Laura is a retired physical science and math tutor. Yet week after week, in her free time, she continues tutoring at the San José Public Library. Not physics, or math, or anything STEM related at all. She teaches English.
Laura volunteers as a tutor for Adult Literacy and ESL, a free program at the San José Public Library. Supported by the San José Public Library Foundation, the program educates adults with an array of skills needed to thrive in Silicon Valley, from reading and writing in English to critical thinking and life skills. In particular, Laura focuses on conversational skills.
Laura is not new to volunteer work. “[Volunteering] almost all of my life is something that my family did because they didn’t have money to do anything else to help out,” she explained. “I had been volunteering previous years in other organizations including the school from which I retired. I would work with ESL students or non-native adults who had never learned to read and were working on it.”
She explained that becoming an English tutor for the library was simple: “The training program for both the [Adult] Literacy and the ESL program through the library is excellent.” Laura said, “They’ll teach you the best practices. They provide you with all the materials that they think you need, and any materials that you don’t have. They will also try to accommodate your schedule.”
A dedicated volunteer at the San Jose Public Library, Laura knows all her students very well. She regularly meets with Brisa and Alma together. Off the top of her head, she can instantly recall many details of both their lives.
Brisa, 23, has lived in America for almost three years now. “She is married and has no kids. She comes from Tijuana,” Laura said. “She still has family there. She is also a high school graduate and was quite literate in Spanish.”
Alma is in her forties and comes from Guadalajara, Mexico, where her family lives. “She has one son who I believe goes to second grade this year,” Laura said. “She does not work outside the home. She does help ladies with their [nails] from time to time, but her husband works as a landscape worker.”
In her lessons with Brisa and Alma, Laura starts every session with conversation. She explained, “I usually meet with two or three individuals together. We’re learning to ask questions now, so they ask each other questions. Or if there’s been a major event in their lives, they want to talk about that and share.”
After an initial conversation, they turn to textbooks. “We have an interesting set of text materials to use which we skip around in to make more effective,” Laura said.
At the end of each lesson, her students will often have unique requests. Most recently, Brisa got her Green Card to visit her mother in Tijuana, but was “frightened about coming back into the United States through immigration and [responding to] the questions they would ask.”
Laura said, “We spent three weeks working ahead of time with all of the ladies on what kind of questions could you expect from immigration.”
As an ESL tutor, Laura must come up with many strategies to keep her students engaged while teaching practical vocabulary. “I think of teaching as having a gigantic bag of tricks,” she said while laughing. “You need a lot of different kinds of things to do, to work well with individual learning. I like pictures and real objects if we can. I like us to move around if we can.”
She added, “We tend to learn better if we’re learning something we like. I can teach you a speech from Abraham Lincoln, but do you really want to know that yet?”
Working with Brisa and Alma, Laura has been with them every step of their English learning journey. “The most striking thing [to see] is their confidence level and the pride with which they try their English out in the community,” Laura said. “When Brisa started with me two and a half years ago, she had no English at all. But I think that the confidence and knowing that they can, Alma will now meet with her principal and doesn’t always request a translator. She’s so proud of that. They just blossom.”
Most importantly, forming a close bond with her students is what keeps Laura coming back to tutor at the San Jose Public Library. “You establish a camaraderie,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to see people grow, not just learning the English, but grow as citizens and as people who will be in the community and want to be involved in the community.”
Becoming involved in American society is difficult without effective communication. “In order to engage and participate fully in a democracy, you need to be able to speak and understand the language,” she said. “You want people to be able to live, to have a career, or to be able to be a respected member of their communities.”
Volunteers like Laura power the Adult Literacy and ESL program at the San José Public Library, and by learning from these volunteer tutors, non-native English speakers are able to achieve their goals, speak with confidence, and wholly express themselves.
Adult Literacy & ESL provides an individualized education to enrich the lives of adults to achieve their personal and professional goals through reading, writing, critical thinking, technology, life skills, and English language learning. Participants are paired with a tutor who provides them with one-on-one support to help them meet personalized goals. Click below to learn more about the program or to become a volunteer tutor today.
Written by Jillian Cheng, Communications Intern