Six eager hands fly up when teacher Mary Ann Ales asks her class to name the part of a plant that stores food.

“The roots! The roots!” shouts a boy who recently emigrated from Italy.

“The stem?” offers another boy, after Ales scolds him for first responding in Spanish.

The correct answer comes in broken English from a Korean student, Jimin Kang, 14, who three months ago joined Ales’ English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom at Iroquois Junior High School in Des Plaines.

“The leaves,” Kang says slowly but confidently.

In traditional ESL programs, such as the one Ales teaches for northwest suburban Des Plaines School District 62, students are taught in English, but at a slower pace than in mainstream classes. Bilingual tutors assist them as needed.

“They speak easily in my classes so I can understand them,” says Kang, who knew very little English before her move to suburban Chicago. “I learn a lot because they take time for us.”

Kang is taught science and social studies alongside students who speak at least 15 different languages, including Spanish, Polish, Bulgarian, Gujarati and Russian.

While she takes math in a mainstream classroom, bilingual tutors are on hand should Kang and other ESL students need concepts explained to them in their native languages.

The Illinois State Board of Education’s goal is to get students entirely into regular classes within three years, a goal District 62 meets with most of its students.

By the time students are placed in mainstream classrooms, “the (English) fluency is there, but they may still have difficulty with content-based material,” Ales said, adding that teachers in regular classrooms

help ease the transition by “bending a little bit, using visuals and slowing down.”

Though there is a growing concern on the part of parents for students to maintain their native language, Ales said, “English is the language of education here, and that’s what our first priority is.”



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