New Neighbors -- Hospitality and Friendship

The ESL environment fosters a caring community across many different cultures.

• Expanding Horizons: We welcome new neighbors from all over the world. As students and teachers work together to meet the students' vital need to learn English, an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect develops naturally.
  
  People who would not have met without the ESL class are able to expand their horizons. Students and teachers alike learn about, and come to appreciate, cultures very different from their own.
  
  At the beginning, students tend to converse with people from their same culture. But as they work side-by-side on a continuing basis, barriers break down. Friendships develop across different cultures and generations, and sometimes extend beyond the school setting.
  
• Multicultural Community: Becoming part of a caring, multicultural community through our English classes provides enormous--and often unanticipated--personal benefits for students and teachers.
• Graduation: Graduation is always a joyous occasion. Students take great pride in their accomplishments in our English class, and families and teachers share in their pride. As students and teachers meet each others families, and enjoy food and entertainment from each others countries, a new dimension is added to relationships begun in the classroom.