4-H Delivers

San Diego County English as a Second Language Support Team

The Issue:

Children of adults who have immigrated to the United States often show below average performance in school.  When they enter school they have a limited English vocabulary and often do not have adult support at home for homework assignments.  California has a large immigrant population and local adult schools are trying to improve the English skills of parents so they can improve their lives and help their own children.

What has 4-H Done?

In San Diego County, the Valley Center Pauma Unified School District ESL Project has been hard at work trying to teach adults in their community to read and speak English. With the support of an award from the 4-H Service-Learning RFP Program, a local 4-H group has been able to purchase new children's books and materials for the program to help improve the student learning.  The ESL adult students learn by reading a book together in class and using flashcards and worksheets to master the vocabulary.  They then check out the books and teach the material to their own children using the methods that they have learned.  According to the San Diego 4-H Program Representative, “the idea of ‘teaching’ what you have learned has been statistically proven to be more effective than just classroom participation.”  Teaching what you have learned is a technique that is used by most 4-H project groups with teen leaders teaching younger members.

Project leader, Rachel Hochstetler, stated, “to reinforce their learning, the adult students will teach the same lessons to their own children, which will help them master sentence structure, vocabulary, and spelling.”

The Payoff:

The Valley Center 4-H group has helped to foster the English skills of their adult students in the Valley Center Pauma Unified School District ESL Project.  Project leader, Rachel Hochstetler said, “I am proud to say that almost every one of the students in our beginning ESL class is able to ready entry level books.  This is a huge success and is a direct result of the 4-H Service-Learning RFP award to purchase books for the class.”

In addition “this class helped the 4-H group to be able to better understand a different culture and the difficulties that they encounter on a daily basis.  It also helped us to understand the sacrifices that they make so they may better assimilate into American culture.”