New ESL Newcomer Academy club allows students to mix learning through exploration

JCPS students from as far away as Gambia, Cuba, Damascus, Yemen, Guatemala and the Congo recently went on a canoe trip along the Ohio River.

By Toni Konz-Tatman | JCPS Communications

It’s a cool morning at the Community Boat House off River Road, and a group of 21 students from the ESL Newcomer Academy are putting on life jackets while looking at maps of the Ohio River.

The students—each from different countries—are about to embark on a canoe trip, the first field trip of the year for the school’s newly formed Explorer Club.

ESL Newcomer Academys paddling canoes Ohio River

“I have never been on a canoe before,” said Duarte Mendes-Blanco, a ninth grader from Venezuela who arrived in the United States just over a year ago. “I am excited.”

The club was started by Scott Wade, a teacher at the ESL Newcomer Academy – a school that serves about 530 students who are beginning English speakers in grades six through ten. It has three locations across the district, with the largest housed at the Academy @ Shawnee at 39th and Market Streets.

Most students at the Newcomer Academy are in their first year of instruction in an American school, and many have had limited or interrupted educational experiences in their native countries.

“I was looking for ambitious, outgoing students to be together in one place,” Wade said. “To me, exploration can mean so many things. Initially, it is about learning peacefully about people from all over the world.”

Wade says students had to apply to get into the club, which meets during the school day once a week.

“They had to write an essay about what they have done in their life to help other people and what they plan to do in the future to help other people,” he said. “This narrowed it down to kids for whom helping others is a priority.” 

Teacher shows student how to hold canoe paddle

Wade said the Explorer Club has students from as far away as Gambia, Cuba, Damascus, Yemen, Guatemala, and the Congo.

“We grow up with stereotypes—ideas about groups,” he said. “But you see friendships emerging here. They are finding their commonalities.”

Wade added, “They start to find that the problems they have in America or the problems they had in their home country, there are so many similarities they start to think of everyone as world citizens. In many cases, their hopes and dreams are the same.”

Once students realized they have “fully incorporated into an international village,” the exploration begins and it is self-directed, Wade said. 

“I will find out through them, and through questioning, their interests,” he said. “For example, there were kids who wanted to know more about animals that live in the ocean, others wanted to know more about black holes and others about college scholarships.”

Prior to becoming a teacher, Wade worked as a journalist. He wrote for newspapers in Allentown, PA, and Kankakee, IL. He also spent 11 years at The Courier-Journal, where he covered a range of beats, including education.

It was during his time as a reporter that he met David Wicks, an environmental educator who retired from JCPS a few years ago. The two men—and their families—became friends.

“When I became a teacher, David called me and told me he was going to have the voyager canoes on the Ohio and that we should work something out with my ESL students,” said Wade, who began his teaching career at Atherton High in 2002 and then transferred to the Newcomer Academy.

“Once I started this Explorer Club, I called him,” he said. 

A common theme Wade says he has seen develop among his students is their love for nature.

“Every chance I get, I am going to take them to a forest, or a stream, or a river,” he said. “This week, we got in canoes to explore the river. Next week, they will be using computers to explore ways to improve their vocabulary. Everything will be built around exploration.”

The ESL Newcomer Academy will celebrate its twelfth anniversary in 2018. For more information about the school, call principal Gwen Snow at 485-6324.

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