SHEFFIELD – These days, if you travel over to the Michael Center in Sheffield, you might get an earful of, “Buenos Dias!” from some 8 year-old. Or maybe you’ll hear, “Hace calor?”, followed by “Mucho Calor!” between a couple of 80-year-olds. No, this isn’t coming from a group of naturally Spanish-speaking people. It would be coming from the class of students learning conversational Spanish.
The Ladies Auxiliary Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8640 sponsors a conversational Spanish language course at the Michael Center in Sheffield. This was the fifth time the class, made up of school age kids – to octogenarian-aged adults (and even older), has gotten together.
Mary Stephens spends most of her waking hours doing work to improve the city. She said that one day the thought just came to her brain, “And so, I introduced the idea to the Auxiliary and it seemed that everybody liked it. So we formed a committee, it took longer to get started than we wanted, but we got it moving.” Stephens, a Sheffield city Council Member, is very pleased with the way things are progressing. “There are so many Hispanic people in this area and the number of them who do not speak English is quite large. We wanted to do something to improve the lives of our new residents, while at the same time enrich the lives of our established community,” she said.
Mary Stephens is a big fan of Chanalda King, a school teacher at Hibbett Middle School in Florence. Chanalda conducts the Spanish class at the Michael Center. Oddly enough, she does not teach Spanish. She teaches Science. When the school year begins, it will be her 17th year as a teacher in Florence. We asked her why she is conducting these free community conversational Spanish classes. “Well, we just have such a large Hispanic community here in Alabama. I ended up sometimes with a third of my students in my room whose parents spoke only Spanish. And I just wanted to make the families feel comfortable with our schools. And I wanted the kids to be comfortable in the classroom. And you know, two languages helps with cognition and brain development. So I wanted my children in my classroom to benefit with a second language. Even if they just spoke English (all the time), I wanted them to have another language. And I want the Hispanic children to feel comfortable when I was talking about Math or Science or any objective. It’s my desire to be able to say the objective in English, and then to translate it, for them to feel comfortable with, “this is what it means”. And it helps the students who are primarily English speakers not to feel like, “These are just strangers coming into our room.”
“Mary (Stephens) contacted me and told me that she was looking to put a program together like this. and that she was looking for someone to teach conversational Spanish. So here I am! The English-speaking kids get to have fun and learn a few phrases, so when they meet their new classmates during the school year, they can say “Hi” to them in Spanish and increase the new student’s comfort level. It can be difficult sometimes when new students come in to a classroom. When children see others from a far away place and can speak their language, that ability helps each of them feel more connected.”
The class is open to children and adults from the entire Shoals area, and meets once a week.
We asked Mary Stephens if we could come to the class to tune up on our Spanish. “You’re welcome! Come on in!”
