Celina teacher attends language conference in Turkey

CELINA - During last month's teacher in-service day, Angela Brown was nowhere to be seen. That's because the Celina teacher was thousands of miles away in Izmir, Turkey.

Brown had been asked to present at a conference held at Yasara University. During her weeklong stay, she spoke with faculty and students about the difficulties in teaching language acquisition skills.

Brown is in her second year as the English as a Second Language teacher at Celina City Schools. The district has 49 students in the ESL program and an additional six to seven who are considered trial mainstream, meaning they aren't receiving services this year to see if they can perform on their own without assistance.

A variety of languages are represented among the English Language Learners, including Marshallese, Spanish, Cambodian, Hindi, Uzbek, Russian and Mossi.

While speaking with Yasara faculty members, Brown discussed some of the speed bumps in learning English. It's not simply learning the words or the grammar, but the inflection, tone, idioms and jargon, she said.

"The whole idea of getting the students to be competent in a language is you also talk about culture, how your body language and intonation ties into your ability to communicate with a native speaker," she said.
One of the more challenging issues for those learning a new language in a new land is the homesickness that comes with moving from their native county. Brown had worked with foreign students at the higher education level and in the military but said the transition is understandably more difficult when the move is permanent.

"For our kids, most of them are coming in as immigrants. I can't even imagine it," she said. "I've visited other countries and, as an adult, I've experienced culture shock and homesickness, and I have the tools to identify what's going on with me. But for a kid, it's much more challenging."

Her trip was an excellent reminder of the struggles that come with not speaking a native language fluently.

"It's a reminder to me of what it feels like to be dependent on someone for everything you need," she said. "I picked up a few words, but that struggle to communicate your needs, it's a good reminder to me and I'm hoping that other teachers will be able to have similar experiences to really understand what it means to have your whole world turned upside down. I've experienced that in other countries, but this was a good reminder."

Brown speaks English, Spanish and Japanese. She has worked and studied in the field for 20 years, graduating from the University of Findlay in bilingual education.

While in Turkey, she asked the students to share their perceptions of America and its culture. Various ideas came to light but Brown said overall, students mainly knew her country through pop culture.

"They like our music, movies. A lot of their ideas about what Americans are like come from Hollywood," she said. "But one kid said he liked U.S. government because of our democracy, our freedom."

Brown said Mercer County students have been welcoming overall to foreign-language-speaking students and said the district personnel have tried not only to include them but also to celebrate their backgrounds.

"I really feel like my students feel like they've been welcomed. They're making friends, they're adapting really well," she said. "And the district is welcoming these students who don't necessarily have all the language yet but are getting there."

Prior to her leaving for Turkey, the U.S. government issued an alert the government was pulling families out of Turkey after bombings in Istanbul and Ankara. Brown was undaunted, though.

"For me, if something's going to happen, it'll happen. I'm not going to jump out of airplanes, but at the same time, I wasn't going to turn down this opportunity because it was 800 miles away from something going on," she said.