New classes are favorite at the track Ron Orwick is a big, hand-waving, demonstrative man who wears his enthusiasm like a Hawaiian shirt. He always wanted to teach and coach, and did so at Butler High School – English, German, math and football. He always like being around horses and parlayed that into being a Churchill Downs hot walker as a kid, a midlevel owner as an adult. He named one hose “Sacred Chariot” solely because it sounded like “Secretariat” coming from the track’s booming, reverberating speakers. Somewhere in there, Orwisk fell in love with Mexico, the Hispanic culture, and the nuance of the Spanish language. All that fell into place this year when Dale Romans, a Churchill Downs trainer and buddy, told Orwick about a new program to teach English to the 1,500 overwhelmingly Hispanic seasonal workers. Orwick, 62, and retired from public school teaching, couldn’t wait to volunteer. “I love it, I literally love it. This is the most enjoyable job I’ve ever had in my life.” The program was developed after conversations between backside officials and the nonprofit Kentucky Derby Museum. This spring the Klein Family Learning Center and WinStar Library and Classrooms opened at the track. Jefferson County Public Schools programs in English as a second language are offered in the evenings. It’s all long been needed; few owners, trainers or veterinarians spoke conversational Spanish; the employees spoke very little English; communication was possible only through a thin chain of people who could speak both. Training mistakes were made that affected horses; upward mobility was impossible for the workers. This was no way to run a multimillion-dollar thoroughbred business. Instant success The learning center – for men, women, and families – was an instant success. “We’ve already had more than 130 students,” said Jennifer Hoert, the center’s director. Her classes – paid for by donations and grants, and taught by volunteers – also include computer training, financial literacy, math, art, quilt-making, and Spanish for those who speak only English. The students are natives of El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Bosnia and Serbia. Many move from track to track and are uncomfortable leaving backside areas to venture into the cities. Many are in the early 20s, have grown up in war and poverty, have six years – or less – of formal education. They are desperate to learn, to find ways to stay here, to someday take a high school equivalency exam, maybe go to college. Their Churchill Downs education comes through a series of four lesson plans, which could easily be exported to learning centers at other tracks to allow some continuity in their mobile lives. “We’ve seen some of that,” Hoert said, “but none of the other tracks have a center like this.” What the teachers find so compelling is their students’ thirst for knowledge; no one has ever dropped out. The student-teacher mix also can be interesting; Marco Ballesteros, a Louisville Methodist minister and native of Mexico City, was teaching English to students from Peru and Guatemala. Orwick told a story of a student from Guatemala who had to drop out of school in the third grade to work in the sugar fields after his father died. Now he will sit two and three hours a day with Orwick, working on English. Orwick finds satisfaction – gratification – in that one-on-one; still teaching; still coaching. He volunteers at Churchill five days a week. He sometimes takes his students out to eat, or to his daughter’s swimming pool. One told Orwick – in Spanish – that he has a “contented heart.” Orwick said the only real thank you he needs is that his students always come back. — Bob Hill, The Courier-Journal , November 30, 2004