Nora held up her hand to me as she entered class last week. “Teacher, look!” she said, obviously pleased. I was puzzled, as her hands were empty. “Look, Teacher,” she repeated, this time pointing to a word written on her hand in blue ink. Wobbly letters, but yes. It was her name. I read it outloud, still unsure what she was excited about. “My name. Friday. I learn.” Later, as we finished up our morning worksheets on pricing and money, I told everyone to write their name so we could continue next time. Again, Nora held up her paper and pointed to her name after she’d written it. “Look!” she crowed in joy. I smiled and congratulated her and wondered what THAT had been about.
We’re offering a new pre-literacy tutoring session on Fridays as part of our new Women’s Center programming. Over the last year, I’ve met many refugee women who are not able to start any ESL class in Charlotte because they can’t read or write in any language, not even their own. As we’ve been preparing women for the workforce, we’ve realized that this is a huge hurdle for otherwise talented women – without any English skills at all, they just can’t get a job. With grant funding and an intrepid new teacher, we decided to launch this class and the demand has been through the roof. Each week, new women keep showing up because they’ve heard the class is available. A representative from another organization came to observe, and told me afterwards that she has refugee clients that are in need of just such tutoring and she’d love to start referring people.
Sometimes after interacting with a non-English speaker, I’ll hear Americans comment, “Well, that person just needs to learn to speak English if they’re going to live here!” While this statement sounds rude, there’s a lot of truth in it. People DO need to learn English if they’re going to thrive. But what many Americans don’t realize is that for some folks, ESL class is not even an option – no one will take them.
I talked to the teacher in charge of our new class about Nora’s pride in writing her name. And I’ll never forget what she said: “Nora told me through an interpreter that she’s worked so hard to learn English by copying letters, numbers, words – but she never understands what she’s written. In our first class, I taught her how to write her name and had her write it again and again. This was the first time she was able to write a word AND understand exactly what she had written.” Nora is a grandmother. Learning IS more challenging for her. But she’s been trying to hard and what a victory! To both write and understand her name in English. This is a beautiful testimony to why these “unreached” English learners just need a chance to learn.