There is a great deal of discussion today about the need to provide translation services in hospitals, clinics, schools, courts, and government offices.  Everyone from car dealers to doctors and lawyers advertise services in Spanish in the Spanish language papers, La Voz and La Conexion.  There are church services in Spanish and there are credit card applications in Spanish.  This is good, but anyone who has lived cut off by language will tell you, translation is a stopgap solution.  Even a gardener who has lived in the U.S. for 27 years without mastering English told me, “This is not good.  I want to learn English, but when I try, I do not have time.  I do not learn enough.”

To understand the experience of learning and of teaching English, I assisted in several ESL classes at the local hotels.  I saw that the students are earnest, but they are also trying to fit language study into a day that may involve two full-time jobs.  They are looking for classes that are available to someone without a car and without extra money.  As if this were not enough difficulty, many of the Spanish-speaking ESL students have had limited formal education at home.  If language study is difficult for a UNC under-graduate, a medical student, or a clinician, imagine the hurdle for someone who has not been in school since the elementary grades or who attended high school more than ten years ago.

Despite the odds, I found ESL classes offered by local community colleges, by Orange County, by hotels to their workers, in churches before services, and in schools.  I found creative teachers and students who want to learn, but who are squeezing the learning into a life full of other demands.  In this composition, I want to show the feelings I had as I watched these classes by showing the faces of the students, the variety of study sites, and, in the border, the sensation of new words floating in all directions, translucent, overlapping, sometimes clear and sometimes all mixed up!

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