education
Wayne Public Library is
ESL Central
Wayne’s immigrant population finds community in language classes
WRITTEN BY PHILIP DEVENCENTIS PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL KARAS
M
arleen Grabowsky
considers her day
to be a success if —
and, only if — each
one of her students
learns a new word.
And, on a recent Tuesday morn-
ing at the Wayne Public Library, the
word of the day in the volunteer
tutor’s class for English-language
learners was a toughie. Thirteen
adult students, hailing from as far
away as China, Italy and Turkey,
worked together to dissect
a message President Donald Trump
had posted on Twitter. It contained
the word “sanction.”
The context of that message was
the president’s decision to withdraw
from a deal with Iran that was agreed
to under the Obama administration
to lift sanctions on the Middle East
nation, in exchange for the country
reducing its nuclear arsenal.
Grabowsky’s English as a Second
Language class, which meets each
week at the main branch of the
library at 461 Valley Road, uses a
computer-based audio program
called “Voice of America” to study
vocabulary relevant to current affairs
and national trends.
“They have no idea the gratitude I
feel,” Grabowsky, a retired Paterson
teacher and Wayne resident, says of
30
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Sharing personal
experiences
Grabowsky encourages con-
versation in her classroom, a
teaching method that lends itself
to getting to know her students
on a personal level. At the
beginning of the session, for
example, students congratulated
their classmate, Dave Seol, a
Marleen Grabowsky
native of South Korea, for pur-
chasing a new home in the township.
Seol, 41, says he moved to the
United States three years earlier
to expand his computer-software
company. In October, he says, he
enrolled in the ESL program, so that
he can communicate more effectively
with his colleagues at his company’s
office in Montvale. “My English
became wider,” says Seol.
Another student, Yaireth
Cristancho, a native of Colombia,
explained to her classmates what it
means to be an au pair. “It helped me
a lot because I learned more words
and expressions,” says Cristancho,
MARLEEN GRABOWSKY,
27, who lives with a host family in
ESL TUTOR
Kinnelon. When Cristancho related
her experience, Grabowsky wrote
“au pair” with a black Magic Marker
her students. “I get so much more
on a handheld whiteboard, before
from them, and receive so much
slowly turning it to each side of
more reward from what they give to
her classroom. It is a strategy
me as a teacher.”
the tutor employed several times
“MY PHILOSOPHY IS, IF
YOU LEARNED ONE
WORD IN CLASS TODAY,
THEN YOU LEARNED A
LOT. AND, MANY OF
THEM LEARN MORE
THAN ONE WORD.”