"English in new demand"

Language programs for immigrants feeling squeeze

By Angelica Medaglia, Globe Correspondent, 4/14/2002

GLOUCESTER - In a semicircle, Moises Silva sits attentively, his cowboy boots tapping to the sound of syllables that are still so new to him. He follows the voice of his teacher, Elizabeth Williams, standing before the first English for Speakers of Other Languages program sponsored by Action Inc.

When Williams corrects a mangled word spoken by one of her 17 students, Silva, a 37-year-old landscaper from Mexico, quickly makes note of it in his notebook.

''Cooked,'' he writes in pencil, underlining the last letters that urged his toes to tap.

Elsewhere on the North Shore, dozens like Silva also attend such classes, hoping to master a language that for them is a highway to better jobs, better service at hospitals or schools, and a highway to a world that is mostly unavailable to them in America.

The demand for ESOL classes has grown as more immigrants move to the North Shore.

From Gloucester to Lynn, organizations offer the course free of charge to eager students. However, there are not enough vacancies with hundreds of applicants awaiting admission.

In Lynn, Operation Bootstrap, which has offered ESOL classes since 1988, has a waiting list of more than 350 people. In Peabody, 150 people await entrance into a project the North Shore Community Action Programs started a year and a half ago. The list in Salem isn't shorter: the Salem Learning Center's ESOL classes don't have room for 144 applicants. Action Inc. ran a two-day outreach campaign that drew 40 applicants for 17 openings. The program, which now has a waiting list of 40, plans a second class for another 17 students.

And in most cases, the waiting lists reflect current immigration trends in the North Shore. People from Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe have signed up to learn basic English. Most of the students, organizers say, come from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking regions in Latin America and the Caribbean.

''We need more money so that we can serve more people,'' said Karin Gertsch, program director of adult basic education at North Shore Community Action Programs. ''We might only have 10 openings at a time and [have applicants] sitting on the list from eight months to a year. That's a long time when you need English to get a job.''

Vanda Ivamenko, a former ESOL student of Operation Bootstrap and an admission counselor of the organization's ESOL program, said the current students in the program filled their applications two years ago.

Waiting lists do not offer the complete picture, adult education organizers say. The demand for ESOL classes is much higher than what these lists reflect, Gertsch said. Workers at North Shore Community Action posted fliers to announce the launching of their program in the fall 2000. After that it was all word of mouth. ''We hardly ever solicit, but if we did, who knows how long the list would grow,'' she said.

Given the demand, each organization would double its programs. Action Inc. will add another class starting Tuesday - this one exclusively for beginners. For Action Inc., which has touted major social change in Gloucester such as establishing a bus system and a Headstart program, getting funding for their ESOL classes was a big win.

With the bulk of the funding from the Department of Housing and Community Development, Action Inc. has enough money to pay the salaries of one teacher and a tutor and to cover class material costs this first year. Older ESOL programs, sponsored by groups such as Operation Bootstraps or Salem Learning Center, stay afloat with five-year grants from the state Department of Education.

Action Inc.'s new ESOL classes have not gone unnoticed.

Luciana Souza, 24, moved from Brazil 10 months ago with a minimal knowledge of English. After nearly four months of English classes, attending three days a week, she can now tell a stranger in English her reason for learning the language.

''I clean houses,'' she said slowly. ''But I want to learn English to get better work.''

And Souza has recently recruited her brother, Ronnie Souza, who moved from Brazil to Cape Ann five months ago and will be one of the students in the new class.

This story ran on page 2 of the Boston Globe's North Weekly section on 4/14/2002.