More than a dozen students in the town’s ESL class visited the Connecticut Historical Society to view an exhibit on the immigration of Chinese boys.

Submitted

On Thursday night, Nov. 10, 2022, West Hartford’s Advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) class visited the Connecticut Historical Society (CHS) to learn more about the current exhibit, “Journeys: Boys of the Chinese Educational Mission.” One of CHS’ Museum Educators explained the history as they viewed the exhibit.

Joe Viola, their teacher, assigned the Hartford Courant article about this exhibit to his advanced students to read. Most of his students are from China, and were very interested in learning more and did further research. Their curiosity led to last Thursday night’s visit.

Students in the town’s Adult ESL Program come from countries all over the world, live in West Hartford and attend classes in the program to learn English. In addition to China, students in this class are from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Columbia, Taiwan, Tibet and Ukraine.

This is the first of what the town and CHS hope to be many joint visits in which ESL students will learn more about the history of Connecticut.

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