By STEPHANIE FARLEY
Morning Sun Staff Writer

On Tuesday morning at Westside, ESOL teacher Sheila Stephens sat with 5-year-old Javier Canales. They were working on Javier's math skills.

At the end of the math worksheet, students receive a break from counting and are given a square in the right-hand corner of the sheet, telling them to color in 15 apples. He reached for a red crayon to color the first apple.

USD 250 is growing more diverse every year, and programs dealing with English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) are increasing to keep up with the demand.

For the past week, practicum students in the ESOL endorsement program in Pittsburg State University's Department of Curriculum and Instruction have been working with USD 250 students at Westside Elementary. The district's summer ESOL program is winding down and for three weeks, students from kindergarten to 12th grade have worked on reading, writing, speaking and listening to the English language, as well as practicing their math skills.

There were approximately 145 K-12 ESOL students in the district for the 2005-06 school year. They represent China, Korea, Saudi Arabia, the Pacific Islands, including Marshall Islands, Mexico, Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Haiti and France.

"So Pittsburg, Kan., is pretty darn diverse," said Becky Stahl, director of early childhood services for The Family Resource Center. Stahl handles placing the practicum students in the schools.

PSU's department offers an ESOL minor for undergraduates, which takes about three semesters to complete. Current teachers have the option of getting the endorsement or completing a master's program, which takes about two years.

Tatiana Sildus, assistant professor with the ESOL program, said she started noticing a push toward similar programs across the board for children and teachers about four years ago. It's been partly driven by increasing diversity, as well as by the market, she said.

For the past three weeks, Sildus has rotated between the resource center and Westside, making sure both sets of students were doing well. About 40 kids were enrolled in the summer program, with roughly 35 attending.

ESOL endorsement is currently not required for teachers in the district, said Gary Price, USD 250 superintendent, "but you have a very, very strong advantage if you're applying in the district and you have it."

There are two reasons for that, Price said. One is that an ESOL-endorsed teacher has more skills in dealing with students "coming from a different language perspective," he said, but also with native English-speaking students because they (teachers) have different ways to approach them as well.

"And the more of those (approaches) you present and the more of those you can have a kid experience, the better chance you're going to have to tap into that kid's learning style," Price said.

Another reason is that the district gets additional funding for every child identified as ESOL who the district provides teachers to work with.

Some of the diversity comes from children of students at the university, Price said, and the rest is from immigration. Price believes that when he came to the district about six years ago, there were about 25 ESOL students. The district has gone from about 25 students to 145 in about five years, he said.

The growth has been somewhat "word of mouth." Those who immigrated "started contacting others and saying, 'Hey, this is a good place because this community is open to this, the schools address this,'" Price said.

"I think that almost any kind of diversity strengthens a community because it causes that community to grow and become less ethnocentric," Price said. "It causes us to think about different parts of the world that do things differently and that there are people who approach the world from different cultures. And anytime you can expose the community and especially our children to those differences, they grow and expand."

June Taylor, head of the curriculum and instruction department, said the program, itself, and the teachers it produces are a "winning combination" in what they provide to the school district. The program looks at how it can help all students, she said.

About 45-50 PSU students have declared ESOL endorsement as a minor and 25-30 are in the master's program.

"We really appreciate the opportunity to partner with USD 250 because I think we are of service to each other," Taylor said of the program. PSU's students get hands-on training, and the district has more people working with its kids.

Monica LaForte, migrant/ESOL coordinator for USD 250, learned English as one of her other languages when she was younger. Writing and grammar came first for her, and speaking came last.

It was harder, she said, and not a day goes by that she doesn't learn something new.

"You become fluent, but you continue to learn," LaForte said.

She now spends her days helping students work toward the same goal. The district has a yearlong ESOL program during the regular school term.

At the table's opposite end on Tuesday, 6-year-old Hawraa Alfashkhi colored an apple with a brown crayon.

"Would you really eat a brown apple?" Stephens asked her.

Hawraa shook her head. "No," she replied.

"Me either," Stephens told her.

They then moved on to the next activity. It's all about communicating and learning.

The Morning Sun, (www.morningsun.net) June 30, 2006

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