Presentation Day

Well my final day with Josiah was last Wednesday and I couldn't have imagined it going any better. Josiah had the confidence to introduce us and displayed our books pictures like a PRO! But he did forget my name in front of 20 or so people... but I forgave him for it and we moved on real quick.

I'm very proud of Josiah for getting up in front of others and speaking even though it was only a few phrases. I didn't think he'd be able to mutter a single word but he proved me wrong and I'm glad he did.

Reading Buddies was a grand ol' time and I recommend it to anyone who likes fun. Which is everyone. So I recommend it to everyone.

-Eric Silberstein

The Final Goodbye

I am sad to say that this is my final blog post because this will be admitting that I will have to say good-bye to the SWAP program and my student, Valentina, as well. I have had such an amazing time and it is an experience that I will never forget.

However, I would like to happily say that Valentina and I found a good routine with our daily work. I had previously mentioned before that we were going to try and role play with written dialogues. We did try that once but my student wasn’t into it. She also said that she did not like using the flash cards. But by a chance spontaneous moment, we found something that worked for both of us, reading current events from the newspaper. This worked perfectly for us. What we would do is, I would bring a newspaper or a magazine and Valentina would a paragraph and I would then ask her what that paragraph was talking about. She would recite the best she could the meaning of what she just read and I would help her fill in the blanks. Then at the very end of the article we would both have a conversation of how we felt about it and often that would bring up another topic of conversation. Sometimes I would have a hard time understanding what she was saying so I would stop her and in another way she would have to explain in another way. This was the only activity that Valentina said she really liked doing and wanted to continue with. So we did this for the rest of our classes. I did feel a little bit worried that some of the newspapers I could get a hold of had hard concepts and words in them. I could mostly only find the New York Times and the LA times on campus but I figured that this is the level most newspapers are at. If she can get through them and comprehend what a higher level newspaper is saying then this will give her the confidence to pick up any newspaper and understand the content. Not everything, like in the workbooks is going to have simple words and concepts. At first, it was challenging but towards the end of the classes, Valentina was a lot quicker about comprehending what was going on and her reading improved as well.

Another thing to brag about Valentina that made me proud was when Valentina didn’t want to throw away the newspapers when we were done with class. She said that she would bring them home with her and read with her 7 year old niece that was just beginning to learn to read. I don’t know if she actually did read with her niece but if she does just once, then I have succeeded.

Not only was I teaching Valentina, she was teaching me. I have a thousand stories that I could share about Valentina’s words of wisdom or actions but one story particularly sticks out. By the end of the semester, I beginning to get fairly well informed on Mexican politics. Previously, the topic never really sparked my interest until one day in class. I remember at the beginning I was really tired from the night before and I had a million things to do after the class and needless to say I was a little distracted. However, a quick, mindless class was not where the conversation was headed. Fairly close to the beginning of the class we read an article about the new Mexican president that was inducted over the weekend, Pena Nieto. When we would stop at every paragraph to discuss what the article was saying, Valentina would be the one that tell me what was really happening in the artice, with background information, the political party systems and why the previous elected officials are corrupt. I found myself very confused at times with the names of the past presidents and who was associated with which party. I kept on having to ask for clarification and very patiently Valentina would help me. Valentina would even correct my pronunciation of some of the Spanish words and names as I have done with her many times with new English words. From that class, Valentina gained useful knowledge in explaining a difficult idea in English and I gained an insider’s perspective on a subject that I previously would have not known.

The last couple weeks the high school students have been coming to the time I volunteer with the middle school students. Once I was helping one of the high school students write a research paper. I was getting so incredibly frustrated because he was not focusing and did not do any research before hand. I felt like he expected me to write the entire thing for him, and I was not about to do that. But after being frustrated for a while I realized maybe he is just insecure about his lack of knowledge of how to write and organize a research paper. So he is being stubborn because he feels embarrassed. And this made me so incredibly sad that he felt that way. It reminded me about what we learned in ling 1000 about linguistic insecurity. About how maybe he felt his language was beneath the "standard language" and felt insecure about it. After that moment I was no longer frustrated but focused more on giving him the skills to write this research paper and more in the future.

This was the first experience I've had at family learning center where I was very frustrated with a student but it ended up working out and we finished his outline for the research paper. YAY!

Goodbye LING 1900! :(

Well tomorrow is the final day of reading buddies and I'm anxious to see how it goes. Last wednesday Josiah left the library in tears which was not how I visioned our 2nd to last meeting ending. He was upset because the reality of speaking in front of people settled in. My plan was for him to introduce us and thats all and when we practiced the introduction he did a very good job. But when his mom was picking him up and we talked one last time about the introduction I encouraged him to practice his lines and that's when he started to cry. So tomorrow should be interesting. I really hope he decides to introduce us and has the courage too or else it'll be a one man show and I'll be center stage.

Besides that final issue I think our final project together has been a very fun time. Josiah finally expressed a reading preference and it was for Star Wars material so I tried to play off this strength so he'd have some encouragement and would be excited for the project. Because before he really seemed to dread the idea of writing his own story. But my strategy worked and we wrote the story together and it was fun for him and I.

I'm sad that tomorrow will be our last meeting. I've had such a fun time hangin' with the little bugger every Wednesday that it's been a highlight of my week every week. So with a gap in my schedule my Wednesdays are gonna feel empty.

I'm very glad I participated in Reading Buddies and think that it's an activity every student could benefit from. I know it's cliché but reading buddies probably taught me more than I taught Josiah. I've become a better story teller (a personal goal of mine), improved my personal skills, and revisited my youth. I think I enjoyed most of the stories more than Josiah did to be honest. This is Eric signing off. Over and out!

Finishing SWAP!

Being able to participate with SWAP has allowed me to remember how difficult it is to learn English as a second language at an older age. Unlike my SWAP person, I was able to learn English in school and that has made all the difference in my life.

Learning English at a much older age becomes very difficult. Not only are the English vowels difficult to pronounce, but the alphabet of the native tongue may also be very different. For example, when going through the English alphabet with my SWAP person, I noticed how the Spanish alphabet has more letters in the alphabet and how confusing the 'e' and 'i' differentiation (into English from Spanish) is. When certain letters are also put together, the pronunciation of many letters differ: something that was very difficult to explain without confusing my person even more.

Aside from the difficult process of shaping one's mouth into the English form, I more importantly realized the linguistic insecurities that are more common in older people who are non-native English speakers. As a non-native English speaker myself, but having learned English at an earlier stage, I have had certain insecurities with my language control, but the one that my person showed was higher than my own. My SWAP person, who is a female, showed me how linguistic insecurities may prevent many people from fully learning English. Although she knew a lot of English, her linguistic insecurity seemed to prevent her from speaking English to others or offering her answers, in English, too quickly. She showed 'shyness' in using English. She did not volunteer to speak in it, she had to be asked to. This of course did not mean that she was unwilling to have a conversation in English, but that she felt very uncomfortable having a conversation in English.

What I do regret from the program, was not being able to find a way to show my student that she should not be ashamed of her English and that if she continues to practice she will become more comfortable in the language. I attempted to show her that she knew a great amount of English, but there was always that insecurity with her language that many times prevented her from celebrating her capabilities in English.

Hello and once again welcome to my blog about LING 1900 and my wonderful experiences with it. First and foremost I must speak about how fortunate I am to have stumbled upon this opportunity. No I am not being a brown nose, I honestly and 100% truly believe in it. I think you guys should advertise it more. I had no idea that this was a program at CU and I know many other students that would both love to take it and who would benefit greatly from it. I think it is an amazing opportunity because not only do you get life experiences, but you also get credit for it. Now that is hard to come by! Which by the way, I want to especially thank you guys for working with me so I could continue with the program I was already working with.

With LING 1900 comes a lot of learning. You learn a lot about working with others, both the child and the parents, and you learn a lot about yourself. I have learned to be more outgoing. This is due to the fact that I need the courage to actually walk up to the parents and ask if I can read with/to their child. I have also learned to be more patient, not the “cliché patience is a virtue,” but the patience with a child who either might not want to read or might be having trouble reading. Additionally, LING 1900 has actually taught me a lot about working with children. I am thinking about becoming a teacher and this is an excellent opportunity to explore what age group I would like to teach. Through this experience I have come to learn that I work best with children around the age of eight. My patience has not yet been perfected for kids younger then that and my entertainment skills are not nearly perfected enough for kids much older then that.

I think all students could benefit from this class. LING 1900 is a way for students to get involved in the Boulder community and learn the importance of volunteering. I think LING 1900 is especially useful because it proves that almost everyone has time to volunteer. Although I can’t prove this I am fairly positive a number of students who have taken LING 1900 or are currently taking it will continue to volunteer in the future. Sometimes it just takes that extra push (like giving credit for a class) for a student in college to realize the impact they could have and that they do in fact have time to make such an impact.

That is a very nice thing about volunteering at Clinica Health Center, there are no strict hours, you can come and go as you please. Although I have come to have a pattern of going mostly on Tuesday morning, if I cannot make it then I am welcomed to go sometimes later in the week. This is especially nice in college where you might have a test later on the day you normally volunteer or you want to go into office hours. Which does bring me to my next point. Kira mentioned that you guys were thinking about partnering up with Clinica Health Center for LING 1900. Although I have enjoyed volunteering at Clinica Health Center, like I said in my previous post I think I would enjoy my time someplace else. I think that I would enjoy volunteering at a place that had more structure when it came to reading with the children. While volunteering I provide positive reading experiences for children in the pediatric waiting rooms, and model reading aloud for parents. My duties as a “Reach out and Read” volunteer are very important and I don’t degrade them at all, I just feel like there are better ways to go about it. Because of the fact I volunteer in a waiting room children come and go on a regular basis, meaning I can’t build a relationship with them, something I think is very important. This is important because it builds better role models and makes kids excited to show their advancements in reading. Secondly, there aren’t always kids, meaning I can be sitting behind a desk with the secretary for an undetermined amount of time waiting for a child to walk in the door. This time waiting could be put to better use at a different reading center.