Tim Steller's column: Tucson concrete company pays workers to learn English

"Quiet," Ochoa, 51, told the room, imitating a stern teacher and prompting the attendees to laugh. "Listen."

Ochoa went on to talk off the cuff about his favorite baseball player of all time: Fernando Valenzuela, the former major league pitcher who was from near Navojoa, Sonora, where Ochoa grew up. He didn't use any photos or videos or words on the screen next to him as help. 

He just spoke extemporaneously — in English. 

Ochoa is one of about three dozen employees of Escalante Concrete who the company has put through English lessons since January 2024 as part of a new initiative with the local nonprofit group Literacy Connects. On Wednesday, they celebrated the end of their latest eight-week session, which Ochoa took part in.

His classmates, too, did presentations in English, several of them on baseball themes, including one employee who also makes baseball bats as a side job. 

It's all part of a relatively unusual project, paid for by the 280-employee company, where everyone hired is first run through the government's E-Verify system to confirm eligibility to work. The idea is to help monolingual Spanish-speaking employees become proficient in the language most spoken by customers, inspectors and other people the company must communicate with. 

It all started when an employee said he got a job offer from another company and was thinking of leaving, said company CEO Lori Escalante. She and others at Escalante thought he would need to speak English to get that job. She then started wondering if they could help him and other employees move up within their own company by learning English.

Soon after, in late 2023, human resources assistant Angela Sanchez began speaking with representatives of Literacy Connects. There was a strong connection, said Jennifer Stanowski, director of workforce development at the agency. 

"We met, and it was like love at first sight – such an incredible company," Stanowski said.

But Literacy Connects hadn't done this kind of thing for many years, so they had to gradually come up with a plan, including Escalante paying the group's costs for the lessons.

"We created a price structure," Lori Escalante said. "They didn't even know what to charge us."

That was in part because Literacy Connects usually relies on volunteers, but ended up hiring teachers for these classes, Stanowski said. Now the group is carrying out a similar project at Tucson Medical Center, teaching English to hospital employees. 

At Escalante, once they decided to go ahead, they needed to figure out how and what to teach. Much of that work fell to master teacher Erik Yoder.

"It's not like any other class I've taught," Yoder said. "This was a chance to develop a curriculum tailored to them."

Yoder figured out what to teach, in part, by going out one day to work sites with project manager Ornaldo Tarazon. He learned about post-tension slabs and other industry concepts and vocabulary that employees needed to learn the English for. He also consulted the students.

They ended up doing sessions not just on the key language for their concrete work but also on skills like using Craigslist, going to the Motor Vehicle Division, going to banks and hospitals, shopping for cars and talking with police or emergency responders. 

They hold the two-hour classes twice a week for eight weeks, about an hour after the workday ends at 2 p.m., except during the summer's overwhelming heat. Not only did Escalante pay for the classes, the company also paid the employees overtime to take the classes and hired an employee's wife to make meals to eat during the classes.

"It’s pretty good, because they put class, food and pay – everything is perfect," Ochoa said. "You come here and they pay overtime for you."

While Ochoa is a 22-year veteran of the company, his colleague and classmate Jose Perez is a relative newcomer, with five years living in Tucson and four years with the company. Like Ochoa, Perez is from Sonora — in Perez's case, from Altar in the northwest of the state.

During his presentation on baseball, Perez talked about how living alone in Tucson is strange, but he solves that problem by going out with his baseball glove to play. 

"I play baseball with one team, but currently I play slow pitch with a lot of teams," Perez told me after the ceremony.

He rates his English comprehension at about 60% but hopes to improve it and open his horizons.

"In the future I want to be supervisor maybe. If the company give me opportunity, I take it," he said.

For Ochoa, a father of four, the classes have not just opened up new opportunities for him at work, but also new horizons at home.

His children speak native English, but Spanish is the predominant language at home.

"Me and my wife speak Spanish, but she and my sons speak English," Ochoa said, gesturing to his daughter, Fernanda, who attended Wednesday's ceremony. 

Fernanda Ochoa, 19, and her siblings might speak Spanish or English with each other, but always spoke Spanish with their parents. Not necessarily anymore. 

Before, she said, "He would speak (English) but it would just be words, you know. But now he can have, like, a full-on conversation."

It's these personal changes that motivate Lori Escalante as much as anything. As a result of these classes, one employee was able to attend and understand his child's parent-teacher conferences for the first time, she said. 

The value was clear to her early on, Escalante told the group at the ceremony, when she overheard the classes from her office.

"I knew this was going to be something special when I heard you guys laughing — the warmth and the camraderie."

Of course, that warmth is also the product of the company culture itself. In 2022, Lori Escalante began the process of turning ownership of Escalante Concrete over to employees. Over 25 years, the shares of the company will all be distributed to employees through an employee stock ownership plan, she said. 

As to the language classes, Escalante explained, "We love those guys, and they love the company. It’s a win-win. I want them to feel they have a future, and not just feel they have a future but have a genuine future with the company."