Volunteer Explorer

When I was six or so, I had to memorize a string of nine numbers. About a year earlier, I had learned to count to one hundred by rote as a requirement for entering kindergarten at the public school. My oldest brother, Mike, helped me with both of these tasks, as well as tying my shoes, another pre-req for kindergarten. The string of nine numbers was broken into chunks of three numbers, two numbers, and four numbers. Mike had me repeat each chunk over and over until I had each one tattooed on my mind and could call it forth on command. Of course, I was learning my Social Security number. There is little a person can accomplish in the US without a Social Security number. School enrollment, bank accounts, any kind of credit, and all interactions with local, state, and federal government require it. In grad school, we graduate assistants had to type the last four digits of our SSNs into the copy machine for it to function. And it tallied our paper usage according to the number, re...

I think Karma has a vision problem. That sounds like an incredibly deep statement, until you realize that Karma is the name I am using for one of the adult students in the Basic Life Skills ESOL class I volunteer in. He is tall and thin and shy, usually seated next to his wife, who is much more adept at speaking and understanding English, and who always feeds him the answers to questions in class. I include him in my small group work when I can—sometimes he won’t join us or goes to the bathroom for half an hour instead. I once had him copy all the letters of the alphabet on his own; it took him forty-five minutes to get through letter G. Yesterday, we worked on the days of the week. Susan had distributed a hand-out with calendar grids that had different days of the week marked with an X, topped by the question “what day is it?”; the students were to identify which day of the week was marked, then write the sentence, “it is Monday (etc.)” after it. I circulated among the ...

So I graduated last week. I mean I really graduated: wore a cap and gown and Master’s hood, listened to speeches, heard my name called after the words “receiving the Master of Fine Arts,” walked across a stage, and shook the hand of the university’s president. My family took me out for a special dinner afterward; we took pictures and exchanged cards for my graduation, mother’s day, my husband’s birthday. After that heady weekend of lofty speeches and heartfelt congratulations, I’ve experienced a lull. I am now officially unemployed. I do not know how to handle that. I’ve been a student for almost eight years. Before that, I went from job to job with no downtime in between. From the time I finished high school until last weekend, I was unemployed for maybe a total of three months. And that’s over a span of some twenty-five years. No wonder I feel at loose ends now. A lot of people have asked me over the past few weeks: “what’s next?” I’m sure these people have the best of inten...

Susan has me doing small group work with some of the students in the second half of our class time during this fall session. She picks out four or five students who have the most difficulty producing words and sentences on their own, students who consistently depend on a neighbor to prompt them with the words in English or Nepali before they speak. My job is to go extra slow with these students, to have them repeat simple questions and answers over and over, so they can build some confidence in their own speaking capabilities rather than just repeat the sounds others make. I am also correcting small mistakes in syntax and pronunciation to help them form better foundational habits in their rudimentary English and avoid long-term linguistic problems. Here's what that looks like: Burka is Saraswati's husband. Saraswati is really sharp, and rather proficient in her English skills. When we worked with counting coins, she was the quickest in the class, both with the nam...

New Class, Same as the Old Class The summer ESOL class ended in August, and we took two weeks off. In that interim, I resumed classes and my assistantship at the university, observed Labor Day, and had the first of many nervous break-downs about my thesis project. On September 9th, my eighteenth wedding anniversary, we began the fall session of Basic Life Skills. The traffic outside the International Institute was a little more hectic than it had been over the summer; yellow school zone lights flashed in front of Findley Elementary school, slowing my progress up the hill of Tallmadge Avenue. It was a mild summer, but now humid air lies thick and heavy over Akron, swelling wooden door frames, frizzing hair, and shortening people's fuzes. My walk down the basement stairs of the Institute today is a welcome descent into chilled, curry-scented respite. We have twenty students today from our summer class, and I remember all but one of their names--Ratna did not come ev...

At the beginning of each ESOL class, Susan, our instructor, writes her name and my name on the white board under the heading 'teachers.' She then writes the words 'speaking, listening, writing, reading' in a list.  "My name is Susan Woodworth. First name Susan; last name Woodworth," she says, pointing to the words with her finger. Then she'll do the same with my name. "We are teachers," she says, pointing out the pluralizing s . "There are two teachers in the classroom today." The students seem to be fascinated by my last name. I'll be standing there, off to the side of the three rows of folding tables, attention fixed on the white board, and I'll hear it.  Cebula. Cebula. se-BOO-lah . SEH-boo-leh . Cebulacebulacebulacebula. I'll look around and three or four of the students will be looking at the white board, or at Susan, fairly expressionless, just repeating the sounds of my last name, qu...

Today, Yadhap and I made paper airplanes and tossed them around during class. Well, I mostly paid attention and helped the other students while Yadhap threw paper airplanes at me, though occasionally I couldn't help but throw one back at him. I have never been good at making paper airplanes. Mine usually take an immediate nose-dive into the ground, smacking down with remarkable force and crumpling into an unrecognizable clump. But for some reason, today's effort was successful. Maybe it was because I didn't give it much thought. Yadhap was already laboring over his when I arrived, forcing way too many folds into a damp, limp ball of smashed paper. I suggested we each start with fresh paper. As I folded my sheet length-wise, Yadhap immediately began criticizing my work. "You're doing it wrong." I folded one corner into the fold. "That's not going to work." I brought the opposite corner into the fold, mirroring the first and creating...