Teachers, tutors try to keep up with demand for ESL classes

Here is another story that disproves what so many people think, that immigrants don't want to learn English. There are long waiting lists almost everywhere. DP

BY KENT JACKSON, STAFF WRITER

Jang “Bobby” Wen Yu and Frank Helverson sat at a table in Jang’s home on Seybert Street in Hazleton as they have regularly for two years to talk.

They discussed employment figures on pie charts, but it’s not the subject that keeps them together —the charts were from the last decade — it’s the language.

English.

Helverson speaks it.

Jang wanted to learn.

Together, after being paired through Catholic Social Services, they worked out a teacher-student relationship that has become a friendship.

Last month, Helverson and his wife attended Jang’s wedding and 12-course reception dinner in New York City’s Chinatown.

At his family’s restaurant, Golden City in Hazleton, Jang manages conversations with customers more easily because of his practice sessions with Helverson.

“My English is getting much better,” he said.

Helverson said he volunteered as a tutor to counteract anti-immigration sentiment he noticed in Hazleton two years ago when the city introduced an Illegal Immigration Relief Act that included English-only provisions.

“I wanted to do something positive. Also I was hearing the wrong notion that immigrants don’t want to learn English,” he said.

In Hazleton, people are waiting in line to learn English.

At Catholic Social Services, 16 volunteers tutor 20 adults. Thirty-three more students are on a waiting list, and the organization hopes more will volunteer as tutors.

The waiting list is longer still at Luzerne County Community College, where 100 people study classes in English as a second language, yet 190 more want to join the program funded by the state and federal governments.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.