Lehman High School sophomore Laura Coronado, a member of the Lobo New Arrival Center, works with ease recording and playing back her voice while mastering English at her desk with the help of an iPod Touch. (Photo by Jim Cullen)

by JIM CULLEN

Lehman High School teacher Jennifer Hernandez is one of the first people non-English-speaking students get to know when they arrive at Lehman High School. She’s not a front-door greeter, but her role in a number of high school students’ lives is critical to their future.

The Lobos’ New Arrival Center (N.A.C.) serves as a center for new arrivals to the country and a comfortable haven for students to begin to become conversant in their new language. The teacher’s reassuring “touch” is clear in this room.

But Hernandez does have some new technology at her disposal – thanks to an Education Foundation innovative teaching grant – that makes the new arrivals’ day-to-day work more readily accessible. It’s also more encouraging for student-to-student and student-to-teacher exchanges. A classroom set of iTouches is the innovative approach Hernandez is using and the success she’s having with the grant-funded technology is clear.

“Mobile Minds” was the name of the 2009 grant proposal Hernandez submitted. She argued that the iTouch technology would allow her students to hear themselves and each other – played back in seconds. The speed with which the playbacks take place, coupled with earphones, enable students to privately record themselves and share the recording with Hernandez and their fellow students without typical embarrassment.

On a mid-May day, as the school year’s close approached, students in the class appeared more interested in hearing a verbal distinction Hernandez was modeling than they were about what they were going to do when school is out. Exchanges between the teacher and each student were quick, positive and lacking predictably self-conscious giggles.

“It’s normal for students learning a new language to be reluctant to speak in front of others,” Hernandez said, “but with the iTouches, they get to where it’s no big deal to be talking to themselves and quickly sharing what they’ve said – and how they’ve said it – with another student who’s offering them their own recording.”