Students come from places as far away as Togo and Nepal. Within a single classroom, a teacher may encounter speakers of as many as fifteen languages, including Dari from Afghanistan, Telugu and Malayalam from Southern India and Amharic from Ethiopia. There are two terms per year, one in the Spring , the other in the Fall. Each class runs for about fourteen weeks, with two sessions a week, amounting to twenty-eight sessions per term. In the classrooms, vocabulary and grammar are conveyed through lessons about every day situations, such as going to the doctor or the supermarket, or renting an apartment.
Emphasis is placed on learning how to speak and understand.
All students receive a full introduction to the library and its services and are taken on a tour of the library. They register for library cards and are encouraged to return and take advantage of all other library services. The New Americans Program also offers ESOL Literacy classes designed to meet the needs of non-English speakers who have less than four years of schooling in their own language. These students would have difficulty entering the standard Beginning Level ESOL class because of their lack of basic literacy skills. In these classes they learn the fundamental skills necessary to succeed academically in the standard series of ESOL courses.