The Upper Valley is home to upward of 4,000 foreign-born individuals, according to an estimate drawn from federal population surveys of New Hampshire and Vermont residents. Drawing from calculations by the Migration Policy Institute, some 1,000 of them may have difficulty speaking English, impeding their path toward jobs, better education and a fulfilling civic life.

While the need for English training in the Upper Valley is not as urgent as it is in other regions of the country, every hour of paid or volunteer time with a student counts, and in the end, English training brings both student and teacher opportunities for growth.

In the Upper Valley, a loose network of paid and volunteer teachers and coaches are working to help these individuals and families close the language gap.

For example, an adult learning program run by Lebanon’s school system is training 48 adults in English ranging from basic to more advanced levels. The program is open to anyone living in the Upper Valley.

Deborah Laffin, who coordinates the program, and Glenna Coleman, an instructor, said their students — one of whom was 80 years old — come with a wide variety of personal stories.

They say there is no “average” household or individual.

For example, a Pakistani family arrived in the Upper Valley speaking poor English. This led them to taking housecleaning jobs in which they could get along in their native language. But their daughter speaks English well.

The husband of another family came with technical skills and good English to fill a professional job, but his wife and their two children needed to learn English.

Upper Valley English training matches what is occurring across the United States. The total foreign-born population has more than doubled since 1990. About 20 million today have what is called “limited English proficiency.” More than 5 million children live in households where no one over the age of 14 is proficient in English.

State education agencies in New Hampshire and Vermont provide grants to public school systems and nonprofit organizations to deliver English language training programs, known widely as English as a Second Language, or ESL.

Lebanon’s schools host the largest enrollment of English language learners in the Upper Valley.

According to Rebecca Wurdak, coordinator of English Language Learner programs for SAU 88, this spring about 225 students are either taking ELL classes or have recently tested out, meaning they can participate in regular classes with little or no special support.

A small annual grant from the state helps to pay for two ELL teachers in each elementary school, one at the middle school and one at the high school. The New Hampshire Department of Education has cited SAU 88 as delivering an “exemplary program.”

Wurdak, who started coordinating the district’s program a decade ago, noted how varied the enrollees are in English training. There is “so much diversity in our diversity,” she said, which distinguishes the Upper Valley from metropolitan areas in the West and South, for example, where English learners are predominantly Hispanic.

Many come to the Upper Valley, Wurdak said, to work at Dartmouth College, pharmaceutical companies or in service and other jobs. Some of the children are refugees from war zones and others are adopted. Their prior formal education may have been disrupted.

In all, more than 50 languages are represented.

The main adult English training program on the Vermont side of the Upper Valley is at the White River Junction-based Vermont Adult Learning branch, at 226 Maple St. Joy Gaine coordinates the basic education services there, from helping people complete their high school education to acquiring English language skills.

Gaine came to the program after many years teaching environmental studies and as an elementary school para-teacher in Thetford.

Gaine tells the story of one of her students, a Chinese woman who married an American man in China. They had a child together, and while in China the conversation at home was in Chinese. The family then moved to Seattle, and then to the Upper Valley, where the American husband has entered a professional degree program.

The child now speaks English, thanks to elementary school training. But the wife’s English is still poor. She comes to Vermont Adult Learning three times a week to work with Gaine, and a fourth time for one-on-one work with a volunteer.

Training the Teachers

Some potential ESL volunteers are under the impression that they need to know the student’s native language. That’s wrong, as virtually all classroom instruction is in English, and the instructor can supplement classroom instruction with myriad internet tools that students access at home.

Many ESL instructors have a background in teaching, including another of Gaine’s volunteers, who teaches during the day at an Upper Valley elementary school and is developing her formal skills in teaching ESL.

The instructors are aware of their own need for training. Most of the paid instructors, and some of the volunteers, seek out formal training, mainly in order to gain an ESL teaching certificate. The most popular certificate is known as TESOL, or Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

A TESOL certificate can be earned online, and Saint Michael’s College, in Colchester, Vt., has been delivering ESL training to teachers for decades. It runs a short summer program that appeals to many Northern New England residents.

Elizabeth O’Dowd, a professor and director of TESOL programs at Saint Michael’s, recommends the four-week intensive summer course, she said, “to help people with no experience, and who want to volunteer in the community or a post-retirement job. These are the adults who typically like to take it.”

Such formal training provides for real classroom ESL experience, equips the student-teacher with a toolbox of resources and techniques, and instills an understanding of what learning a language demands. One Vermont-based volunteer with a background in health care, for example, went to London for a month of ESL training. She was surprised that she had to learn more about English to become a good ESL teacher.

In addition to this occasional column, Peter Rousmaniere, of Woodstock, blogs about immigration issues at www.working immigrants.com. Email him at pfr@rousmaniere.com.