December 9, 2025 // Diocese

A Call to Educate All

Kevin Kilbane

Teacher Erin Warden uses every minute when students enter her English Language Learner (ELL) classroom at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School in Fort Wayne.

On a recent day, several kindergartners recited letters of the alphabet and then joined her in pointing out parts of their faces in time to a song. Warden, the school’s ELL director, then read a story that used animals’ clothing to discuss the concepts of too big and too small. During the 30-minute class, Warden also squeezed in other exercises and read a story about counting before students returned to their regular classrooms.

ELL lessons become more conversational as students get older. With second graders, Warden showed them a photo of a bear in a goofy pose and asked what the bear may be doing. “Looking for hamburgers,” a boy said. “Dancing,” and “Dancing while looking at the sky,” other children suggested.

St. Vincent is one of several schools in the diocese that offers ELL instruction for students who are not native English speakers but whose parents want them to receive a Catholic education.

“The English Language Learners program at St. Vincent de Paul School focuses on students’ learning, and that has helped my children through being able to communicate with their teachers and classmates,” said Khup Ngaih Niang, a member of the local Burmese community who has two children in the ELL program. The program also helps her children accomplish their schoolwork and participate in class, said Niang, whose family came to America in 2011 seeking a better life and better education than was available in their home country of Myanmar.

Ministering to a Need

ELL programs evolved at some of the diocese’s 44 schools because the parishes had families who didn’t speak any English or weren’t fluent in it. That ELL work carries out Catholic social teachings, said Amanda Arnold, who became the diocese’s diverse learners director in July.

“It’s saying, hey, it might not be exactly like we’re used to or what we know comfortably, but it’s OK to be uncomfortable and it’s OK to learn and grow and to see every child and every family as God does – made in his image and likeness,” said Arnold, who previously taught special-education students for about 18 years at diocesan schools in the Fort Wayne area.

The number of ELL students and their cultural backgrounds vary at each school.

At St. Michael Catholic School in Plymouth, ELL instructor Mary Beth Kolter and her instructional aide, Ana Aguilar, work with 28 ELL students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Last year, St. Michael had 37 children in the ELL program, said Kolter, a veteran classroom teacher now in her fourth year of working with ELL students.

This year, all her students speak Spanish as their native language, she said. In prior years, she also had students with home languages of Vietnamese and Chinese.

At Sacred Heart School in Warsaw, ELL teacher Liz Cauhorn works with 44 students who represent nearly a third of the school’s total enrollment of 141 children in kindergarten through sixth grade. Her ELL students mainly come from Hispanic families, but the parish also serves a few Filipino students and has a couple of students whose families speak the Malayalam language from India, said Cauhorn, who is in her third year as the school’s ELL teacher.

St. Vincent School in Fort Wayne has 64 ELL students this year in kindergarten through eighth grade, said Warden, who is in her fifth year at St. Vincent after teaching ELL students for about 10 years in public schools. A majority of her ELL students come from Burmese families from the Chin cultural group, who speak the Zo language, she said. She also serves a number of students of Mexican heritage, as well as children whose families came from the Philippines and Vietnam.

Other diocesan schools that list ELL faculty on their websites include St. Vincent de Paul School in Elkhart, and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Joseph schools in Fort Wayne.

Assessing Skills

Schools usually learn about an ELL need once parents register their child for kindergarten. Parents must answer a survey about what language their family speaks at home. If the child or parents speak a foreign language at home, the school must screen the student to determine if he or she needs ELL instruction.

ELL students throughout Indiana then take the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) test each January to measure their ability to use the English language in speaking, writing, listening, and reading comprehension, Kolter said. Students must earn a 5.0 or better on the WIDA test to be considered proficient in English for their grade level. Once they reach that score, they are deemed to no longer need ELL classes.

Gaining English Proficiency

ELL teachers pack a lot of learning into the approximately 30 minutes a day they work with elementary-grade students. They also go into elementary and junior high students’ classrooms to work with them if they need assistance there.

“They say you need exposure 77 times to use a word fluently and know it,” Warden told Today’s Catholic.

English isn’t an easy language to learn. There are numerous exceptions to rules of spelling and grammar, Kolter explained. ELL students frequently also have trouble with the various endings on words and how the endings affect the meaning of words.

Teachers take a multifaceted approach.

“A lot of pointing, a lot of pictures,” Warden said of working with students who know little to no English. “We do a lot of repeating of words. Short, concise sentences, not long. … Taking it slow. Giving them time to process and think about what they’re learning.”

For Cauhorn, “the ones I always start with would be visuals: How can we make it so they can picture it? How can you do a motion to help them remember or tie it with a word?” She also uses sentence stems where students fill in a blank in a partial sentence.

In addition, Cauhorn utilizes learning activities such as “Quiz, Quiz, Trade.” Students take a card containing a question or vocabulary term and pair up with another student. One student asks the question on his or her card, and the other responds. They then reverse the process. Afterward, each student moves to a new partner to start again.

“Studies have found that our ELL students are only speaking 2 percent of the school day, so we are working on intentionally providing them these speaking opportunities,” Cauhorn added.

Students make the most of their English instructional time.

“They all really want to do well, and they work hard,” Kolter said.

Most students pass the WIDA test by Grade 5, the ELL teachers said.

Nurturing that growth is very rewarding, they noted.

“I really love the fact that I have a student all the way through, and you get to watch them grow,” Warden said. “They come to you barely speaking anything and then, by the time they’re in seventh and eighth grade, you’ve built that relationship with them – just like your own kids, really.”

Supportive Environment

ELL and classroom teachers collaborate so ELL lessons reinforce what students are working on in their regular classes. ELL teachers also suggest ways to make language used in regular classes more accessible for ELL students.

“Our big goal is to maintain the academics,” Cauhorn said. “We know they may not be proficient in English, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of all these things. So, we just want to make sure they don’t fall behind in those ways.”

The need for language assistance doesn’t reflect students’ overall abilities, Cauhorn emphasized.

“Part of my mission,” she noted, “is to help understand all of the abilities these students have, all the gifts they bring.”

Kolter learned that with a kindergarten boy whose family speaks only Spanish at home. On the English screening test, he scored well above his grade level, she said. He can draw a map of the world and name every country. He also can draw a map of the United States and identify all the states and their capital cities.

ELL teachers remain resources for their students even after they test out of ELL classes.

Kolter, for example, monitors her ELL students for two years after they pass the WIDA test, just in case they need any help. Warden and her assistant, Michelle Renninger, usually open their room 45 minutes before classes begin so they can assist students with understanding homework or assignments.

Celebrating Heritage

ELL teachers’ support includes encouraging students to retain and celebrate their home country’s language and culture.

“I’m lecturing constantly about making sure they’re keeping their own language,” Warden said. “When they lose that, they lose their communication with their family.”

One of Kolter’s bulletin boards says, “‘My superpower is being multilingual,’ because I just try to foster in the kids that is such an amazing superpower. I tell them, you guys have to always hold onto this.”

Many parish and school staff members at St. Michael in Plymouth speak Spanish, so Hispanic students receive a lot of support for their language and culture, Principal Robin Coffman told Today’s Catholic.

ELL teachers also discuss and celebrate events and traditions in their students’ cultures.

Positive Impact

Parents whose students are being serviced by ELL programs praise the teachers and the results they’re seeing in their children

“The program focuses on the specific skills he needs to develop, and it has ignited his motivation to learn English, read more, and always do his best,” said Clara Borda, whose son is in the ELL program at Sacred Heart School in Warsaw. “We have seen wonderful progress and confidence in his learning.”

Borda, who describes her family as proud natives of Colombia, in South America, said they came to Indiana in 2021 when she was hired as a dual immersion teacher in the Warsaw public school district.

Borda said Sacred Heart’s ELL program also benefits her son outside of school.

“The program has played a key role in helping him catch up in the (English) language and feel more confident,” she said. “It promotes a love for culture and makes him feel welcomed, supported, and motivated. It has truly helped him feel part of the school and the community.”

St. Vincent’s Niang also believes the ELL program benefits her children beyond the classroom. It helps them adjust to living in the United States by improving their English proficiency and fostering a sense of belonging, she said.

Mission Oriented

Going forward, diocesan Diverse Learners Director Amanda Arnold hopes to provide ELL teachers with more encouragement and training. The programs still will look different at each school, she said, but she hopes they achieve a common result.

“Overall, my goal would be all of us in the schools, and even in our parishes, are doing everything possible to help ensure that the people who are coming into our schools and communities, whether they are English Language Learners or whatever different background they come from, have the opportunity to truly feel part of the community through communication, through understanding and respecting cultures.”

Warden said she and other ELL teachers see their work as living out the Gospel call to welcome the stranger.

“The stories my students have told me about what they and their families have been through – fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries – are almost impossible for us in the United States to imagine,” Warden said. “Whether children speak fluent English or not, whether they are from here or not, the Church calls us to open our arms to them, and our duty as Catholic educators is to meet them where they are and put them on a path to success.”