Photo by rick walter
LINEUP. Ashley Roth and Alonzo Powell of the Tacoma Rainiers joined students at Lincoln High School (from left, Nqoulim Hing, Marcos Hernandez, Mony Pal, Salvador Pena and Alexjandro Santiago) and their teacher Shannon Ergun for a project in English as a second language class.
Students in Shannon Ergun’s English as a second language (ESL) class at Lincoln High School come from Cambodia, El Salvador and Mexico. To practice writing and speaking English, the students have recently undertaken a research project in sports.
During the time of the project, they have visited Safeco Field, met with golf pros Dan Harrington and Erik Haag from Meadow Park Golf Course, interviewed the communications director of the Tacoma Tide Sports Club, Jon Billings and – this past week – talked with players and representatives of the Tacoma Rainiers, who visited their classroom.
Rainiers hitting coach and former major-leaguer Alonzo Powell and Operations Director Ashley Roth visited Lincoln for two morning ESL classes, in which students interviewed them about how the game is both played and marketed.
Powell, who has played in Japan and other countries outside of the United States, had a special appreciation for the importance of learning to communicate well in different languages. Sitting at a desk among a small circle, Powell fielded questions from where the expression “hot dog” (as in showoff) came from, to which baseball rule he thinks is the worst.
The phrase hot dog, he explained to a student named Marcos, comes from players putting a little “extra” spice into their performance, the way mustard and relish are sloshed over the most traditional food item at the ballpark.
Powell answered questions from the students on everything from rules (the one he hates the most is three strikes; he thinks the game would be much faster with two) to travel to advice for writers preparing for interviews, as the students had.
“It’s great to see these kids working hard on a project like this. I’m sure it makes it fun for them to talk to professionals,” Powell said.
Front office personnel, Roth, and later in the day Marketing Director Annie Shultz, answered questions regarding all the functions that go into the operation of an actual game at Cheney Stadium.
In the afternoon, Rainiers pitcher Andy Baldwin visited classes with Shultz. To make sure the students would relax for the interview, Baldwin introduced himself, as he slid into one of the student desks, by saying, “I’m Andy Baldwin and I am a baseball player.”
Then, after a short pause and some tentative laughter, he added, “and I’m cooler than I look.”
Baldwin was queried mostly on what the life of a professional player is like, and he was generous with his answers as the students wrote into their notebooks.
“The club lets us know about opportunities to get out into the community and I think it is a cool thing to do when you have a little extra time on your hands,” Baldwin said.
There are about 50 students in the ESL classes at Lincoln, and about 20 of them were participating in this project.
In her attempt to bring some excitement to the often less-than-inspiring task of conducting research – and by enlisting local sports personalities to help – Ergun has been able to succeed in generating enthusiasm from her students that helps make the language barrier a little less daunting to cross.
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