Two Jersey City teens are building a space for community with global impact

Co-founder of Words Beyond Worlds, Eza Iqbal, is shown teaching young boy at the TongYan Chinese School. (Photo Courtesy of Eza Iqbal for Public Square Amplified)

Jersey City teenagers Eza Iqbal and Arjun Krishnakumar, both children of immigrants, sometimes turned translating for their parents into a game. At school, they watched classmates be pulled out for English-language instruction and thought the single period of instruction could not possibly be enough.

When Iqbal received her Heart of the City Essay Competition award at the Jersey City Public Library, she met Liyun Ma, principal of the TongYan Chinese School. Ma was there to talk about her experiences expanding cultural awareness and the TongYan school. Iqbal began telling Ma about her idea for a language learning program, Words Beyond Worlds. Their shared appreciation for building community space and fostering language learning was realized.

As then-sophomores, Iqbal and Krishnakumar were able to put their ideas for a supplementary tutoring model into action through a pilot program at the school. By the summer of 2023, Iqbal and Krishnakumar started their own program for helping English learners, right from their home computers. 

They developed a curriculum and diagnostics, set up their website, and started teaching with the help of fellow students from their high school, McNair Academic High School in Jersey City. Now their program, Words Beyond Worlds, has a team of 60 New Jersey-based students tutoring over 1,000 people, both adults and children, across 15 different countries for free. 

Liyun Ma has a ten-year-old son who is in his second year in the program and says the program has helped foster a strong sense of community. 

“He’s doing semi-private lessons this semester because he likes to do that with his friend,” she said of her son. “He and his friend grew up together, but now they’re in different schools. So, this tutoring program is the only time they can see each other. I feel this serves as a connection for them, to bring them together. Once a week, they can meet, they can do some learning together, and they’re happy to see their friends.”

The sense of community extends beyond the program’s students. Krishnakumar adds, “It helps our tutors as well because many of them were ESL students when they were younger. We try to make sure that each tutor is tutoring the same student every week [not only] so that they can track their progress, but also so they can become closer and have someone to talk to.”

Tutors left to right, Miles Agle, Mason Margolis, and Zack Aziz from McNair Academic High School teach a student during classes at the Jersey City Pavonia Branch Public Library. (Photo Courtesy of Eza Iqbal for Public Square Amplified)

The program builds upon New Jersey’s existing education provisions for English language learning students. A 2021 Consortium for Immigrant Children study found that over one-third of 80 survey participants, including bilingual and ESL educators, administrators, and counselors, reported a lack of compliance with state regulations for English learning students.

Language accommodations were often not met, only sometimes met, or only feeble solutions such as Google Translate were offered. Participants also reported a failure to communicate to parents in a language they can understand through accessible formats, which the New Jersey Department of Education requires.

The New Jersey Department of Education defines an English as a second language program as “a daily class period of second-language acquisition instruction within an LIEP (Language Instruction Educational Program) and based on a student’s English language proficiency that teaches the English language development standards and incorporates the cultural aspects of the student's experiences in their ESL instruction.”

The Consortium confirmed the study represented its most up-to-date data on the matter but declined to comment in greater detail on the current landscape of ESL regulations.

Ma notes that class size is an issue with ESL classes. In her experience as a principal, Ma said, “Many students in public schools have such a big class size, and so they don’t get that kind of individual teaching or assessment. And it’s not good when these students aren’t proficient in the language, and their parents aren’t either.”

The Words Beyond Worlds curriculum supports free-flowing lessons between tutors and tutees. This allows tutors discretion, said Prabhjit Singh, an 18-year-old who has been the curriculum designer since December 2023. 

Singh was born in India and raised in Jersey City. He described his experience as a tutor to Public Square. “When I tutor, I like to do spelling bees and debates with my kids. I really try to engage with them through English in that sense,” he said. “a lot of what my experience has been with children here in Jersey City is that they know English, so it’s more about honing it.”

Tutor Rayana Ba, Curriculum Directors Mithul Kesavan and Prabhjit Singh, and Co-Founders Eza Iqbal and Arjun Krishnakumar teach virtual classes with adult students from Mali, in partnership with the Tandana Foundation. (Photo Courtesy of Eza Iqbal for Public Square Amplified)

The program’s recipients range in age. Most in-person instruction occurs at local schools with younger children, while most virtual instruction is with adults abroad. This is often facilitated through partnerships with adult language learning programs across the globe, such as The Tandana Foundation, and closer to home, like Make the Road. 

The curriculum varies. Singh emphasized that instruction among younger students supports the existing English instruction within their school. In contrast, instruction abroad emphasizes equipping adults with the tools needed to navigate life in a country where English is the primary language: filling out forms, seeking employment, and learning how to ask for help, among other things. 

“We look at what’s practical for them and get their feedback. So, for example, in Mali, the program we collaborated with said, ‘We want students to learn practical skills that could help them within the real world.’ So it goes back to how we can use the resources we have to ensure the students can do what impacts them the most,” explained Singh. 

Supporting English language learners is essential, as language barriers stand at the intersection of many different needs for people entering the country. 

“Sometimes I feel like I learned English, not American, if you get what I mean,” said Dalya Scezeran, an immigrant to the United States from Turkey and current freshman at Brandeis University. She continued, “I learned English from instructors much older than me, in their sixties or seventies. If I had had someone my age or near my age to teach me English, I would have developed a better cultural grasp of English. I would have acclimated better in coming to the U.S.”

“By going through this program [as a tutor] and getting involved with the kids from immigrant families, they feel a greater appreciation of what they have and face. It benefits both sides,” said Ma, speaking from her observations of the instruction as both a parent and principal.

As for Iqbal and Krishnakumar, alongside expansion, their goal is to hand down the program to new leadership and continue to allow the space to foster community.