Program makes learning English fun

LYNN – Rene DeJesus got the fright of his life when his 13-year-old walked into his family?s house looking like he had been assaulted or in an accident.?I almost got a heart attack when I saw him in the makeup,” DeJesus said.Erskine DeJesus quickly attributed his overly realistic and traumatic appearance to the theater class he took last weekend. The Endicott College class is just one of several new experiences DeJesus and 28 other local middle school students encountered during a nearly month-long English immersion program.DeJesus speaks Spanish and English but the program helped the Breed Middle School student improve his English speaking skills while having fun on field trips to Fenway Park, the Essex River and Endicott, where the students spent two supervised weekends experiencing college life.?At the beginning, he wasn?t sure about it. But I told him, ?This is something really great.? He ended up enjoying it,” said Rene DeJesus.More than half of the 14,700 public school students in the city spoke a language other than English before they started school, according to a report prepared in March by School Superintendent Catherine Latham.Latham and school administrators secured a $350,000 state grant this year to launch a program designed to focus students on speaking English and have fun doing it. They hired Middlebury Interactive Languages, a Vermont firm run by former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift, to design an intense but fun English immersion program.Batool and Shahad Faraj signed up for the immersion program at the insistence of their father, who wants the girls to master English as well as the Arabic they learned as children in Iraq. The pair said they met new friends in the program and learned fun skills like shoe making.?I want to be fashion designer or a doctor,” Shahad, a Breed Middle School student, said.Marshall Middle School teacher Amy DeRosa helped teach the immersion program and said the shared struggle to improve their English skills helped the Faraj sisters and other students work together to master other skills.?It?s awesome seeing them collaborate and work together,” DeRosa said.She said most of the students want to attend college and the two weekends at Endicott in Beverly acquainted them with painting, drawing, environmental engineering and the dramatic arts program Erskine DeJesus participated in.?He can see his future in college, especially in programs like theater,” his father said.