Foreigners aren’t alien to the Penobscot School

In a small building in Rockland, the fledgling Penobscot School brings the world to Maine and English to the world.

The non-profit, tax-exempt school, founded in 1987, recently was host to 10 students from five European countries who came to improve their English skills with a three-week course.

The school gives its students the expected English grammar and syntax, along with reading and discussion. But these lessons are put in context through cultural lessons and field trips to places such as a radio station, a rope factory, a house construction site or a boat building shop. Also, the guests speak English with their volunteer host families.

“One of our principles is to give them practical English skills,” said Julia Schulz, the school’s president. “When they go out into the community, they use what they learn in class.”

On one recent day, the textbook was an L.L. Bean catalog and English teacher Ed Dooley was preparing the students for a shopping trip to Freeport that night.

Each student had to read aloud the description of an item he or she planned to buy. Dooley would correct pronunciations or explain the strange American marketing terms as they went along. The students read about duffel bags, Bean boots and “bags for to sleep.”

Pavel Linhart from Czechoslovakia wanted to buy a dog bed, complete with the dalmation accompanying the picture in the catalog.

“But, Pavel, you can’t buy the dog,” Dooley exclaimed.

“I believe everything is possible in America,” said Linhart, undeterred.

The school’s setting is sparse. The building’s main room is dominated by a long table at which the students sit. A piano and music stand rest against one wall while maps of Maine and the United States frame a white wipe-off board on the wall behind Dooley. Video equipment sits on a stand in one corner. At one end of the room sits a small kitchen, where, during the L.L. Bean session, Schulz and the school’s intern, Michelle Merry, prepared a lunch of borscht and ham-and-cheese sandwiches for the students.

Dooley gave the night’s assignment to the class: Ask a question of a Bean’s salesperson. Then they cleared the table for lunch. The borscht was served in mock commemoration of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which happened 22 years ago that day.

Dooley, a high school teacher on sabbatical, enjoyed having such an eager class.

“These are people who have led fascinating, often difficult lives,” Dooley said. “They’re so interested in getting it right, getting all the subtleties, that you cover maybe a third of the material you’d planned to cover. Their being together all day creates a real communal atmosphere.”

Veronique Crouzet of Paris said knowing English better would improve her situation at home.

“To get a good job, you have to know English fluently,” said Crouzet, who quit her job with an agency that promotes the sale of French technology abroad to take the course. “English sounds very direct. It’s an intense national language.”

Crouzet has enjoyed getting to see Mainers in their everyday lives.

“It’s very American to have people meet together,” she said. “We don’t do that much in France.”

Hungarian Dora Letay, a budding actress now at the College of Performing Arts in Bupadest, said that knowing English would help her in a film career.

“I can’t imagine being in my profession without English,” she said. “A lot of talented actresses missed the chance to go abroad before. Since things have opened, I have a big chance to learn English and be oriented in the West. Also, it helps me to meet the very important characters of English literature in their native language.”

Linhart, a director in Radio Prague, has already been adapting English plays for radio and enjoys American literature and poetry. Next, he will go to Washington, D.C., to visit the Voice of America.

“I want to learn English and see all in the USA,” he said. “I want to learn more through experience to help my country.”

The Eastern European students attended the school on scholarship, because of restrictions on their currencies. They still, however, had to pay the cost of their air travel. Schulz said of the 55 applicants, 10 were awarded scholarships for the two sessions this summer. The scholarship program came out of a trip Schulz and her husband, Joseph Steinberger, took to Eastern Europe last March. The school raised $10,000 for the fund, largely through small contributions from Rockland-area residents.

The school also offers classes in foreign languages — including French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Arabic and German — to Mainers.

“I was pleasantly surprised how many qualified teachers there are in this area, and was surprised at the interest in languages,” Schulz said. “These are people who have moved here that have been abroad, and are looking for ways to continue that interest.”

The school also holds lectures, slide shows and dinners, and every June holds an intensive program with a visiting scholar, delving into a country’s language and culture. The lecturers the past two summers have been from China and the Soviet Union.

A small operation on a shoestring budget, the Penobscot School is continuing to evolve.

“There’s no model anywhere for the Penobscot School,” said Steinberger. “We’ve been looking, but we haven’t found anything like it at all.”