Before the pandemic, my volunteering life had settled into a comfortable mix of involvements that included being a teachers' aide for in-person English for Speakers of Other Languages classes -- ESOL, which used to be called ESL -- at two different agencies within walking distance of my apartment. At the International Institute of New England (IINE), I worked in a Level 3 class for immigrants. The students had enough English to crack jokes and tell stories, and I loved working with them and with Clyde, a true Renaissance man who taught English as a second job after a 9-5 day working in tech. The other class, Level 1 at Jewish Vocational Services, taught recent refugees and immigrants the basics of English, from the names for food items to how to tell time, how to make phone calls, and conversation they would need at work or at school or at a doctor's office. Jessica, a creative and compassionate instructor, taught me everything I needed to know to be useful, as I'd never been in a beginner class before. The hard work put in by these students, whose lives were often complicated in ways most of us cannot imagine, left me awestruck.
Now I am virtual. So, too, are the teachers and students. I'm no longer at IINE, but currently working in two JVS classes on Zoom. The Level 2 class focuses on job readiness. A recent influx of refugees from Afghanistan joined men and women from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Somalia, South Sudan and Haiti; we expect to welcome some Ukrainian refugees soon. The other class, at the complete opposite end of the English learning spectrum, helps international research fellows at Massachusetts General Hospital with pronunciation skills that will enable them to make presentations and be understood more easily by patients and colleagues. In the MGH class, students (many of whom are MDs and PhDs, with a good command of English) come from Iran, Turkey, China, France, Japan, Italy, Syria and Thailand. Sarah, the teacher, manages to make a difficult subject fun for the students, and I learn something new about my native language in every class.
Zoom can be both a mystery and a blessing. Some features work more intuitively than others, and because my Mac is an outlier in a classroom full of PCs, I spend a lot of energy finding workarounds. However, the convenience -- for the teachers and students, as well as for me -- of learning from home more than makes up for the challenges.
Working with ESOL students has become an important part of my volunteering life, but it's not the only part. More about that next time.
(Stock photo, not at JVS.)
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