ESL classes are improving the workplace

ESL classes are improving the workplace

For years, Baltazar Ruiz avoided paying inside gas stations because he couldn’t tell the attendant which gas pump he was using.

He threw away most of the mail arriving at his home in Le Center, Minn.

Visiting a doctor? A bank? “That was really bad,” he said.

Born in Mexico, Ruiz legally immigrated 34 years ago so he could work and help support 10 siblings back home. But he never fully learned English and that impeded both his home life and his career.

Nearly five years ago, he signed up for a new program at the Cambria countertop plant where he worked in Le Sueur, Minn. The company was offering courses in English as a second language (ESL) as part of participants’ workdays, a leader in Minnesota in the training and only a handful of employers offering it in the state.

Cambria had an ambitious goal: make sure all of its 300 foreign-born workers at the 650-worker factory could read and write English at an eighth-grade level or above. The ESL program was born with one instructor. It now has four teaching 50 classes with a total of 123 workers in Le Sueur and Belle Plaine.

“It was right away, I learned a lot,” said Ruiz, who came into work on his days off to take extra classes.

Learn more about this topic by reading this article on Star Tribune.

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