Helen Green knows what it’s like to stand in a sea of people and not understand a single word being said around her.
It happened a little more than two decades ago when she landed in Japan where she was to teach English to local students.
“I got into Osaka — I was with my sister — and I looked up and it was just a wall of Japanese faces coming toward me and there wasn’t a person who could understand anything that I would say to them.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh my goodness what are we doing here,’” laughs Green, who despite that jittery start taught in Japan for six years, after which she started her very own privately-operated English-as-a-second-language (ESL) and home-stay school on Prince Edward Island.
From that pioneering point, she eventually became co-owner of Study Abroad Canada Language Institute (SACLI) in Charlottetown, which this year has more than 240 students; half of whom are newcomers to P.E.I. learning English, while the other half are students from places like Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Mexico who are keen for a cultural adventure while they learn.
Green’s segue from teaching English in Japan to running a private ESL school started when she noticed that the Japanese students who had studied English abroad weren’t really improving.
“(I discovered that) they live in dorms and so they spoke Japanese all the time. So combined with my experience with a wonderful home stay in Japan I thought, ‘Why not do home stay and language training here (in P.E.I.)?’” she remembers.
And so with virtually no experience in business, Green brought four students to the Island in the summer of 1994 for a combined home-stay and study experience through Helen’s Home Stay and English School in Tryon.
“I thought ‘Build it and they will come.’ I honestly thought that would happen, but it didn’t. I kept on meeting with people who were involved with tourism, especially the Japanese, but the numbers didn’t come,” Green admits.
“And then I started doing some research and I realized how competitive a world it is. That were no ESL schools on P.E.I. (at that time), but there were across Canada . . . and everybody sees Toronto and Vancouver as the two main destinations.”
A year later she attended an education fair at the Canadian embassy in Tokyo and went head-to-head with the bigwig language schools to promote her small P.E.I. business, which had one thing the others did not — access to the land of Anne of Green Gables.
“It was the attraction at that time 15 years ago,” Green remembers.
“And what I’ve learned since then is it depends on the country (for) what you need to market: so in Japan, Anne of Green Gables is my selling feature; in Mexico, safety is my selling feature.”
That trip to Japan put her in touch with education travel agents who market this type of adventure vacation.
Green eventually joined forces with Patrick Davis and Paula Clark, who had a language school in Park Corner. The couple left the language school business about three years ago. Green now operates Study Abroad Canada with business partner Sherry Huang.
“The business has changed a lot in 15 years. Before, we were selling language training and that was it — learn English and go back to (your home country). Now the students are wanting to do language and higher education; they are wanting to do English and then stay and study at UPEI or learning English and go to high school.”
To that end, Study Abroad Canada now has a contract with the provincial Department of Education so it can recruit students for high school.
At present, there are 20 international students studying at Colonel Gray, Charlottetown Rural and Bluefield high schools.
“They’re paying international fees to study in our high schools and they’re staying with home-stay families for the full year . . . ,” Green says.
“There are amazing spin-offs. We now have home-stay families who have welcomed students from southeast Asia and now we’re starting to go into Eastern Europe.”
Home-stay families are paid for their participation, but that is not the reason they become involved.
“It’s a real cultural (experience). A lot of the (home-stay) families who have younger children, they love it because it’s such an education to learn about Korea or whatever country their student is coming from,” Green says.
The students who come to P.E.I. to study English basically fit into two categories: serious language learners who want to study English intensively so they can continue on to college or university and those who want to play while they learn and have a unique P.E.I. cultural experience.
“(The latter are) coming for four weeks (during the summer months) and they’re coming to learn English, but they want to see Anne of Gables house, they want to go to the beach and go kayaking or fishing,” Green says.
Study Abroad Canada recently embarked upon its largest trade mission to date, which was its first venture into Russia, Ukraine and Turkey in October 2011.
“The emerging markets are where there is a growing middle class economy, and they are people who are interested in education outside of their home country,” Green says.
A preliminary visit from a representative to P.E.I. from Russia may open the doors to winter education sessions in the future.
“That’s where Russia is interesting because they’re not afraid of our winters. They’re used to that so coming to P.E.I. for a winter camp, learning English and doing winter activities is an easy sell, whereas I know in Taiwan when I try to sell that people think they’re going to freeze to death,” Green grins.
Even to this day she knows what it’s like to be unable to communicate with those around her so she makes sure the welcome for her students-from-away is extra special.
“Going into Russia, Ukraine and Turkey (recently), that was frustrating again (for me) because I didn’t even know how to say hello, thank you or please . . . ,” Green reflects.
“But you know there’s still this human nature of a smile and a good handshake and you connect with people. That’s what I’ve found that so many times, yes, you don’t understand the language, but you can still get a connection there. A smile or a twinkle in the eye and things can move on.”
