Fasino loved hearing the success stories. As the years passed, the students she had helped so much as children had found their footing in different careers and new worlds, becoming productive adults and proud American citizens.

Marguerite "Peg" Fasino, who died July 25 at age 95, was the first teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL) in the Weymouth schools. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, she built one of the first such programs on the South Shore.

Using both instincts and knowledge, she created the Weymouth ESL program in 1986, worked nonstop, and when she retired in 2001, three teachers were hired to replace her.

"She was just a fabulous person," retired Weymouth teacher Linda Breen (formerly Messino), of Hull, said Saturday. "I can't even find the words. It didn't matter where the students came from – she put the work into researching the tools we teachers needed to work with them."

"She was an incredible human being," Elaine Bugbee Meuse, whose mother, Betty Bugbee, was a friend of Fasino's, said. "Just imagine being the very first ESL teacher. She truly made a difference."

"The most fastidiously elegant woman I ever laid eyes on"

Growing up, Meuse knew Fasino in her Catholic education and posted this memory on her obituary: "My CCD teacher, the most fastidiously elegant woman I'd ever laid eyes on. She was eloquent, sincere and made a lasting positive impression on me."

Fasino's "graduates" included dozens of youngsters from Cambodia, Brazil and other countries whose families had emigrated to the United States. On her own, she also helped adults who wanted to improve their English so they could advance in their chosen professions or social roles.

In an interview two years ago in The Patriot Ledger, Fasino said she considered it a "blessing" to meet and help immigrants who had survived so much. They, in turn, helped her learn about foreign languages, customs and cultures. She was invited to many family birthdays and weddings; one family even hosted her in Brazil for a week.

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Survivors of the Cambodian Pol Pot labor camps

Linda Breen shared a story: As a 9th-grade teacher, Breen was puzzled by a boy from Cambodia who was very withdrawn. He would not look at her when she spoke to him; even when she knelt down by his desk at eye level, he would just put his head down.

She sought advice from Fasino.

"Peg said, 'Linda, in that culture teachers are revered and you never look the teacher in the eye.' " Then Fasino filled Breen in on the boy's background: his family had been held in a prison camp in Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime. His parents were forced to labor all day in the fields; the boy's job was to try and find food for his starving siblings, and on his watch, one of them died.

"There were just so many kids who she helped," Breen said.

Born Marguerite Corbo in Weymouth

Marguerite A. Corbo was born on Jan. 25, 1928, in Weymouth. She graduated from Weymouth High School in 1945 and from Emmanuel College in 1949, majoring in English and French. She took graduate courses at Laval University in Quebec and later studied English Language Learning at UMass-Boston.

After teaching French at a private school in Milton for two years, she married James Fasino, a Weymouth attorney, and they raised a son and three daughters in Weymouth. When her children were in school, she returned to teaching.

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How was the English as a Second Language program started in Weymouth

In 1977, the Weymouth schools hired Fasino to teach basic English and reading in the federal Title One program. She recalled in 2021 how regular classroom teachers began sending her more and more students who did not speak English. In 1986, she was asked to start teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.

Quincy and Brockton already had large programs. With no guidebook or curriculum, she observed the ESL classes in the other communities and developed her own materials for one-on-one instruction. Instead of "stilted" vocabulary lists, she favored stories and novels.

"They could relate the vocabulary in the stories to the situations they were reading about," Fasino said. "I loved the kids and being a teacher by nature, I wanted to help them in any way I could. They needed tools for everyday practical life so I would do categories – transportation, going to the doctor, shopping, etc."

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To learn the names of foods, they passed the taste test

To learn the names of foods, she took them to a restaurant to practice ordering from a menu.

In the 2021 interview, her voice became emotional as she described hearing the immigrants' personal stories.

"Some of the kids from Cambodia had walked into Thailand, walked through landmines exploding all around them, some had been in refugee camps and starving. And the Vietnamese kids came on boats boarded by pirates. And what these kids saw – when I talked to these kids and they explained themselves to me, I absolutely could not do enough for them."

"I regarded it as a privilege to be able to provide educational services for these students who had endured so much hardship in their young lives."

Peg Fasino's family and connection to Immaculate Conception Parish

A woman of deep faith, Fasino was baptized in and a lifelong member of the Immaculate Conception Parish in Weymouth. One of her good friends was Muriel Savoy Moloney, 93, also a longtime member of the parish. A group of a dozen or more women would go to the 9 a.m. Mass every day and then have coffee afterward at Dunkin' Donuts on Commercial Street. Close bonds were formed.

"She was such a special person," Savoy Moloney said. "She never had a bad word to say about anyone. She was willing to do whatever needed to be done, and she was someone you could talk to and she'd always have a good piece of advice." Savoy Moloney recalled another parishioner, a younger woman, still describes Fasino as her "idol."

Her husband, a Weymouth attorney, had developed early Alzheimer's disease in his 50s and died in 1997. She visited him faithfully every day in a nursing home for years.

On Martin Luther King Day in 1995, the town's Fair Housing Commission presented its eighth annual Citizen of the Year award to Fasino. She also received the Who’s Who Among American Teachers award in both 1998 and 2002.

Her obituary described how Fasino "devoted her life to her family, her faith, and educating others." She taught Catholic catechism classes from her teenage years into her 80s and developed her parish’s confirmation curriculum.

She is survived by her four children: James and Susan Fasino, of Mansfield; Paula Collins, of Mansfield; Ellen and John Clifford, of Marshfield; and Marguerite and James Clifford, of Attleboro. She also had 10 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Peg Fasino remembered for creating Weymouth School's ESL/ELL program