LOUISVILLE, Ky. — There are roughly 18,000 Jefferson County Public School students who are learning English. According to the JCPS report card published by the Kentucky Board of Education, that’s an increase of approximately 3,000 from last year. 

The last school bell rang, but Benjamin Brown’s classroom was still full.

About 10 seats were filled by some unexpected students. 

“The impact that we have on students and that it’s really learning from adults and seeing that behavior modeled and how people interact with each other, that helps us grow as democratic citizens,” Brown said.

Once a week, Knight Middle School teachers file into Brown’s classroom to learn the basics of the Spanish language. Like their own students, they take notes and practice what they have learned.

The teachers even go out into the hallways and practice saying phrases they learned.

According to Knight’s principal, Christel Lanier, about one-third of the students at her school are native Spanish speakers. But the increase of native Spanish-speaking students is not limited to Knight Middle School. 

This is Brown’s first year of teaching at Knight Middle School. The English as a Second Language (ESL) instructor noticed the students weren’t interacting with the teachers throughout the day. He decided to teach his colleagues Spanish. 

“It’s been a lot of fun. I think that they’re realizing we’re all in the same boat. It’s not anymore where you have the ESL class in this corner of the school or that. This is the team that works with the students learning English. It is the whole building,” Brown said.

Math teacher Valerie McGovern says almost half of her students speak Spanish.

She wants to make sure each child is included and engaged. 

McGovern said, “It makes your students realize that you care about them. They’re just not another number, you know. [In the} beginning of the year, I was only able to talk to my English speakers, and they were kind of probably feeling like they were ignored, you know?”

The school community is closely connected—a connection McGovern said is like a family.  

“Our kids are part of our family. And the fact that we couldn’t talk to some of our students, it was very hard.”

Brown claims that even knowing a few phrases can mean a lot to students.

“I think that little conversations day to day of ‘How are you?’, ‘What’s new?’, ‘Tell me about home’, ‘How is your class?’. You can learn those in a week, two weeks. I think the impact it has will be the whole school year, and it doesn’t have to be years and years of developing a language to make that happen.”

When this group of teachers goes back to the front of the class, they’ll have a few more tools to help students grow.

Knight Middle School plans to continue the Spanish program for its teachers as long as they are interested.