Learning English Under the Tree: An Outdoor Bilingual ESL Academy
In the summer and fall of 2020, during the COVID-19 school closure period, a group of preschoolers, children, young adults, and adults gathered under a tree on the grounds of an apartment complex in Ellicott City, MD to attend an outdoor bilingual ESL ‘class’. This complex is home to the largest low-income ESL population in the County. The ESL program was funded by Amazon and directed by The Unforgotten’s Education Advisor – Dr. Anita Pandey – a specialist in ESL and linguistics.
The Learners
This program served 16 fulltime attendees (12 school-age students and four working adults) and four half-time attendees, who were working adults.
The Classes & Mode of Teaching
Classes averaged 90 to 120 minutes in length and consisted of short bilingual lectures (aimed at fortifying participants’ listening comprehension skills), interaction time (to allow for practice and feedback provision and implementation), scaffolding (to draw attention to common “errors”), performance, and review.
Daily in-person English sessions were conducted which consisted of pair and group conversation practice.
In addition to this, telephone exchanges were instituted to supplement the amount of English each participant heard, and to provide each attendee with additional and essential interaction time. For this component of the program, conversation partners contacted the participants via telephone.
Participants were also encouraged to leave their aides and/or the program director daily audio reports and to use “as much English as possible” in these daily reports so that they would get accustomed to steadily using more and more English.
Thematic vocabulary and associated language (based on specific themes) pertaining to small talk, family, body parts, cognates, and multisensory descriptive language using adjectives and comparative and superlative forms was introduced by the facilitator.
Each week, participants were also invited to share their English language needs, and their recommendations were incorporated. Themes suggested included culturally relevant information (e.g., popular culture, music, memes, icons and comedians), functional vocabulary including how to ask teachers, support stat, and peers for help, language pertaining to directions, wellness and doctor appointments, family, home and community, and common idioms.
Sometimes, skits were used towards the end of lessons to vary the tone of the class and to allow for interaction, movement, and creativity. Song and music were integrated in every lesson to enable physical movement and to ease vocabulary acquisition and the learning of target grammatical structures (e.g., verb tenses) in context. Attendees were encouraged to create catchy lines and/or lyrics to remember key words and expressions.
The Teachers
Dr. Pandey taught English to the ESL families and single adults, and the Spanish-speakers in the group would excitedly teach her – and three other English-fluent attendees – survival Spanish. Daily in-person English sessions were co-facilitated by two young adults, and two adults helped by leading pair and group conversational practice. Six conversation partners helped to talk to the participants via telephone.
Building Friendships “Under The Tree”
Attendance grew as more ESL residents and others in the area saw the community gather, and/or heard about the classes through friends and family, and through periodic social media posts. Attendees ranged in age from preschoolers to adults and were paired and grouped by age and language proficiency.
Gradually, as others joined the class, friendships & relationships formed “Under the Tree” or “de bajo del Arbol” as the instructor dubbed this outdoor gathering. American (mostly monolingual) residents who walked their dogs in the vicinity, and other passers-by periodically volunteered their time as conversation partners. A couple also volunteered resources, including lawn furniture, water, snacks, and prizes for the children.
Every week, boxes containing fruit, yogurt, vegetables and occasionally, diary items were handed out at the start or end of the classes to both help families and to incentivize attendees so that they would be punctual and frequent participants.
Meet Our Community Members
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Objectives
The primary objective of this program was to provide school-age students a safe, interactive, and conducive to English-mastery space. By providing them an opportunity to hear and use conversational and academic English in a sustained basis, as well as to receive immediate or almost-immediate feedback, so as to ensure that they were continually growing their English skills, as well as critical interpersonal and socio-emotional skills.
In addition to offering school-age participants tips to make sense of their online class lectures and assignments, and to complete homework in a timely manner (the primary focus), this class was aimed at developing a community of learners with common interests who could motivate family members and each other, as well as/and recommend strategies and resources on language, wellness and other essential needs.
Gathering for class also gave the participants an opportunity to interact, to get some movement (i.e., hulla hoop, jump rope, walk, run, and play soccer), and to get out of the rut and closed spaces and feel inspired through the peer and cross-age and cross-linguistic exchanges, as well as the music, art, and performing arts that were integrated into each session.
Assessment
Learning was assessed informally through informal and recorded observations, participants’ participation and level of engagement (e.g., their interactivity and responsiveness to direct and indirect questions), and occasionally through written responses.
Since all the ESL participants were more comfortable writing in Spanish than in English, they were encouraged to write their thoughts in their home language and to then locate equivalent words on Google Translate that they could use.
Participants were also invited to share their insights by way of an informal poll midway through the program and again at the end using a survey where participants were requested to share what they had learned, what they wished to learn, and challenges they had encountered.
Personal Stories
After the program ended, a few participants shared the following observations:
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