Submitted By: Aimee Kling
This morning, I had one of the best tutoring sessions of my nearly seven-year tenure with Literacy Together.
In February, I started working with a Ukrainian refugee who is at the low beginner level, using Ventures Basic. This is new territory for me: each of my previous students has been a Mexican woman, a long-time resident of the United States, and either a high beginner or low intermediate student. Learning about my new student's background and refugee status made me feel an added layer of pressure to provide exceptional support and care for her (although of course, I bring my whole heart to my lessons with all my students).
On our first day, my student shared with me that she felt deep shame about not being able to speak English yet. She repeated that word, "shame," in her messages shared through Google Translate. My immediate response is to protest that shame -- to correct it. But shame isn't something you correct, and to deny my student the right to her feelings would be inappropriate and unhelpful.
Shame is a lie. And based on my research, experience, and, truthfully, gut instinct, I decided the best way to counter that lie was with the truth. The truth, as I see it, is that my student is an incredibly courageous, resilient, intelligent, funny, and hardworking woman who is deserving of respect, grace, and pride -- from me, from her community, and most importantly, from herself. The truth, as I see it, is also that learning languages is a joy, not a source of shame. So to bring those truths to our classes, I decided to show up with joy, with praise, with games, and with repeated assurances that while learning a new language (and a new alphabet, to boot) from scratch is no easy feat and does require hard work, it's also SO much fun.
Over the past several weeks, I've seen a slow shift in my student's reaction to challenging activities and new concepts. I've seen her hard work start to pay off, and I've seen a competitive fire and a love of fun start to emerge. She has still spoken openly about her challenges and has mentioned that feeling of shame a few more times; it's not something that changes overnight, especially given how much she's dealing with in her personal life.
But this morning, she made no mention of shame. Instead, our lesson was full of fist-pumping and cries of "YES!!" as my student nailed challenges and started to see her own progress. I could see it on her face as she watched formerly inscrutable text become a story, and as she started to see classroom commands that formerly needed translating via Google (an incredibly helpful app and a perfectly valid resource, especially in the early stages) come naturally to her.
She was full of joy. She was competitive, she was laughing, and she was so, so proud of herself. I'm not sure I've ever felt anything like what I did in that classroom.
In a future blog post, I want to share the practical "Grammar 101" strategies that have been really successful with this low-beginner student who, in her words, "needs a system" to help her learn effectively and avoid cramming too much information and retaining too little.
But for today, I just want to celebrate the warm glow of watching my student see herself as a success.
Happy National Grammar Day to you all. Please share your fulfilling, fist-pumping student success stories in the comments, or via your own blog posts!
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