Alhambra Schools Tutor Immigrants : Learning the ABCs of America

The teacher explains a complicated concept in Spanish to the three Latino students bunched against the far wall. A dozen Asian students, unfazed that the explanation is in a foreign language, listen intently.

No matter who asks the question, the answer usually comes in a foreign language because the subject--and the problem--is English.

“What is this? Tell me what this is,” asks the teacher, waving a picture in front of the class.

“Principal’s office,” responds a chorus heavy with Chinese, Vietnamese and Spanish accents.

This diverse group of students is taking part in a special orientation program for newly arrived immigrants about to begin classes in the Alhambra School District. In a district in which Anglo students are a minority and immigrants--primarily Asians--make up most of the student body, educators have taken a novel approach to coping with language and cultural problems.

Each day at separate elementary and high school centers, about 180 students with limited English skills, uncertain prior schooling and disparate upbringings take lessons aimed at easing them into the American school system. In a little more than two months, students learn how to survive and succeed in classes taught by instructors who speak mostly English.

Each day, the high school students in Ana Santomauro’s class write in journals. The point is to get them comfortable with writing in English, said teaching aide Kim Hong.

“We advise them, ‘If you can’t write in English, write in what you do best,’ ” he said. “We have a feeling once they can handle something in their own language, they will adopt it in English.” Journal pages posted in the hallway in the center at San Gabriel High School affirm Hong’s theory.

Two dozen students, whose first entries were in Chinese, Vietnamese or Spanish, proclaimed their success near the end of their semester at the center.

“This is my first day writing English,” wrote one student. “It makes me happy.”

But adjusting to English and life in California isn’t the only culture shock experienced in class. Each semester, friction created by the students’ differing backgrounds must be worked out.

“Maybe one of the Chinese kids will point to another and say, ‘You’re a communist,’ ” Hong said. “But we tell them they’re here now, and that doesn’t matter anymore. It gets better.”

Latino students, who are generally more private, can be annoyed or intimidated by the directness of their Asian classmates.

“Sometimes we have to pull them aside and explain that because of their backgrounds, where they may be refugees and have had to struggle for everything . . . they press a little,” Santomauro said.

Outside the high school classroom sits a Ping-Pong table that is constantly in use during recess. At the beginning of the semester, Asian students play only with Asians, Latinos only with Latinos.

“After a while, (Asians) don’t even notice that they’re playing with the Hispanic kids,” said Scott Magnusson, program director at the high school center. “They just want to play with their friends.”

Santomauro said the children share a common bond that eventually overrides cultural or political differences.

“They have different backgrounds, but they all have to learn English,” she said. “They all have to speak it once they transfer to their home school. As time goes on, they see they have the same needs; they get more relaxed” with one another.

These classes are only a small part of the district’s Assessment and Orienta tion Program.

The program tests all students who do not speak English at home. They are tested for literacy and language skills in both English and their native language.

“We have a need brought on by these kids coming into our schools,” said Deputy Supt. Heber Meeks. “We had to have someone go and evaluate them in their own languages.”

Based on the scores, most of the students move into regular courses that often cater to limited-English proficiency.

Physical Exams

All students entering the assessment program also undergo physical examinations, which often uncover maladies ranging from scoliosis (curvature of the spine) to diseases associated with malnutrition. “It’s scary,” Meeks said. “Almost all the kids have something wrong with them.”

Last year, the program placed 3,287 newcomers into the 20,000-student district, which has schools in Alhambra, San Gabriel and Monterey Park.

According to a recent survey, one of every six California schoolchildren is an immigrant. In the Alhambra district, the ratio is one in two.

Over the past decade, Asian enrollment in the district has more than doubled, while the percentage of Anglo students has dropped dramatically. Asians, 20% of the student body in 1978, now make up half. Over the same period, Latino enrollment has hovered around 35%, while Anglo enrollment has slipped from 45% to 14%.

Constant Influx

As a result, the district has been faced with a constant influx of non-English speaking students, some eloquent in their native languages, some illiterate.

To cope with the changing face of the district, Meeks said, officials received a $485,000 federal grant to aid refugee schoolchildren and began the Assessment and Orientation Program in May, 1986.

Its broad-based approach, which encompasses language, cultural and physical problems, has made the Alhambra district’s program a model for other school districts, according to a recent study.

A report by California Tomorrow, an educational research and policy organization, concluded that the Alhambra district is doing a better job of dealing with the problems of immigrant students than the 31 other districts surveyed, all of which have large numbers of non-English speaking immigrants.

‘One of the Best’

The Alhambra program, like the one in Long Beach, should be a prototype, according to the study.

“It’s one of the best in the state,” California Tomorrow researcher Marcia Chen said. It is “one of the most complete. In Alhambra, they take an overall look at the child.

“Language is one factor, but there’s so much more to it,” Chen she said. “We tend to look at immigrants as though if they can get over that hurdle, they’ll get by.”

Immigrant students have a number of cultural, physical and psychological problems to overcome, Chen said. Many of the children need inoculations and physicals before they can attend public schools. Refugees fleeing countries torn by war or famine often need special attention that the center’s close student-teacher relationship can provide.

Problems Elsewhere

In most California school districts, assessment of new immigrant students is haphazard at best and often done by untrained staff in the principal’s office, she said.

“The staff, usually a secretary, may or may not speak Spanish and almost certainly not an Asian dialect,” Chen said.

The California Tomorrow study found that nearly half of the immigrant children in the survey believe that they have been placed in the wrong grade and that their education is suffering.

Because the Alhambra district takes a more comprehensive look, newcomers are placed in more appropriate classes and are more likely to succeed, Chen said.

‘How We Lose Kids’

“The more complete you are, the better the initial adjustment is,” Chen said. “If you place them wrong in the first step . . . that’s how we lose kids through the cracks.”

During the assessment process, the few students who are not ready for regular school are placed in the orientation classes for at least one semester.

They receive basic instruction in American culture, school rules and life in the San Gabriel Valley.

Both the high school and elementary orientation classes are taught by bilingual teachers and teacher’s aides who generally teach in English, much as in regular English-as-a-second-language (ESL) courses. Orientation teachers speak in simplified sentences, supplemented by props and gestures.

In one class, information that must be learned quickly, such as school rules and the district attendance policy, was given in Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Spanish.

Can’t Speak Every Dialect

But that failed to help the few Korean students in the class. Despite the care given to testing and written communication in the students’ native languages, the instructors cannot speak every dialect.

Santomauro, half of a teaching team, speaks Spanish. The other teacher speaks only English. To reach the Asian students, the class has Hong, a teaching aide who is a Vietnamese refugee. Hong speaks Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Fujian (the dialect of a Chinese province) and English. But sometimes even that isn’t enough.

“The Koreans seem like they’re out of luck,” Santomauro said. “We just have to go over things slowly and often until they catch on.”

Teachers at the high school center also provide a crash course in the essentials of getting by in school--seeing counselors, following class schedules and using libraries and cafeterias.

“Most of these kids have never been involved in a bureaucracy like this before,” said Magnusson, the program director at the high school center.

Begin With Alphabet

In the high school class, students begin with the alphabet and try to progress to three-word sentences by the end of the semester, Santomauro said. Filling out a form--a staple of American education--is the objective.

Students in the elementary program at Northrup Elementary School receive rudimentary English training and techniques in classes taught primarily by English-speaking instructors.

At both levels, the program aims to make students comfortable enough in school to compete with their peers in more advanced ESL courses, where the subject is math or science instead of English.

“All ESL should be survival,” Magnusson said. “This isn’t a dumping ground. We try and serve the kids who are the neediest and the biggest dropout risks.”

‘Very Elementary’

Most of the things native students take for granted are foreign to these newcomers, many of whom have little or no prior schooling, he said.

“They would sink at a regular school ESL course,” Magnusson said. “This seems very elementary, but that’s where they’re coming from.”

Edmund W. Lee, program director of the elementary center, said his program tries to give the children basic language skills instead of concentrating on conquering the school bureaucracy.

The elementary class, he said, “is more concerned with the student performance in the classroom than the overall school experience.”

“We try to ascertain their language skills in their own language and then work on English,” he said. “The things they need to know for high school . . . they can pick up later.”

Uncovering Needs

In both programs, school officials say uncovering physical and psychological needs is an important part of the assessment process.

For example, one Vietnamese high school student who appeared outwardly stable and adjusted had deep psychological trauma that came to light only during his physical, Magnusson said.

“(The student) had a tattoo on his shoulder that said ‘hate,’ ” he said. The boy was tattooed in remembrance of a sister whose murder he had witnessed. “If it wasn’t for the nurse and the physical exam, we wouldn’t have known about that.”

The student was referred to counselors.

No Dropout Figures

Unlike the students, who are constantly tested and assessed, the program has yet to receive its first report card. The first high school students are at least 2 1/2 years from graduation, and no dropout figures are available.

“Undoubtedly we’re losing some, but I feel it has been effective overall,” Magnusson said.

Lee, who runs the elementary program, said teachers and principals from the regular elementary schools have said immigrant students are entering their classes with more self-esteem.

“That’s been one benefit we’ve heard quite often,” he said. “If there’s a correlation between self-esteem and achievement, then it must help.”

Meeks, the deputy superintendent credited with starting the program, said teachers and students are more at ease with the American school experience because of it.

‘Education Is Better’

“I think it gives them a better start,” he said. “The teachers get better information, the students enter classes better prepared . . . and the education is better overall.”

Although federal funding for the program is decreasing and will likely end, the district will probably continue the program because of the benefits shown in the past year and a half, he said.

“We made the commitment when we started,” Meeks said. “We probably will scale it back a bit, but we’ve made the commitment to keep it.”

The program may provide instruction in only Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Spanish if the district shoulders the $300,000 operating cost, he said.

Pays Dividends

Finances aside, teacher Santomauro said she has seen the program pay dividends each semester as the students transfer to the high schools.

“It’s been a rewarding experience for all of us because we’ve seen them grow out of the culture shock and warm up to the things around them,” she said.

Immigrant children, because they are in a sink-or-swim situation, have incentive that English-speaking students often lack, Santomauro said.

“They definitely are more motivated,” she said. “They have to learn it just to survive. We had one girl who went without lunch for three or four days because she didn’t know where the cafeteria was.”

Like many of her classmates, Yong Liang wants to transfer to regular high school classes. Having recently settled in Monterey Park, the 15-year-old is looking ahead to graduating from high school and possibly going to college. She had some English instruction in her native Hong Kong but lacks the skills to attend classes at Alhambra High School.

“I want to achieve my educational goal as much as possible,” Yong said through an interpreter. “I feel it is better to be here now, so I can have more chance to write and speak English.”