When we first brought up the idea of doing a service blog like the Gates' family, I explained to my family with an example. "If you got, Cristina, for example, you could do a service for a widow that you know, or maybe volunteer to help people who are learning English as a second language." Imagine my surprise when the name I drew was actually Cris! I lucked out because I already had an awesome idea or two! I quickly realized I didn't know many widows to serve. So I started looking for an ESL program. I remembered Cristina coming to my house on that snowy New Year's Eve for the first time. She knew very little English and looked absolutely overwhelmed! I'm so proud of how hard she has worked and how fluent she is! I think she may know more English than Spanish now!
I could have gone to the local Elementary school, but I wanted to work with adults learning English since that was Cris' situation. I finally tracked down a program in Provo. I found out when their next session began and for 12 weeks I drove to Provo to help out in the classroom. I worked in the level two classroom because I didn't feel I knew enough Spanish to fully communicate with someone who knows zero English. Every week we'd have between 5-20 adults come for a 2 hour lesson. They came three days a week, but I only went once. I loved working with these people!! They were so friendly and wanted so badly to learn. Most of them were Mexican or from another Spanish speaking country. There were two from Brazil, one from China and one from Korea.
The teacher did most of the talking, but I sat by the slower students and helped them. One student in particular, Teresita, became a good friend. She is from Argentina and trying to learn English but has a learning disability on top of trying to learn a new languate. (She is in the red on the far right of picture below)
I looked forward to this service every week. I truly came to love them. About two weeks into this service I decided to get my master's degree from WGU. I had signed up to do a quicker program about Curriculum development. I just didn't like it! I felt so grumpy about doing it. One night I was up with my usual insomnia, and it occurred to me that WGU has a Masters for English language. Because of my experience with my service for Cris, I knew I would enjoy it. I had to get special permission to enter it because my teaching license is expired. The minute I switched programs I felt a load lifted. I knew that was the program I was supposed to do. Thanks Cris for helping me find something I love to learn about! I love you! Merry Christmas!
I am amazed by this. Great job Nicki!
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome Nicki! I am so excited for you!
ReplyDeleteThank you Sister! Love you.
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