Nantucket Community School Breaking Through The Island's Language Barrier

Hours after the last bell at Nantucket High School rings and the last public school students take off for the day, dozens and dozens of adult students are once again filling the classrooms with hopes of improving their English skills.

They come from 15 different countries and speak five different languages. But for an hour and a half, two nights a week, they’re speaking English, learning the day-to-day vocabulary and grammar to communicate with their employers, their children’s teachers and neighbors, to order a meal or talk on the phone, and simply to connect with other English speakers in a new community.

“The most important part is to build community,” said Laurie Richards, an assistant instructor with the Nantucket Community School’s English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program. “The students are here to understand the language and to be part of a community where they live and work.”

At home, the students speak Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Georgian, and Uzbek in addition to the English they’re practicing. They come from Belarus, Brazil, Columbia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Georgia, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Venezuela. They represent the increasing diversity of Nantucket’s year-round population. Some of them have students in Nantucket Public Schools, where nearly 20 percent of students take English as a second language classes.

“Our ESOL program provides classes for more than 150 students each year,” said Nantucket Community School Executive Director Alicia Graziadei. “Our one-on-one placement tests with bilingual instructors ensure that we are meeting each student’s needs, as well as allowing progression from term to term.”

The classes are broken up into four levels, depending on the students’ level of English.

In level four, students read from a textbook and speak in full sentences in English. They have discussions about passages from a book and interact with each other, trying to understand the meaning of the passages they’re reading. In level one, the goal is to build up vocabulary, sometimes through games, simple questions, and practice conversations.

One teaching assistant in class on a Tuesday night is a high school junior named Giovanne, who moved to Nantucket from Brazil with his mother and stepfather one year ago, not speaking any English. One year in, he’s worked up not only the English skills necessary to hold a full conversation but also the confidence to work in the ESOL program through the Nantucket Community School. Now, he’s applying to college with the hopes of studying computer science—math, unlike English, always came easy, Giovanne said.

“People here are communicating to teachers, and teachers are communicating to students,” said Nantucket Community School Adult Education Coordinator Brian Lenane. “Many of these people worked all day today, went home, and then came here so they could learn English. [These classes] are a way to get people together because none of these people would have interacted without this group. There are 15 different countries represented here. All of these people from all of these countries are coming together.”

The program itself is funded through a grant from the Community Foundation for Nantucket's Nantucket Fund, which covers the majority of the program. The more than 75 students participating pay a $140 fee per session, with sessions running in the fall from September through November and again in the winter from January through March. Registration for the winter session of ESOL is on Tuesday, January 7 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Nantucket High School cafeteria.