For one educator at Greenwood Middle School, the struggle of going to school without knowing English is all too familiar.
Fabiola Moranchel, a Multilingual Learners (MLL) instructional assistant, emigrated from Mexico when she was 11. With no MLL program until she reached high school, she struggled socially and academically, Moranchel said.
“I used to cry a lot and didn’t want to go to school because I had no friends and had no one to communicate with,” she said. “I struggled because I didn’t understand. I just sat in class and teachers didn’t know how to communicate with me.”
Now, she’s making sure other students have a better experience. She, along with MLL instructional assistant Genesis Marcelo and MLL teacher Maureen Hoffman-Wehmeier assist the 55 MLL students at the middle school, part of a total of 281 students across Greenwood Community School Corporation who have a native language other than English. That number stood at 196 during the 2020-21 school year and is projected to exceed 300 this fall. The influx of MLL students has caused Greenwood schools to add multiple positions to the program for the coming school year, Superintendent Terry Terhune said.
The salaries for the positions haven’t been determined yet, and will be based on experience. A full-time MLL teacher will be added for Greenwood Middle School, and half-time positions will be added for Westwood Elementary School, Greenwood Community High School and Isom Elementary School, Terhune said.
Other positions will be shuffled. Two employees who split time between the district’s four elementary schools will instead work full-time at Southwest Elementary School and Northeast Elementary School, which have more MLL students than Isom and Westwood, he said.
Hoffman-Wehmeier has spent the past seven years of her 22-year education career as an MLL teacher at Greenwood Middle School, and has seen the program grow significantly since she arrived, she said.
“It has exploded,” Hoffman-Wehmeier said. “When I got here, there were probably 10 to 12 (MLL) students here; now, we have about 55. To have a certified teacher dedicated only to teaching the MLLs without the additional course load will be something for our program. It will give students a lot more confidence to know this one teacher will push into my classes and pull me out of classes and follow me for three years.”
MLL teachers will sit in on classes of students who need the most assistance and are able to provide them clarification without the regular classroom teacher having to interrupt their lesson to help them.
The number of MLL students grown over time, and so has the number of languages spoken. While the vast majority of those students spoke Spanish in previous years, now, there’s a much broader range including: Punjabi, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Burmese, Chin and Haitian Creole. MLL teachers are able to reach people of many languages through innovative activities, Hoffman-Wehmeier said.
“We recently watched a wordless cartoon, and one student watching it told the other person what was happening in the cartoon,” she said. “(Friday), for writing, they are going to be a dog or a cat currently at the Johnson County Humane Society, writing a letter to a potential owner as that dog or cat.”
For eighth-grader Sui Sung, who speaks Hakha Chin, the MLL classes help outside the classroom.
“It helped me understand English better in reading and writing,” Sung said. “I think I have gotten better and I can help interpret for my parents who don’t know English.”
When Sung fully masters the language, she can help other students learn English too, she said.
MLL students have Individualized Learning Plans, which can help teachers understand what needs they have, said Jill Lambert, student services director at Greenwood schools.
“For students who don’t have English as their first language, we identify goals and accommodations for the classroom setting,” Lambert said. “Those are shared with the classroom teacher. It’s a priority in our buildings to make sure our most diverse learners’ needs are met.”
Eighth-grader Annemarla Isaac speaks some French and comes from a family that speaks Haitian Creole. Her growing knowledge of English has inspired her to pursue other languages.
“The teachers talk slowly and they explain things to us until we understand,” Isaac said. “I want to learn every other language. I want to learn French again and I’m learning Spanish from my parents right now.”
