Phouang Phagnasay-Le is a human whirlwind, a native of Laos who started learning English at age 10 in Illinois and now is teaching it nonstop at Rancho Cordova Elementary to little girls and boys newly arrived from Eastern Europe.

While English may be the world’s foremost language — the currency of international business, government and diplomatic affairs — she speaks an even more universal language to students who don’t speak hers. It consists of voice intonation, raised eyebrows, smiles, frowns, counting fingers and pictures of red apples, green frogs and yellow bananas.

The system is used in variation each autumn by dozens of Sacramento area teachers who greet hundreds of students stepping into American schools for the first time. Sacramento County schools had 2,226 newcomer immigrant students — ninth among counties statewide — taking classes last spring at all grade levels, according to the state Department of Education.

Not all schools have so-called “newcomer center” classrooms like the Folsom Cordova Unified School District. The classrooms stress one year of immersion in English — an idea predating but recently mandated by Proposition 227, adopted June 2 by California voters.

Folsom Cordova’s newcomer center classrooms, for about 200 of the most in-need of the district’s 900 limited-English-proficient students, are at Rancho Cordova and White Rock elementaries, Mills Middle and Cordova High, according to Judy Lewis of the district’s transitional English office. The teachers are supported by native-language-speaking instructional assistants.

Rancho Cordova’s current wave of Eastern European refugees was preceded by southeast Asians. Statewide, there are 1.4 million LEP students, 75 percent of whom are Spanish speakers.

Although Elk Grove and Sacramento City schools have variations on the newcomer center, the more typical arrangement — such as in San Juan schools — is a clustering of newcomer students in their neighborhood schools with teachers who have special language training.

“We tried that in the early 1980s and found that it takes 18 months for most students to learn English,” Lewis said. “They also learned a lot of humiliation and discouragement.”

“We’re all in the same boat,” said newcomer teacher Trish Appel at Rancho Cordova, meaning that communication is a two-directional concern in the classroom. Appel, who once immersed herself in Spanish courses to meet her classroom needs, now says she’s looking for an intensive course in Russian.

As part of Folsom Cordova’s maximum, one-year immersion in English, language instructional assistants are assigned to individual students rather than schools. Depending on the improvement of their English skills, newcomer students may pass assessment tests and move into mainstream classes before the end of the school year.

But Phouang Phagnasay-Le predicts her entire start-from-scratch class will stay put the whole year, and it’s safe to say the students will need future language support in regular classrooms just to attain basic skills.

“I’ve been here 17 years, and I’m still learning,” she said.

Meanwhile, her first-, second- and third-graders gobble up new words like “apple,” “burger,” “carrot” and “cookie” (which in Russian sounds something like pachenka). It is basic language absorption: They are learning new names for edible objects they already recognize.

Just a few weeks into their first year in an American school, the children are happily and clearly singing most of the verses to a schoolhouse standby, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”

Phouang chirps, “Good job!” every few minutes. They may not understand the words, but they can read a compliment in their teacher’s smile.

As a second-year teacher she has a youthful energy well matched to her students’ enthusiasm. Both sides labor to communicate through pictures, drawings, songs and hand signals.

None seems to tire of the task of trying to communicate.

Early in the semester Phouang earns one of those teacher bonuses that aren’t paid in dollars. A student has already learned enough to complete an assignment and say, “Mrs. Phouang, I’m finished.”

“It’s a small step leading to a big step,” Phouang observed.



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