VOLUNTEER STORIES

Meredith Smith and Jenna Serghini joined St. James ESL in August as the new Literacy Americorps members.

Meredith Smith, ESL Tutor

Literacy* Americorps Member

Meredith Smith tutors employees at Lighthouse for the Blind, a group she describes as a "unique and verdant mix". Teaching English to this group of blind, visually impaired, and sighted students can be challenging. "Teaching vocabulary is quite difficult, but I have found that using tactile strategies leads to better results."

In a lesson on sequencing, Meredith taught target words like ‘first,’ ‘second,’ and ‘then.’ "To help them practice, I had them make trail mix, in a certain order, following directions and using one ingredient at a time. Using their hands helped them stay focused and interact with my targets." At the YWCA in Auburn, her students are older immigrants and refugees from Russia, the Ukraine, Somalia, Mexico and Korea. "...they have an incredible wealth of experience that they bring to each class," she says. To teach them how to give and receive directions she built a small obstacle course. Using their new vocabulary the students guided each other through the course. Later, she had them practice the vocabulary in their journals, where they had to write the directions from their house to the YWCA. "There is so much excitement with all of my students...The enthusiasm the students bring to class easily outweigh the challenges."

Jenna Serghini, ESL Tutor

Literacy* Americorps Member

Jenna Serghini tutors two groups in South Seattle. One group, mostly Burmese, Somalian and Eritrean women, speak little or no English and cannot read or write in their own language. She describes the group dynamic as “very serious about learning English. They are easily frustrated until they realize they can do it.” “There is a lot of repetition of basic things they really need to know. What is your name? Where are you from? My previous class was at a higher level, they could ask someone to rephrase a question, but these students don’t have those tools yet.” A lot of writing exercises can overwhelm them, many have hardly held pencils, so she uses a different approach. “Your drawing skills have to be pretty good,” Jenna laughs.

In one lesson she asked her students to draw their favorite foods. She demonstrated how they could draw a chicken, a goat, a sheep. Then she tried to explain the difference between cow and beef and why you wouldn’t say, “I like to eat cow.” “The reward is the grateful feeling you get from students just for caring about them…trying to teach them something they need.”

STUDENT STORIES

Now I Raise my Hand

Lupita Zamora started tutoring three years ago after an interpreter at Harborview Medical Center told her about the program. She knew that the one-to-one instruction was better for her than learning English in a class, “I think the personal learn is better for me. My problem is listening to people. People talk quickly and shorten words. My tutor will explain the difference; this is professional talking, this is casual talking. I have questions, my tutors says what questions you have.”

Lupita spends her time working and volunteering in the community: with domestic violence victims at Consejo Counseling Service, with parishioners at St. Mary’s, and with Spanish speakers about the city’s recycling program. When she first moved to Seattle, her lack of English made it difficult for her to volunteer. Being involved in the community meant participating in meetings and civic forums where everyone spoke English. She could only understand a few words and wasn’t sure how to ask questions.

Her tutoring lessons are often based on the volunteer workshops and community meetings she attends. “I prefer St. James ESL because it is more personal. More attention. I practice talking, reading and writing. For example, my tutor say, Lupita, take the blackboard and write a discussion on what you did yesterday. She supervises me, she review every homework.” Now, when Lupita attends volunteer meetings or community forums she understands what is being said. Now she raises her hand to ask questions.

Currently she is facilitating county-wide focus groups in Spanish with new Latino parents. Her goal is to moderate a forum on immigrant development in English, to lead the discussion and answer questions. For Lupita, learning to speak English means being able to connect with more people and become more involved in helping the community.■

I Don't Drink My Tea with Honey

Alexis Bloom, ESL Tutor
Literacy* Americorps

Shocked, Habiba’s mouth drops open as she raises a hand to her cheek, perplexed and disgusted. I’ve just told her I sweeten my tea with honey. Oh, the horrors! Apparently, she has never put honey in her tea and has no intention of doing so. Later, when she points to ingredients she regularly combines, I make my own horrified expression, half-serious, half-teasing as the other students laugh at my overly-dramatic antics.

Most of our lessons are fun and light-hearted like this, though there are certainly moments of frustration and confusion. None of these women, three Somali refugees and one Ethiopian, have been educated formally. None are able to read or write in their native language. With little more than one year of teaching ESL, I am faced with the challenging task of teaching these amazing, dedicated women how to speak, listen, read, and write in English.

I try to keep the class fun, engaging, and practical; I want their first formal education experience to be positive. The concept of an object or idea represented two-dimensionally on a page is foreign to some of them so I use materials that are real-life, tangible objects they can see, touch, hear, smell and sometimes taste.

To practice using “I like…” I brought in food items and lined them up neatly along the desk, from pasta to lemons to ginger. For lessons on money, I used kidney beans to teach quantity before bringing in a jar of coins. As they begin to understand and speak more English, I will introduce written letters, sounds, and words.

Someday, maybe Habiba will be able to describe Somali foods using a few simple sentences or tell about the time she learned that people in America do things differently, like sweeten their tea with honey. ■

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The enthusiasm the students bring to class easily outweighs the challenges.

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