American-Latino Immigrants Proudly Assisting the Community

There are a lot of different types of people who volunteer to teach English to immigrants in a small town.  Truth be told, most of the teachers this year are retired Caucasians.  One guy is a high school student from Argentina, but he's been in the country so long that he has no accent, and he looks like Justin Timberlake (God give him strength) so you would never have guessed he was from Argentina.  But most of the volunteers are old folks.

Not everyone is a teacher.  There is a coordinator who has several assistants.  Then there are more than a few volunteer helpers.  No one has any particular skill that I know of.  The only qualification to teach is that you have a heart beat and are willing to give up your evenings.

One of the good things about volunteering here is that you actually have something to do that is meaningful.  I've volunteered at other venues before, and it always seems that there are more volunteers than work so you end up doing little more than getting in the way.  I remember one time a group of us traveled about 75 miles to volunteer at a place that was sending care packages to Russia.  There were so many volunteers we could hardly get into the building.  Everybody wanted to do something.  I just wanted to get out of there.  But there is always something to do while teaching English.

One of the students we have must have just crossed the border.  Rosa is from Honduras and has absolutely no knowledge of English whatsoever.  Added to that she is shy.  You want her to get accustomed to speaking English words and aking English sounds, but she was shy and didn't pronounce well so she got paired up with one of the volunteers.  She can work with the volunteer rather than speak before the entire class which may have made her uncomfortable.  She's been coming to every class, and she's making progress.   The high school student from Argentina brought in one of his high school classmates, a young Dominican lady.  She's been working with Rosa also.

Then there is Elizabeth Collins, the 14 year old country music fan who is the daughter of a local podiatrist.  She is the stereotype spoiled rich kid.   She thinks Mitchell Musso is cute.  The boy has no lips for cryin' out loud!  How can she think he's cute?  She's obviously a troubled teen.  Her parents recently separated, and she's been getting an attitude with her mom sometimes.  Her mom is a little worried that she's developing too much of an interest in boys [although she has really bad taste (see above)].  But when she walks into English class, you'd think she was SuAnne Big Crow.  After the first class, she went to her high school Spanish teacher and got some ideas for teaching tools and games and exercises.  The teacher is glad to have her input.

The borderline troubled teen turned enthusiastic helper is just one example of what the volunteers get out of helping others to learn English.  A widow gets out of the house and spends some time with young people.  The office worker, for a moment, leaves his mundane existence and makes friends with people from another culture.  The businessman meets people who didn't have the opportunities he had yet work just as hard and oftentimes harder than he did for much less pay.  It seems to have a positive effect on everyone in a unique way.