By KAYLA J. MARSH
Staff Writer
RED BANK — A donation made by Middletown High School South’s Spanish Honor Society has helped the Mental Health Association of Monmouth County’s Red Bank Resource Network gather the necessary tools and supplies to initiate a new English as a Second Language (ESL) class.
The class is being held in partnership with The SOURCE at Red Bank Regional High School to provide an environment in the community for students to practice their communication and support the development of English language skills after school hours.
“We are on their advisory council and they are on ours and they were talking about the needs of the Red Bank community … and said they have a number of students who could use some extra support for English language in the community,” said Jessica Kostenblatt, Coordinator of the Red Bank Resource Network.
“They were willing to put in the time and the effort and the research and wanted to establish a class and they were looking for someone to kind of join them.”
Moving to their new offices at 103 Drs. James Parker Blvd., Suite B in Red Bank, enabled the Red Bank Resource Network to assist.
“We had just recently moved to a bigger space … and included in the space is a back conference room and so I said we have the space now we can help support this class,” Kostenblatt said.
“All these students are in ESL classes at the school, but that extra help after school can be really beneficial.”
A timely and generous donation from the Spanish Honor Society at Middletown High School South supported the new class initiative and helped to meet the needs of the community.
“Valerie Barney, who is a World Languages teacher and advisor to the Spanish Honor Society at Middletown South, reached out and said she heard about Red Bank Resource Network and said [the society] would like to support any programming we had going on,” Kostenblatt said.
“It just so happened that we’d just launched this new initiative to start the ESL class with Red Bank Regional High School right here in our town and so I said ‘you know Valerie we actually do have something that we are just starting brand new that we haven’t done before that we definitely need materials for’ and so she asked me a few more questions and brought it back to the kids and they agreed to help us turn our conference room into a classroom.
“They got us a whiteboard and stand, they got us markers and erasers and they got us two boxes of school supplies that have basically funded our class.”
Kostenblatt said the new class is a new, free eight-week ESL program for Red Bank Regional High School students and is currently place until May.
“Red Bank Regional assessed the needs of the kids in their school and reached out to their community partners and we were able to help them and partner with them to meet those needs of the students,” she said.
Two community volunteers, lead teacher Gianna Cusanelli, and assistant teacher, Luke Roskowinski are leading the class, donating their time and expertise.
“[The donation] couldn’t have been at a better time,” Kostenblatt said. “We were very lucky and they were so positive they came here and delivered it all to us.
“They made the donation to us over the course of a couple of weeks and did a collection at the school of materials so we were able to give every kid a notebook, folder, lots of writing utensils and they even donated a plant so we could make our space pretty for our first class.
“It’s rare that a donation calls you and are willing to meet an immediate need and they were able to meet an immediate need that we had, plus support something that is exciting and new … so it worked out … and it is great this is the kind of stuff we can now offer to the community [in our bigger building] and all this is free to the students and that is even better.”
