Language learning opens doors – New Hampshire Magazine

English teacher Lynn Hayden, second left, helps Sayra Zeledon, left, while Jiselle Lopez and Jessica Villanova work on their lessons.

Saint Anselm College has long offered community services as part of its educational vision for students. For over a year, that mandate has included a more practical education for refugees and immigrants.

The Meelia Center for Community Engagement, a program of Saint Anselm’s, began offering adult education courses for English for speakers of other languages in October 2023 through a partnership with the International Institute of New England, a refugee and immigrant resources organization. The classes are focused on career readiness, college preparation and functional skills like how to fill out forms, make a medical appointment and read grocery prices when shopping.

Demand for the service was immediate and grew as the program expanded its outreach efforts, says Joseph Gilbert, the IINE’s associate director of ESOL.

As of late December, the waitlist stood at 200 people despite the addition of a second class last January.

“We thought we’d be able to expand with the Meelia Center and add some more seats to knock this out,” Gilbert says, referring to the waitlist. “But the opposite happened … we were tapping into a population of people who previously weren’t aware of or looking for services that are now looking for that.”

Lissolot Reyes displays the racks of clothes that have been donated to the Meelia Center.

The rising interest comes as New Hampshire’s demographics change: 86,751 people identified as foreign-born residents in the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey, a nearly 50% increase from 2012. About 8% of New Hampshire residents speak a language other than English, with 36% speaking Spanish and 15% of those speaking French. The majority of non-English speakers live in Hillsborough County.

The majority of Meelia Center’s English language learners are Spanish and Ukrainian speakers, but a scattering of Haitians, Congolese and Central and South Americans also populate the classes, Gilbert said.

Classes are offered at two levels, depending on a student’s assessed English proficiency. That can pull in people from all walks of life, which creates a challenge for the teachers, Gilbert said.

“Students are often at very different places in their educational path,” he said. “Sometimes we get someone who was a doctor in their home country; sometimes we get someone who had a third-grade education. But if they’re in the same ballpark in their English proficiency, they might end up in the same classes and progress differently.”

Gilbert said he knew the need for the program existed based on community outreach, but he could not name a specific reason why demand is high now. He estimated some students who attend an ESOL class and then get a job leave the program rather than continue, but will return when their proficiency hampers them from moving forward. Others are students who were resettled in Manchester — the classes take place at the West Side’s Saint Raphael Parish — and are seeking classes for the first time.

Providing the classes involved a lot of collaboration: The Meelia Center received a grant two years ago to fund the program, said executive director Nicole Lora, but needed the expertise and location to host it. Saint Anselm’s College students, as well as the center’s program specialists, provide child care for ESOL students who would not be able to attend the classes otherwise.

Program specialists Maria Lopez, left, and Anastasia Yuresko oversee some food donations.

“We know that children will thrive also if their families are supported,” Lora said.

Lora said the center aims to not duplicate services when possible, and expanding available ESOL classes is just one part of the puzzle needed to help refugees and immigrants succeed in a new place. Child care, transportation and other services can be barriers to the services new Americans need to find housing or a job. Not knowing English makes those tasks much harder, she said.

“Being able to speak the language impacts almost every aspect of your life, like navigating day to day or going to the grocery store,” Lora said. “Or if you have a child at school, not being able to read the report card or understand what they’re learning.”

“We’re not set up to have multilingual spaces; it’s not the norm,” she continued.

The value of learning English is apparent in who shows up to the classes, which are free of charge to the students, Gilbert said. Some students are people in their 70s who never had access to school, or women who hail from countries where they were not allowed to learn.

He said he hopes to expand those opportunities in the future. Gilbert is part of a coalition working together to promote when and where ESOL classes are available. He hopes to find opportunities to create special workforce training where people can learn English while advancing in a stable career.

“We want to funnel people to things which will improve not just their income but their quality of life,” he said.

This article was featured in 603 Diversity.

603 Diversity’s mission is to educate readers of all backgrounds about the exciting accomplishments and cultural contributions of the state’s diverse communities, as well as the challenges faced and support needed by those communities to continue to grow and thrive in the Granite State.

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