It's silly to say, but I think the third time's the charm. Tonight was my third trip to NBB church for the ESL class and I feel that tonight was a successful one. I was delighted to see my previous student had once again made it to class, which was no surprise since he is committed to returning to each Tuesday night session. His attendance is superb, while mine seemed to be lacking due to work, school and stress of winter quarter. So why was this meeting different than the two previous classes? I, along with J, my partner, were both more alert and seemingly more energized than normal, which was a fantastic abnormality. Tonight was fluid, casual and comfortable; I almost felt as if J was a long-lost friend who had gone away to summer camp and I had not been able to see him for weeks.
Our lesson revolved around the theme of ongoing and future actions. For example, "We are going to the store", "I am going to visit my aunt today", "She is going to go to the concert tomorrow" were some of the sentences in the book; the construction of sentences like these seemed to be difficult for J at first, but he learned the pattern of the sentence structure and was able to comprehend the chapter quickly. I was, however, underestimating the finer details of the chapter. J struggled with understanding the relationship between "your" and "my" in the question compared to the response, which was a minor detail to me, but to a non-native speaker proved to be complicated. When the question read, "When are you going to visit your grandmother?", J got caught on how to answer the question, because of the word "your". After explaining that "your" translates to "tu" in spanish and that the answer would be "my", aka "mi" in spanish, I noticed that J remained baffled. I don't blame him in the slightest for finding difficulity in such an intricate part of the english language and I was determined to make sure he was not disheartened by the fact that some rules are harder to grasp than others.
Before J could resort to frustration, I suggested a small break from the material. During the brief "descanso", he noticed some papers I had been given by my ESL professor and he initiated conversation regarding these "papeles". We talked about my classes and about my college, which seemed to interest him quite a bit. I must say that during our casual discussion of my affinity for art classes and his interest in soccer I forgot I was speaking spanish, whether broken-spanish or not. I was more than impressed by the flow of conversation, I was proud of myself and of him for making me feel comfortable with my Americanized dialect.
As I mentioned before, tonight felt different, more engaging and more personal. Perhaps the most shocking and inspiring aspect of the night was not something I taught, but something I had learned. When the class was over and the prayer was finished, the volunteer director had approached J and I and he informed me that J had been walking 2 miles from his house every Tuesday night in order to attend class. He had also been walking 2 miles back from class to his house every Tuesday night when class ended around 9pm. I immediately felt ungrateful because even with sufficient transportation I had not attended all the classes, in fact I had missed two classes already because I was running behind on work, school and life. Needless to say I envied J's dedication.
Lastly, at the end of the ESL class the closing prayer was shared with us by the pastor of the church. In his prayer I recognized only a few words in succession, but the words I did happen to catch were "Gracias padre por nuestros hermanos Americanos". The pastor of the church had included us, the volunteers, in his prayer, which is an honor in itself. We were not the American volunteers or the American students, we were much more than that, we were the American brothers. My gratitude was extended in silence, but on the inside I wanted to hug every committed member of the class for their welcoming acceptance.
