Night English classes illuminate Hickman Mills' multi-cultural community
Hickman Mills School District Superintendent Yaw Obeng, dark suit, left, visits the district’s ESL class during the opening of the fall semester. Photo from Hickman Mills School District.
To get some idea of the demands on the Hickman Mills School District’s night English classes, consider this:
When the district celebrated a multi-cultural night in November, the families that came represented 36 different nations, said Swapnam Kumar.
Arabic translator Salwa Elshariff and Spanish translator Maritza Kartman put up a sign for the first day of the ESL class fall semester.
Kumar, as the district’s English language development specialist, knows the families and their countries. Many of them came to the night English classes that the district set up this school year with financial support from LINC.
Kumar’s office sits in the same hallway as the district’s enrollment office — keeping her close at hand to help new arrivals, refugees and migrants with their questions.
Among so many needs, one question kept coming: Where could they get help learning English?
“A lot of parents were asking me,” Kumar said. “They were wanting to learn.”
One of the parents was a cook at a local Mexican restaurant, said Jill Grigsby, one of the night school’s teachers. The cook after severals months on the job still could not understand the special requests coming from the servers taking the orders.
Another woman came with her 22-year-old daughter — a graduate of the district — so she could cross the language barrier without having to rely on her daughter. And soon after the daughter got her mom started, her father came too.
Grigsby became a teacher of English as a second language after several years as an elementary school teacher at Primitivo Garcia Elementary in Kansas City’s largely Hispanic west side.
She could see how parents — whatever their native language — knew how important it was to be able to speak English.
“I like seeing them learning,” she said. “I just enjoy it.”
From left to right, ESL teachers Jill Grigsby, Timothy Henderson, and Hickman Mills English Language Development Specialist Swapnam Kumar.
Timothy Henderson, another of the night school’s teachers along with Jed Yarick, came to the work out of a love for speaking languages.
Henderson built his Spanish on his own, watching telenovelas and Spanish talk shows, sometimes turning on English subtitles and then turning them off.
He’s not just working on Spanish, but Arabic and Pashto too.
Henderson was working at a Kansas City grocery store and became remarkable for his ability to speak to many of the non-English-speaking customers. One customer who noticed was an administrator at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
The UMKC staffer convinced Henderson he should get a teaching degree, because he was right that Henderson would enjoy this work.
“I love to see the sparks when someone is learning,” Henderson said, “whether they are 3 or 103. It can’t be taken from you.”
In Yarick’s class, he specializes teaching English to high school students and to several Ukrainian refugee families.
Over all around 50 adults have taken the English classes since the district started them last summer — at times turning over as many as 25 children to a childcare classroom while their parents learned.
The turnout confirmed the need for help that Kumar raised up when Hickman Mills staff and community partners were preparing for the March 2022 Hickman Mills Family Summit.
LINC is part of that planning team and LINC Caring Communities Administrator Sean Akridge said the idea of a class for English as a second language made perfect sense.
LINC’s Caring Communities programs — anchored at all of Hickman Mills’ elementary schools and its middle school and high school, as well as schools in the Kansas City Public Schools, Grandview, Center and North Kansas City school districts — believe in partnerships that strengthen families and neighborhoods.
LINC is helping fund the ESL classes, Akridge said, “because supporting parents in being able to communicate better helps build community with all of our families.”
Hickman Mills School District’s vast cultural diversity was on display this fall when the district held its multi-cultural celebration. Photos by Stefan Hodes, Hickman Mills School District.
The classrooms for the ESL courses are stocked with picture dictionaries. Posters on the walls show lessons in money denominations, colors, household items, groceries and essential questions.
“It’s a long process,” Kumar said.
But along the way, the teachers say, teachers and students alike enjoy the multi-cultural experience they share.
They love to share the stories of their home countries, Henderson said, and they want to feel at home in their new community. And there’s optimism there, as well.
On the last days of the original summer session, the classes practiced English by exploring the list of civic questions on the test for U.S. citizenship, Henderson said. Because that’s what the students wanted.
The curriculum and agenda for each class “doesn’t come straight out of a box,” he said. “We find out what they want to learn.”
The classes will return in the spring. The district hasn’t determined the date yet, Kumar said, but they’ll put the word out when they do — in multiple languages.
By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer