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Surry’s Language Guru
Shares Enthusiasm with Students
Would you like to
brush up on your high school French? Pick up some conversational
Italian? How about a little Swahili, Chinese, or Scottish Gallic?
Wayne Smith listens intently to students in a Spanish class he
offers at Learning Unlimited.
Smith uses various visual aids to make points during his foreign
language classes. |
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DEER IS |
If so, you need to
talk to Wayne Smith, who lives in Surry and runs a language school
called “Learning Unlimited.”
Smith has a varied
and learned background in languages. He holds a bachelor’s degree
in French and Portuguese, a master’s in East Asian studies and a
second master’s in deaf education and linguistics.
He spent a number
of years in Taiwan, where he taught English as a second language,
learned Chinese, the Taiwanese dialect, and Taiwan Sign Language.
Although he grew up
in Massachusetts
and Florida, Smith’s ancestors on his father’s side were from Surry.
In 1883, his great-grandfather, Manoel Gaspar, bought the home Smith
now owns on the North Bend Road. Smith’s great aunt Ruth Conary,
with whom he had a very close relationship, lived in the house when
he was younger, and he used to come up to visit her and his cousins
as often as he could. In 1991, after his aunt’s death, he bought the
family home and moved to Surry.
At first, Smith was
unemployed. “All I could do was teach foreign language,” he said,
so he began by teaching an adult education class, doing private
tutoring and substitute teaching.
In 1992, he started
his own school in a rented space on Main Street in Ellsworth. After
two years, he had fixed up a room in his Surry home, which needed “a
lot of work,” and moved the school to that room. He gained students
by word of mouth.
In April of this
year, he completed a new school building on property next to his
house.
It has “tremendous
room,” he said, not only classrooms and office space, but
bookshelves for his many books and storage space for his materials.
In addition to teaching there himself, he rents the space to other
teachers, and there are now art classes and writing classes in
addition to language classes at the school.
Smith said he loves
the Surry area, which is “not too heavily populated” (“I have
squirrels and deer for neighbors, and I like that.” Yet it is
central to Ellsworth, Bucksport,
Mount Desert Island
and the Blue Hill peninsula.
He is currently
teaching three university extension courses in Ellsworth and Bangor
in addition to the classes he teaches at his school.
Smith said he can
hold conversations comfortably in eight different languages and get
by in a number of more. What is unique about Smith is that he is
willing to teach any language, even ones he doesn’t know yet,
learning them along with his students.
He is now teaching
and learning Hebrew, which is his 24th language in 10 years. Less
than three months ago, he began to study Scottish Gallic, traveling
to Cape Breton to be immersed in the language and culture.
Smith’s passion for
languages is clear.
“I get all excited
[to learn a new language]” he said, “It’s fun—I love it.” |
