Esther Park could see a bit of herself in the little boy from Ethiopia who sat beside her and opened a storybook called "Packing My Bag." He turned the pages, eager to please his new teacher, but she could tell that the words were a mystery.
Park guided Haism Abdu's fingers across each letter, and the 6-year-old echoed her as she slowly read aloud: "I put my drink into my bag. I put my hat into my bag. I put my book into my bag."
Haism Abdu, 6, is among the immigrant children at Franconia Elementary in Fairfax who get help from Esther Park, an ESOL teacher who, like them, immigrated unable to speak English.
(Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)
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Haism arrived at Fairfax County's Franconia Elementary School a month ago. Someday soon, when he understands English a little better, Park, 39, will explain that she also came to the United States as a child who spoke no English, and that she also struggled to make sense of her new country.
Park's journey from shy immigrant in Bladensburg to highly trained teacher illustrates the dramatic evolution of instruction for children learning English. When Park arrived more than 30 years ago, school districts around the Capital Beltway were just beginning to understand how to teach children like her. Today, programs for students learning English have grown dramatically.
For example, Fairfax County now has 644 teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages as well as dozens of parent liaisons who help families cope with their move to a new country.
Park, who grew up in Seoul with her parents and two brothers, remembers only random details from her family's trip to America. She was 7 when they boarded a TWA jet in 1973. The flight attendant served steak, which she didn't like, and Kit Kat candy bars, which she liked quite a bit.
Those first days were full of excitement for Park, who still went by her Korean name, Chi-Hey Hwang. The family settled into their Bladensburg apartment, bought their first car and took trips to Shenandoah National Park, Colonial Williamsburg and Virginia Beach.
For Park, whose only English was, "Thank you very much," it also was the beginning of what she calls her "silent period."
She missed her grandfather and her neighborhood in Seoul, where she ran freely and everyone knew her family. She couldn't understand her teacher or classmates. Sometimes she was so homesick she would huddle in a closet and cry.
"I don't know how I made it through," Park said. "I was afraid of everything around me."
Park remembers being the only child who didn't speak English in her class at Rogers Heights Elementary School in Prince George's County. Once or twice a week, she recalled, a teacher pulled her out of class for an English lesson. They looked at a picture book with some basic sentences, and Park read aloud: "This is a girl. This is a boy. This is a dog."
Keith Buchanan, Fairfax County's ESOL coordinator, said Park's experience was typical for foreign children arriving in the 1970s, when Washington area schools were just beginning to see an influx of non-English-speaking students.
Fairfax County started a program for limited-English students in 1975, largely because of a wave of refugees from Vietnam. That year, Fairfax schools had about 275 students learning English. This year, 21,468 students are enrolled in ESOL classes.
Finding the best way to educate children who are learning English has become increasingly important because the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires that those students as a group meet testing benchmarks.
