By Jeanne Barron, ILI Volunteer Coordinator
Among the many volunteer opportunities I’ve explored and experienced, while enriching, none have offered the level of connection, cross-cultural understanding, and depth of feeling that I’ve made a difference in someone’s life as tutoring an ILI student. Biased? Maybe. But hear me out.
At the end of each meeting with my students, I hear myself saying “no, thank YOU for allowing me to help you.” Being an immigrant in the US right now is fraught. Yet our students are here to live safely, work, in some cases raise families, and contribute regardless of the state of the union. Their focus is on getting more fluent at English so they can do those things more effectively. If I can make that even a little bit easier, that’s what I want to do.
As the Volunteer Coordinator at ILI, I have the unique privilege of getting to know many of our students and also many members of our wonderful community. Our tutors are generous in wanting to help despite many having no “teaching” experience. So, while encouraging confidence in prospective tutors is part of my job…the fact that they want to help, puts them halfway there.
I recently met with a tutor who had had a couple of false starts with a student who struggled to schedule meetings, which can sometimes be an issue for those juggling jobs, family, and learning a new language. Then, another beginner student she was matched with relied heavily on google translate to converse, as beginners sometimes do, which she found disruptive to their conversation flow. We scheduled a meeting to talk this through. By the end of our conversation, it was clear that, although she was feeling less than successful and a little frustrated, she had truly enjoyed meeting the students and, according to her, “we laughed a lot!” Amazing, I thought, and said, “What a gift for both of you to have bridged a cultural gap and a generational gap – (both students were younger, she’s retired) – and were still able to laugh together.”
Isn’t laughter the staff of life? Along with some bread, of course.
Which leads me to another fruitful outcome. In her tutor report, Elisa, who works with Guitta from Lebanon, shared the following story of both bread and laughter: “Guitta and I made a Lebanese dinner together. It was a great learning opportunity for both of us. I invited two friends and she brought an ILI buddy to my house for the event. It truly was an international exchange as we cooked side by side and shared stories. We had lots of laughs in our various languages!”
The staff of life, indeed. If you’re interested in learning more about tutoring one of our English language learners, please reach out to me at jeanne@ili.edu.
Photos of tutors with their students and a recent volunteer tutor training.