Ciao, hola, hallo, bonjour or merhaba, five different languages but all have the same thing in common, the translation to “hello” in English. At East there are roughly about 350 multilingual (ML) students.
With the ML students originating from all over the world they are still learning English, but the ML teachers accept the challenge no matter how little their students understand them.
“There were two brothers from Eritrea and we were communicating through signals,” ML teacher Richard Bohan said. “We were developing a relationship despite not being able to verbally communicate, just through pictures and whatnot. After six months of working with them, something clicked and they were communicating in English.”
Bohan has been a ML teacher for 6 years at East and is fluent in Spanish, but before coming to East he taught in a few different countries.
“I found out that I could travel the world teaching English,” Bohan said. “I was in Mexico and also Central America, I wound up in Columbia, South America and I taught business English.”
Like the majority of the ML Department, Bohan moved here from living in a different country. Junior Sam Kyshka moved from western Ukraine at the beginning of the school year.
“There was a war and it was dangerous,” Kyshka said. “They could take my father and brother to war so we left.”
This is the reality for many students as their families want to pursue a better life in America. As Kyshka moved here he doesn’t know any English and has to use Google Translate to communicate with everyone, but he still doesn’t regret his decision.
“It was scary to move, but also interesting, the feeling is very cool,” Kyshka said. “Everything is beautiful here.”
With Kyshka coming here to East, he’s the only person in the ML department that can speak Ukrainian. Other than English, the most commonly spoken language at East is Spanish. 40% of the student body speaks Spanish, which is around 835 students.
The next most common language is Vietnamese at around 37 students, which is a huge decrease from the amount of Spanish speakers.
“I think one of the hardest things is the different languages that we have. In one of my classes alone, I have 21 students and out of those 21 students, I have one student from Ukraine, one student from Turkey, one student from Pakistan and two students from Haiti. Then the rest of the students are Spanish speaking,” ML Department Chair Rebecca Lintz said. “So it’s really hard to reach all of the students when I have you know, my student from Ukraine and my student from Turkey are the only two Ukrainian and Turkish students in the entire school. There’s no one who can help me translate.”
There are 6 teachers total in the ML department, but when none of them can speak a language like Ukrainian or Turkish, they have to rely on Google Translate. Communicating with students over Google Translate makes them unable to open up as well as if they were being spoken to.
“I love when you see students grow, when you see them learning, they usually go through a silent period when they first arrive, and they don’t really talk, they’re just kind of shell shocked,” Lintz said. “Then when you see them slowly start to open up and speak and ask questions in English or even just say little words in English, you see their confidence grow.”
