Story by Chris Graham 

Nell Tiller had been teaching high-school Spanish for 20 years - “so I was ready for something new,” she said.

“And this was something new - and this was something that I could do for the community,” said Tiller, a Spanish professor at Blue Ridge Community College who has been teaching classes to police officers and poultry-plant supervisors for 16 years.

Tiller was hired by BRCC in 1991 through a grant funded by Tyson, Rocco and Wampler-Longacre to teach Spanish to those employed in the local poultry industry.”In my first years, I taught Spanish to supervisors in each one of those plants - and had to write the materials because there were no materials to help me,” Tiller said.”It was basically communications things like some gestures and things that would be important to them - plus some culture and some general phrases that I had to write down, such as, Don’t take the earplugs out of your ears, Watch what you’re doing, Be careful, Hello, what is your name. That is what started my career here at Blue Ridge,” Tiller said.

At that time, the Census said there were 5,000 Spanish speakers in the area served by the community college - “and in effect, we knew we had 8,000-plus, because of what the churches were dealing with and what the local community was having to deal with,” Tiller said.

“That was the reason that my position was created. The college, of course, wanted a foreign-language teacher - but they went to the community to find out the needs, and that’s why three poultry industries wanted to buy into this program and pay the salary of this person for three years,” Tiller said.

One thing that Tiller has always made sure of is to have an actual Spanish speaker on hand for her classes for supervisors and police officers - “because that person could tell me if I was using that word correctly, or that we don’t use that word commonly, what words are used commonly, things like that,” Tiller said.

“That caused a big turnaround in relationships between supervisors and employees - because the Hispanics in the plants, for example, were teaching them words, but they were the wrong words, and then they would laugh at them when they used them,” Tiller said.

One of Tiller’s students last fall was Waynesboro police chief Doug Davis - who took a semester of Spanish under Tiller because he feels it is important to be able to communicate with members of the growing Shenandoah Valley Hispanic population.

“I feel that it’s an important thing for me to do - so I can be responsive to that section of our community,” Davis said.

Davis admitted that he had a “rough” go of it at times.

“I feel like I have learned a hundred times more than I knew before I started. But trying to work full time, and with the obligations that I’ve got after hours and things like that, it’s really difficult,” Davis said.

“The most difficult part for anybody, especially when you get older, is the memorization,” Davis said. “I can understand the English part - about subjects and predicates and adjectives and verbs and sentence structure and that kind of stuff. But when it comes down to actually memorizing all of the translations, to me, that’s the toughest thing.”

Davis plans to continue his Spanish-language instruction in the fall.

“The Spanish population has increased here 22 percent in the last five years. And I think it’s important for me to be able to respond to people in their language,” Davis said. “I’m not advocating that we do two languages - that’s not the point. They are new to the country - and they are trying to learn English, and I’m trying to learn Spanish.”

Tiller recalled a recent conversation that she had with one of her undergraduate students that took on a similar tone.

“I was finishing up a class the other day, and I was erasing the board in preparation for another class to come in. And a young man came up to me and said, This is America. We speak English, and everybody who comes here needs to speak English,” Tiller said.

“I said, You know what, you’re exactly right, we are Americans, and we do speak English, and we will speak English. But you know what, I sure do enjoy listening to a conversation in Spanish and knowing what is being said,” Tiller said.

Filed under: 8-January 2007 Issue