ESL Teachers Learn to Adapt Classrooms in a Foreign Setting : Education: Suzanne Gergely of Hungary wasn’t prepared for the culture shock she got when she set about teaching English as a second language in America.

For Suzanne Gergely, English is her second language.

So the Fulbright Exchange teacher from Hungary had a lot of sympathy for the daunting challenges faced by the Central American and Indochinese students who crowded into her English as a Second Language classroom at Hoover High School last September.

But even Gergely, as well-traveled and fluent in English as she is, wasn’t prepared for the abrupt contrasts between an inner-city American secondary school and the college preparatory, English-immersion high school in Hungary where she had taught before coming to San Diego for a year.

Among the striking differences: 40 students to a class rather than 12; teen-agers of all different abilities, some without any formal schooling, rather than students selected for their ability to enter top colleges; students from several different countries, none of them speaking a word of English, compared to an ethnically homogeneous group eager to tackle a foreign language.

“It’s a different type of teaching, it’s very tiring. . . . Some things were shocking,” Gergely said. “I think it’s very hard for teachers in America.”

She had asked for an assignment in the American Southwest because she is fluent in Spanish as well as English, and also has studied Native American culture.

“I knew of ESL classes, but I wasn’t expecting that so many students would be Asian, or that some students would have had no formal education in their (home countries), that they did not know how to hold a pen or pencil in their hand, or know the importance of study.”

Despite the initial culture shock, Gergely has grown extremely fond of her students.

“They are so different from my students in Hungary, so I didn’t think that I would get emotionally attached to them,” she said, “but I found I couldn’t help it. . . . As I learned more about the kids, I have gotten closer and closer to them.”

Through essays, however simply expressed by her students, Gergely learned of the poverty that many of them face.

“I realized many of them have family back in the old countries, that they have few if any friends here, that they left many things behind,” she said. “I wondered why they don’t study (as much), but I learned that about 60% go off right after school to work, and get home at midnight. And then they’re supposed to study at that hour!

“I have one girl who falls asleep all the time in my first period, but what am I supposed to do? Get angry at her? That would be so unfair.”

One student, a Cambodian girl, had to move to Long Beach because her family had more chance there to earn money. “She keeps writing letters to me, telling how she sews and sews every day after school to help the family, and one time wrote that it would be her birthday soon but there would be no time or money to celebrate,” Gergely said.

“I had the class send notes because they understood” what she is going through.

In more upbeat instances, Gergely has attended several quinceaneras, the elaborate celebration Latino parents hold for their daughters when they reach age 15.

“They are so beautiful . . . like a wedding,” Gergely said.

Knowing about the background of her students, however, has not deterred Gergely from pushing her students to get the most out of school, regardless of the cultural and educational gap they face.

“At first they all sat in groups, Mexicans with Mexicans, Vietnamese with Vietnamese, and I finally asked them to sit” alternately by ethnicity so they couldn’t use their own language as often, she said.

“And now it is a real thrill to see a Vietnamese girl talk to a Mexican girl in English. . . . And because this is such a rough neighborhood, I have tried to get them to be patient, to be tolerant” in working with or listening to a student of another ethnicity in class.

Gergely finds herself repeating phrases hundreds of times so students will become comfortable with them, and writing every sentence on the blackboard--all in an effort to jump-start her students’ education.

“I’m teaching about America at the same time,” she said, adding that she has to keep her own knowledge of popular culture one step ahead of the images and sounds the students get from television.

“I mentioned Beethoven once and no one reacted. . . . They know so little about the world around them, even where to locate San Francisco.

“But I’ve learned how to talk with them about film, about their music, in a simplified language.”

It also took a while for Gergely’s own non-American background to sink in for students, she said.

“They know I am from a different country, but they don’t really know what Hungary is, other than a country on a map,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder if they really understand I was an ESL student once.”

While their phrases are still simple, the students express their own affection for Gergely.

“She is very intelligent,” Helg Ramirez smiled.

“She speaks the language very well, and Spanish well, too,” Carlos Pereda added.

“But sometimes she becomes angry when we don’t sit down when class begins, and says, ‘Do you hear the bell?’ ” Bernardino Mendoza laughed.

The yearlong experience has left Gergely with mixed feelings both about American education and the country as a whole.

“There’s so much isolation of teachers, you’re locked into your classroom all day and it’s hard to (really talk) with another teacher, and you don’t want to put your burden on their shoulder” by approaching someone else for advice, Gergely said. “And then there’s all this paperwork, all the counselors, et cetera.”

She added: “I’m confused about the future of the United States. Sometimes it makes me wonder how America can function so well. . . . The standard of material in high schools seems very low compared to European high schools.”