Julie Brockway carefully posed questions to her kindergarten class at Green Bay’s Tank Elementary School.

“Mrs. Brockway, my mom eats coffee,” Linda Douangmala told her teacher, answering a question about what people do at the table.

“Drinks,” corrected translator Toua Ly.

The afternoon class is for kindergartners who don’t speak English.

When most other kindergartners finish their half-day of classes at the school, 12 students move on to English-as-a-second-language extended-day kindergarten to focus on language skills.

Brockway and Ly, a Hmong translator, use songs, games, writing and coloring to teach them.

Their task is complicated by the fact that they don’t just work with Hmong students. The teachers also have two Russian-speaking Ukrainian students and Lao-speaking twin sisters.

All the children recently worked on a game in which they had to put household items into the appropriate room.

“I got the hard one. I don’t know this,” Nkauchia Vang said in English, holding out a picture of a vacuum cleaner.

Brockway asked whether anyone else knew the word. When they didn’t answer, she asked whether they could respond in Hmong, Lao or Russian. Several students turned to Ly to answer.

While the children generally faced Brockway, with Ly at their sides or at their backs, they clearly knew both adults were in the room to help them.

One student, looking for Brockway’s approval, brought a drawing to her.

“Good,” Brockway said. “Tell Mr. Ly now.”

Then Brockway turned to her partner.

“Ask her what that is, because I’m not quite getting it.”

Brockway is glad to have Ly, both to help her and for what he offers the students.

“It sure is a lot easier for them,” she said. “It gives them comfort to know they can turn to him if they need to.”

A translator for five years, Ly studied to be a teacher in Laos before he and his family were forced to flee to the United States in 1976. He is fluent in Hmong and Lao.

Ly is pleased he can ease the children’s transition to American culture and the English language.

He doesn’t work just with Brockway. In the morning, when the children are in a regular kindergarten class, Ly is right there with them, translating every word.

Brockway has tried to bridge the gap between herself and her students not just through English but by trying to pick up parts of their languages.

Her efforts at Hmong have not been a rousing success, she confessed with a smile.

“The more I try, the more they giggle,” Brockway said.

Ly is glad the children are taught to value their first languages. “They have to hang on to their own language and learn English, too,” he said. “It’s better for their future.”



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