Modesto Junior College welcomes English learners

Modesto Junior College is opening an English Language Learner Welcome Center on its west campus, bringing together an assortment of helping hands and helpful services under one roof for the first time.

An open house is slated for 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday for the center, which sits beside the campus security office in John Muir Hall. The center will have walk-in hours and appointment times Monday through Thursday, with Thursday workshops on high-interest topics. Its startup funding came from the Stanislaus Mother Lode Consortium for adult education.

About 800 students a year attend Modesto Junior College English language classes. English for home and work classes progress in six eight-week segments. English for college-goers runs for four semesters, said MJC English language instructor Ruth Luman.

MJC English classes are not like the adult education classes at schools, said center student worker Esmeralda Felix, who took both. “It’s very different. To start with, we’re more formal here. There’s letter grades,” she said. “They tell you about the (college) programs. They push you to move on.”

Felix was born in the United States, but her parents moved back to Mexico when she was 8. “I never got used to it there. I didn’t like the education system,” Felix said. She promised herself when she turned 18 she would come back. It took getting a GED and years of studying the more difficult academic English, but she now is working toward a nursing degree and helping other English learners make it through.

MJC student Sepideh Nikkhah also works at the center. Nikkhah came from Iran two years ago speaking Farsi, Assyrian and Arabic, and has picked up English quickly. But it was difficult to know where to go or how to enroll at the college, she said.

“It’s hard to live without this information,” Nikkhah said. “It’s not important what country you come from. It is about learning to live here. It’s about learning to write checks. It’s about going to the DMV.”

She now tutors English learners and helps others through the difficulties she faced not so long ago. “Change is hard,” she summed up.

Mary Calderon can second that. She came from Mexico as a child 50 years ago and started school speaking no English. Now with a bachelor’s degree, she works at MJC and helped English-learning students at the library for years. “It feels really good to see my students succeed,” she said.

She will shift to helping out of the Welcome Center, as will success specialist Elida Miranda-Zaragoza, whose job is to help students facing barriers of all kinds. Because she speaks Spanish, she works particularly with English learners.

“One thing with (English learners) is the culture; they tend to stay in little groups. We want to make sure they integrate into the college,” she said.

For newcomers with a language barrier, Luman said, “There’s a whole world of things you’re trying to figure out.” The center is designed to help community members and students navigate through life and into a career path with potential.

“We find students come, and it’s a process to go through. Sometimes for English learners, people new to the system, we tend to lose them,” Luman said.

This story was originally published July 23, 2016 at 4:12 PM with the headline "Modesto Junior College welcomes English learners."