The Piedmont Needs ESOL Alternatives
• Montagnards learning English while gardening (see photo documentation)
• Nepalis learning English while training in a professional kitchen (see photo documentation)
• A Montagnard woman talks about what she grows in her garden (see YouTube video)
• Refugees like the Montagnards are taught in a technology desert. See BRIEFS
WHY CULTURE MATTERS
There are many problems teaching English to refugees and immigrants in the Piedmont. Systemic problems account for inefficiency and uneven results over the decades. Different organizations offer classes throughout the region that are not publicized. Some are offered through state institutions like the community college, others through churches. Some teachers are paid, others are volunteers. In an era of digital communication and widespread Web access, the disconnectiveness of the system is startling.
Most teaching is classroom-bound. In the best circumstances it is augmented by computer programs or taught one-on-one. But almost all teaching tackles the refugee's inability to speak English as a social problem fixed by a single solution: Regular attendance by the individual in class. If this prescription seems obvious enough, reality intrudes time and again. Individuals must work so unless classes are flexibly scheduled, learning is regularly interrupted. Children get ill, work shifts change, money runs out, women become pregnant and cars break down, yet the model is the same. Even refugee communities that reflect vastly different learning needs, such as the Montagnards, many of whom have almost no formal education, and Iraqis, who are highly educated, are treated the same.
There is probably one more criticism that can be leveled at current practice: Most of it is passive learning. That is, even while the most dynamic instructors will employ exercises to involve all learners in the room by keeping their minds alert and challenging them moment to moment, they are operating in a format that is notorious for producing low retention of information in students. As so many earnest Montagnard students have told me, “In one ear, out the other!” Oftentimes it is not want of trying —even for a preliterate population— but the classroom format itself that prevents accelerated learning.
