When two Maine nonprofits that work with refugees and immigrants asked ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ whether it could help with their pilot language program, the College didn't hesitate to say yes, according to McKeen Center director Sarah Seames. “We’re invested in the community,” she said.
ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ provided free room and board for the language instructors, as well as dining hall tickets for breakfast and lunch to the eighteen students.
Seames gave credit to the two main organizers of the initiative: Maggie Cummings from the United Way of Mid Coast Maine and Fatuma Hussein H’17, founder and executive director of the Immigrant Resource Center of Maine.
“Both are dedicated to making sure families are independent, and so much of that starts with English acquisition because that is what leads to jobs, and jobs pay for housing,” Seames said.
The idea for the course first came from a volunteer tutor who works with asylum seekers and was familiar with a unique language program at Dartmouth College, said Cummings.
“The biggest barrier to employment is the language gap,” she reinforced, adding that English instruction is an emerging focus for the United Way and other regional organizations. Currently, the community of asylum seekers in the Brunswick area includes between eighty and 100 families. Many are from Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
With funds from a recent grant, the United Way was able to invite lead instructor, Fernando Ausin, a 2006 graduate from Dartmouth College. With volunteer assistant instructors, Ausin taught for ten full days, from July 20 to August 2, using the .
The technique, developed by Dartmouth professor “is tailored for urgency and efficiency,” explained Helene Rassias-Miles, who is the daughter of John Rassias, directs the Rassias Center at Dartmouth, and traveled to Maine to help support the program.
“It's all about empowering people with language,” she continued. “More than anything, we try to help our students acquire confidence. In two weeks with them at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾, we knew we weren’t going to have everyone walk out fluent, of course not, but what we think we did is help them gain a new sense of confidence. Everybody improved some, some people really improved, and bless them, they were amazing and they worked so dang hard.”
As a bonus, Ausin and his team also trained five local people—including ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ students Carolyne Sauda ’27 and Avery Leisle ’25—to teach with the Rassias Method. “Now we can have them participate in English conversation lessons, which we already offer, so the students get that resource again,” Cummings said.
The United Way is grateful to both the Dartmouth teachers and to ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ staff, she added. “They did a great job creating a space for learning and the messiness that comes with that. It was beautiful to see the difference from day one—where it was difficult to get people to speak—to day ten, with students having full conversations with instructors.”
At the end of the course, ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ even hosted a mini-graduation ceremony in Kresge Auditorium, made possible by ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾'s good-natured employees in the events office, Seames said.
“There was a ceremony with lights and sound and diplomas. They played the graduation march, and we got the students caps and gowns out of storage,” she said.
