Imagine sitting down on the first day of school — nervous and in a new school — and the teacher arrives and begins to speak, “Tomen sus lápices y cuadernos, y prepárense para la clase.”

“Take out your pencils and notebooks and prepare for class.”

Not understanding the teacher is a reality for many students attending Seymour Community Schools who do not speak English as their primary language.

On Thursday, 20 teachers from the district’s five elementary schools and 20 more faculty members were exposed to the reality many of their students from other nations face when they start attending school here.

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“Taking the class really makes you know how the kids feel,” Rosemary Albright said of Spanish for Teachers classes offered this summer by Seymour Community Schools Corp. Albright is the English as a new language instructor at Seymour-Jackson Elementary School.

“If you spoke in English during class, Ana (De Gante) would snap at you and say, ‘en Español,’ similar to what might happen to a student,” Albright said of De Gante, the district’s interpreter and one of the class instructors.

English as a new language (ENL) students make up about 12 percent of the district’s total enrollment, with the largest number of those being in elementary schools.

At first glance, the class might seem similar to any other language class, with students sitting at desks and repeating Spanish words and phrases with De Gante and Amy Landaw-Ortiz, the high school’s new Spanish-language teacher. The two were quick to point out the four-week, six-session course taught a lot more than just language.

“Our goal is not just to teach Spanish, but teach about their culture and how they live in the U.S.,” Landaw-Ortiz said.

The pair talked to the class about the importance of the cultural differences between ENL students and the general student population.

They discussed issues such as understanding why students have two last names — one surname for the mother and one for the father — and how to correctly pronounce students’ names.

They might seem like small details, but they go a long way toward making students feel more accepted, resulting in a better attitude toward learning and better grades, Landaw-Ortiz said.

“The classes were very geared toward things we need for class, things we need to know how to say and things we needed to understand about the students,” said Debbie Atchison, Seymour-Jackson Elementary School first-grade teacher.

That means teaching them about an entirely new schooling system. Places such as Guatemala and Puerto Rico have different schooling systems and might not require their students to attend school until age 7, Landaw-Ortiz said.

Students coming from these school systems might be of school age but have never attended school, she added. Understanding the students’ backgrounds and about these school systems better equips teachers to help ENL students adapt.

“Both me and Ana understand the difficulties these students face,” Landaw-Ortiz said. “She grew up in Mexico, and I grew up in Puerto Rico and later Spain.”

Understanding different cultures also helps the teachers in their interactions with the parents of ENL students, many of whom do not speak English fluently and sometimes not at all.

“It’s not that (parents) don’t want to help,” De Gante said.

“They don’t know the culture and how to help. We try to teach teachers to put themselves in their shoes.”

Atchison agreed.

She has used Spanish with students in some of her classes, but her goal is to be able to hold parent-teacher conferences without the aid of an interpreter.

“We have a rising population of Latino families in the community and only a limited number of interpreters,” Atchison said.

Teachers spent part of one class learning how to ask about health-related issues, including how to explain to a parent in Spanish that a student was sick and needs to be picked up and asking if the student has any special medical conditions.

Atchison said this information and how to convey an emergency situation such as tornadoes or a fire to ENL students are some of the most important pieces of information she learned in the class. She plans to reformat the emergency instructions found in her classroom to include Spanish translations.

In another class, De Gante introduced Aracely Gonzalez, a Latina case manager with Turning Point of Columbus, and Michelle Woods, director of Human Services Inc., both of whom spoke to the groups about the services they provide to the Hispanic community in Seymour. These include services to protect individuals from domestic violence, finding housing, child care and much more.

“We can use this (information) to offer different needed services to students,” Albright said.

“For instance, I didn’t know Turning Point in Columbus covered Seymour and could help in those ways.”

Albright said the school has ENL students from all over the world, not just Spanish-speaking countries. But she has seen an increase in Spanish-speaking students, she added.

“Many of the students in my ENL classes have even learned Spanish, even those from other countries, like Japan or China; it’s just becoming more common,” Albright said.

The program isn’t the first to teach Hispanic culture to teachers. De Gante said she has conducted classes for Seymour teachers about the Hispanic culture, but this was the first year for a class that included a focus on language.

Both Atchison and Albright agreed that probably the greatest advantage to the class was the chance to practice the Spanish they knew and learn new phrases.

“They aren’t going to be fluent after six classes, but it’s a start,” Landaw-Ortiz said.

She said that at first she was unsure how the class would be received.

“This is kind of a dream to me and Ana, to create a class like this for the school corporation,” Landaw-Ortiz said.

Both classes quickly filled up, however, and the names of teachers who were not included this summer were put on a waiting list for the next class to be offered.

In addition to the teacher/staff classes, De Gante also teaches an English class for parents to try to help them understand things like homework, interactions with teachers and requirements for students.

Landaw-Ortiz and De Gante both said they hope to continue the program and expand it to include more sessions for middle and high school teachers and other faculty members.

“We want to break the barriers that are there because of language and just understand what it’s like to not understand what’s being said,” Landaw-Ortiz said.