ESL really looked at as a second language?

A few days ago, I got into a conversation with a teacher who told me many people that work at her school over look ESL and tend to not think of  it as a second language.  They simply think of it as a normal class and don’t really put much emphasis into it like they do with other foreign language classes. I told her that this was very interesting to me because obviously  people who do not know English and who are learning it for the first time would consider it to be a foreign language to them.  However, I do understand where this notion would come from. Because English for most of us is the dominant language, we naturally tend to think of it as “the norm” and not think of it as a foreign language for some. In my opinion, this needs to change. Just  like foreign languages help us to communicate with more people in our daily lives as well as give us a whole new outlook on a culture, the same goes for people who are learning English. They too are trying to communicate with us as well as gain an outlook on our American culture. This is important because when all is said and done, our actions as well as theirs all work together to unite us as one and when one group is singled out such as people in ESL classes, this is not able to happen. I think that people who feel this way about ESL should look into it again. It is just as important as any other foreign language.