And the Journey Begins

The first day, I drive up to the apartment where I am to meet the refugee family that I am supposed to teach and am welcomed with huge smiles and can just feel the excitement in the room.  This is a Filipino family that I am about to teach the English language to.  First, we meet the family by trying to pronounce each others' names, which was actually kind of funny because of the level of difficulty each others' name was.  Due to our awful pronunciations, laughter soon filled the room- it was definitely a great icebreaker. 

We then proceeded to jump right into the material.  We started off with a children's alphabet book that contained pictures for each word.  I would point to a certain picture and they would try spelling out each letter from the word that was written below.  They were actually really good at reciting off the different letters, which was exciting because I didn't think they knew any English at all and I could tell they studied!  After going through each letter contained in each word written, I would say the word and wait for them to say it back.  If they said it correctly, I would right away smile and give positive feedback.  However, if they didn't say the word completely correct, I would say it a couple times more and wait for them to say it correctly before giving my positive feedback.  I would also point to the object that is related to the word being said just to make sure they knew which object I was talking about.  Later on, I would quiz the family on the objects that we just went over in order to keep it fresh in their minds.  The family also had flashcards there in their home, so I would go through the same process I did with the book and then try and quiz them on those as well, gradually adding in a few more as we went on.  We briefly went over some colors just to mix it up a bit and also so they wouldn't be bored or frustrated.  As the two hour period came to an end, I made sure to place my name and our next meeting time on her calendar, so she wouldn't forget.  I briefly tried to explain the day of the week that we were meeting, month, and time just to make sure she understood that I would be back the same exact time the following week.  

At times it was extremely difficult trying to communicate with them, which really tested my patience, but at the same time, I knew they were going through frustrating times as well and more so than me.  The English language is not an easy language to learn, especially because of all the exceptions to the wording, such as synonyms.  Really, learning any language is difficult, especially under such stress.  Through this, I realized no matter what, I had to try to help out in any way that I could think of that would be the most impactful.  Also, I needed to try and have even more patience with them and be a positive and encouraging role model.  Maybe over time I could try and learn some of their language in order to relate back to them and show that I care about them and their language.