Students filled the rotunda wearing balloons tethered to their ankles for a game of last man standing, or in this case, the last man with a balloon. Kids ran around, avoiding challenges, often spinning in complete circles to save their balloons. They screamed as each balloon popped one by one into debris.

This would look like organized mass chaos to an outsider, but the language academy uses fun games like this to help new English speaking students get comfortable with each other and make new friends.

Moving to a new environment means spending some time acclimating to that new altitude, climate, or place before you are comfortable. One of the language academy teachers, Tim Ebarb, explained that they meet at Har-Ber in the summer for the same reason. The program gets new English-speaking students accustomed to the school and its classrooms, but also acts as a jumpstart to their year.

“It’s a jumpstart program that attempts to basically give lower level students a head start on the school year. They are immersed in all the different classes. We try to cover the four basic subjects. The first day, we take them around on a tour of the school to try to get them acclimated to the different places because it can be overwhelming,” Ebarb said.

Students come from many different nationalities and backgrounds, like Hugo Flores who is from El Salvador, or Wayne Martin Tut who is from the Marshall islands.

The language academy is also there to help students learn English. There are different levels of proficiency and that is how the students are divided.

“Hopefully by being in a smaller group they’re more comfortable in using the language. We permit them to make mistakes, and learn from their mistakes. We try to let them learn at their pace, and we reinforce the positive. We tested them the first day that they were here. We split them up into the beginner level, the intermediate level and the early advanced level and that is how they are divided,” Ebarb said.

The program is completely voluntary and it teaches English to the students. In fact, one of the students, John Junior, said he came to the summer school because he wanted to learn more English.

“I don’t have to come to the summer school but I asked my teacher if I could come and they told me that I could come. I do the same thing that they [other students] are doing,” Junior said.

One of the reasons Junior likes the language academy is because of the teachers and how hard they work, but he also likes making new friends and helping them.

“The teachers are good to us and they work hard. They want to teach us more English and prove to us that we can go to the next level. I have made a lot of friends this last year and the year before that. This year, I met the new students and I help them by talking with them in English,” Junior said.

The students of the language academy have their head start to a year full of learning. Though they come from different places, they all share the commonality of learning English and making new friends while they adjust to this new environment.