Journal #1
I have gotten the wonderful opportunity to tutor at South Burlington High School. Here is my very first journal entry about the student I am tutoring, with her background information, and a little about my initial experience there:
The girl I’m tutoring is named Carol and she is from
Kinshasa, Congo, which is the capitol of Congo. She is 18 years old and has
been in the United States for three and a half years. She speaks four languages
and English is her fourth language. She mentions in her initial letter that she
has “a little problem with the world and speak”. She also notes that she needs
help in her classes titled PIWA, and Contemporary Health Issues. From her
original letter, I can tell that her English is very broken, but it is very
impressive that she speaks four languages! I also notice that she is very good
in understanding the format of how to write a formal letter because she had a
header, a closer, and body paragraphs, with the date in the top right corner.
I did
some research on the Democratic Republic of Congo and started by looking at the
website created by the two graduate students on all the immigrant cultures in
South Burlington Middle School and High School. In the DRC, some refugees come
from camps and others established themselves in urban areas following flight
from their country. Chances are, these entrants have lacked education,
employment opportunities, and mediocre healthcare, despite the fact that these
refugees may be more familiar with urban lifestyles and technology. In terms of
education, primary school is free. However, there are limited schools and
teachers. Some students are obligated to bring in money or food in return for
classes. Another fact I found interesting was that boys are more likely to receive
education than girls (Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School website, 3/17/09).
In the
DRC, up to 250 different African languages are spoken. The main languages are
Lingala, Kikongo, Kingwana, and Tshiluba. Furthermore, French is the country’s
official language. Finally, African
society is traditionally organized by kinship groups and family is very
important to the people of the DRC. They take pride in their close-knit
relationships and coming from a good family. Families are also typically very
large because children are a considered as a sign of prosperity (Frederick H.
Tuttle Middle School website, 3/17/09).
Lastly,
in rural areas, general roles are traditional. Men are responsible for tasks
like hunting, clearing the forest, and making important decisions. On the other
hand, women are in charge of tending crops, cooking dinner, and caring for the
family. Unfortunately, women don’t have many rights and I was shocked when I
learned that married women don’t even have the right to open their own bank
account (Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School website, 3/17/09).
In terms
of Carol’s physical appearance, she was absolutely beautiful and it is clear
that she loves beauty and fashion. She has very dark, creamy skin. She had a
huge bun on the top of her head with a grey headband. She also had a full face
of pretty makeup with winged eyeliner. Additionally, she wore hoop earrings, a
tight black top with a sequined skirt, black tights, and black boots. I
complimented her on her outfit because I was very impressed. She also had fake
sparkly nails on which I thought was very trendy.
I
learned a lot about Carol in the short amount of time I was able to spend with
her. One of the things I noticed was that she was very curious about us. As
soon as we sat down in the library, she kept asking questions about our lives
and was so interested. She was so genuine and it was evident that she is amazed
by the world around her. I also thought it was intriguing when she asked us
what our dreams in life are. I told her my dream is to be a teacher and it put
the biggest smile on her face. When I asked her what her dream is, she said she
wants to go to college and be a nurse. I think it’s incredible that she has
such wonderful goals in life.
We first
started out on her current events assignment from her PIWA class. She was given
an article and had to underline the pros of sending troops to Syria. I noticed
that she consistently referenced back to the videos she watched in class about
the issue and that seemed to make her understand the situation very well. This
proves to me that educational videos are crucial in teaching ELL students, especially
for the visual learners. Another technique she used to better understand the
article was translating some of the words into French because she said speaks
French very well. I found this fascinating because French isn’t even her first
language. However, from my research, it makes sense that she is so proficient
in French because French is used in schools in the DRC. I can’t imagine how
hard it must be for her to understand an article with a copious amount of
information because some of the information in the article was confusing for
me--it must be 10 times harder for her. However, after going through the
article very slowly and discussing it along the way with the help of her
background information from the video and her French, she was able to
understand the concept much more.
Then, we
moved onto an assignment from her Contemporary Health Issues class. The
assignment was to pick a disorder from a list of disorders given to her in
class, and make a PSA about it. The questions were: What is your target
audience? Why would information regarding the symptoms about this disorder be
relevant to your target audience? Finally, she was instructed to give a
statistic revolved around the disorder. It was very difficult to help her
complete this assignment because she didn’t understand what a lot of the words
meant. She didn’t comprehend what a target audience is, what the word,
“symptom” means, or what a statistic is. I did the best I could in explaining
it but it was frustrating because a lot of my explanation included, what I
thought were, simple words that she still didn’t understand. Eventually, she
was able to grasp what the questions were asking when I explained to her that
the target audience is a group of people you are sharing the information with,
symptoms are signs of the disorder, and a statistic is like a fact.
Lastly,
we moved onto a reading assignment. She was instructed to read the first few
chapters of “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” by John Boyne. Then, she had to
write a short paragraph about each of the characters regarding their physical
appearance, and other characteristics. She began reading out loud to me and she
struggled a lot with her words. It was difficult to understand what she was
saying and she had to frequently stop and ask me what a word meant. In order to
assist her in better understanding the content, I would break it down into
simpler terms. For example, the text described how the protagonist had good
manners. She didn’t understand what that meant so I told her he was respectful
and followed the rules. It was very rewarding when she threw her head back,
smiling and said, “Oh! I get it now!”
The
final thing I want to write about is towards the end of our session, she
received a phone call from her dad. She became very happy when she picked up
the phone to talk to her dad, which makes sense because in doing my research,
it is clear that family is very important in the DRC. She was speaking in her
first language, I’m assuming. Next time I meet with her, I want to ask her what
that is.
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