FULLERTON : Onward, Upward With Better English

Gabriela Rodriguez is jobless, but she doesn’t want to take the only kind of employment she can find--back-breaking assembly-line work.

“I had a job in a factory where I sewed garments on a sewing machine all day,” Rodriguez said in Spanish.

“That was hard work. My body always ached.”

The 23-year-old Fullerton woman, who emigrated from Mexico six years ago, has decided it is time to learn English so she can seek a higher paying and less physically demanding job.

Rodriguez and about 100 other people with the same commitment attended their first English classes Saturday and Sunday at Jimmy Ramos’ home on Truslow Avenue.

Ramos and six other college students conducted the classes on his driveway, which they converted into two classrooms--one for beginners and another for more advanced students.

The teachers used donated books, paper and chalkboards to deliver their first free lessons to neighbors and people who came from all over Orange and Los Angeles counties.

So many eager students had lined up before class started at 9 a.m. that Ramos had to run door-to-door in his neighborhood to borrow chairs.

He got a rocking chair, picnic benches, plastic lawn seats, a beat-up wooden school chair and a couch for his students to sit on.

Blue plastic awnings provided shade for the make-shift classrooms, where Glo Morris, a Fullerton College student, and Javier Cortez, a Cal State Fullerton student, taught the correct pronunciation for the words flag, post office and doctor’s appointment and for some conversational phrases.

Meanwhile, Josue Abarca and Alberto Ortega, both Fullerton College students, held a chalkboard displaying forms of 10 verbs.

“For homework, I want you to write one sentence for each verb,” Abarca instructed.

Ramos went from student to student, offering individual help to those who needed extra tutoring.

“So many people want and need to learn English,” Ramos said. “I haven’t seen many programs that give English classes on the weekends so we’re doing this to help people who cannot afford to go to school or who work during the week and don’t have a lot of time.”

As class concluded Saturday afternoon, grateful students thanked their teachers and some offered to bring chairs, chalk and pencils to their new school on Sunday.

“What these teachers are doing is a great labor of love,” said Naomi Guitierrez, 33, of Orange. “They are young college kids who could easily be spending their time doing something else but, instead, they’re helping us learn English.”

Another student, Pedro Rodriguez, 40, said he will drive from his Fontana home every weekend to attend his new class because he needs to learn English.

“Right now I work the graveyard shift as a security guard,” he said. “If I learn how to write and read English, then I can get a better job.

“I don’t know anybody else who offers classes like this,” he added. “It doesn’t matter that this is not a luxurious building because we the students will benefit.”

The volunteer teachers said they will continue offering the classes to help the Latino community prosper.

Adela G. Lopez, Fullerton College’s Ethnic Studies Program coordinator, and Elisabeth Leyson, the college’s English department chairwoman, said they were impressed by the students’ work.

“With all the immigrant bashing going on today, this is a terrific program that shows that we can help ourselves,” Lopez said.

“Programs like these are available, but they are (overcrowded) and the state keeps cutting back, so it’s nice to see students, who see a need, respond to it,” Leyson added.