Employer Adds English to the Lunch Break

At the end of a work day last September, about a dozen women gathered in a small room with a white board, a table and some chairs.

Prompted by their teacher and using a borrowed English as a Second Language lesson plan, they recited the words.

“Hello.”

“What is your name?”

“My name is . . . “

“I work at Beverly Hills Confection.”

This was not a classroom, but the workers’ break room, and the teacher was their boss, Linda Swarzman, 56, of Encino, owner and president of the Gift Factory, which produces the Beverly Hills Confection Collection for gift shops nationwide.

Swarzman started the twice-weekly lessons because she wanted her workers, many of whom come from Pacoima, to understand English so they could better function in the world. “It may be the mother in me,” said Swarzman, the mother of three adult children.

Her inspiration to teach her employees came from her husband’s aunt, Doris Swarzman, a retired bookkeeper for a shirt factory downtown. Now 89 and living on the Westside, Doris Swarzman started teaching English to the immigrant workers at that company on her lunch break years ago.

“I have had that story in the back of my mind all this time,” Linda Swarzman said of her aunt’s experience. Following that example did more for Swarzman and her company than she expected.

“It was more than just an English class,” she said. “It was a real bonding experience.”

The lessons lasted from September through April, and had to be put on hold because of a seasonal work schedule. Swarzman plans to resume lessons in September. In the meantime, she asks her workers to use English as much as possible.

“We learned a lot from her,” said employee Lupe Campos of Pacoima.

Campos still struggles with her English, often speaking Spanish, and sometimes gets help from Swarzman as she talks. “I cannot tell you we have been successful to the point that they are fluent in English,” Swarzman said.

But does she have a good teacher? “Yes,” Campos said shyly.

Swarzman was encouraged to learn Spanish when she was a schoolgirl in Burbank. Her grandfather, a Russian Jewish immigrant, owned a jewelry store downtown and spoke English, Yiddish and Spanish. “He would encourage me to start speaking Spanish with a nice old gentleman who was selling newspapers,” she said.

Today, as she speaks Spanish with her employees, she sometimes gets teased, “because I conjugate my verbs wrong,” she explained. “I have to use the vocabulary I’m limited to.”

But Swarzman will not let the women tease each other about their English. “I made it a rule that no one was to be laughed at,” she said. “I wanted them to feel comfortable.”

The star pupil in the class has been Flora Berum, also of Pacoima, who would practice English each day with her 23-year-old son. “I wanted to learn English,” Berum said. “I hope to speak English very well.”

Berum also said she enjoyed field trips that Swarzman took employees on, to Chinatown, UCLA, Hollywood and Beverly Hills, where they also found a part of themselves.

“We went into a gift shop and there was a whole wall of products they made,” Swarzman said. Berum nodded proudly. “I want to go again.”

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