Retirement is for enrichment

Palmer Elementary school has been an institution in the Creston Neigborhood for many years. It is unique because of its role as a refugee language center serving students from various countries and backgrounds. The following is an account from one of Palmer's senior volunteers, Nancy Allen:

When I semi-retired seven years ago, I felt that I needed something more to do. I called The Creston Neighborhood Association and was set up with one of the second grade teachers at Palmer Elementary School. I am not a certified teacher and I speak only English but I started as a volunteer reading with some of the student a half a day a week. When I realized how big the need was I told the teacher I could stay all day. Soon I was also correcting papers and taking students one at a time and showing them what they did wrong on their math papers and helped them to correct them. I also made sure that they could solve a problem like it on their own. We also had a few student who could not speak English. They were from Tanzania, Somalia and Italy. Although they worked with an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher part of the day, I also worked with them using a picture dictionary.

This past year I retired completely as the “Sample Lady” at Kingma’s Market. I decided to volunteer with the same second grade teacher one day each week and another day with the ESL students. The regular ESL teacher had retired and although the teachers work with these students, they all have full classrooms and don’t have much time to work one on one with them. I made up workbooks for each of the students and started with pictures of clothing, food, people, body parts, household items, and furniture. Then I added letter blends and helped them to pronounce the words correctly. The second grade teacher I work with gave me some other materials such as ten pages of “Instant Words” that the second graders are supposed to know instantly on sight. I began giving them simple sentences to read and made them harder and harder. Then I added simple stories that also became harder and harder and also teaches them how we live, about the weather, recreational activities and much more.

After the winter break I began teaching them about verbs. About the last tem or fifteen minutes of our session, I ask them to find an object such as a cabbage or a chair in the workbook or we read a sentence and I ask them to find the verb or I pick out a word and ask them the meaning.  They race to be the first one to answer correctly. They have a lot of fun with the competition and sometimes we get quite loud. We work in the hallway at school and I asked the principle once “are we being too loud?”  She smiled and said, “They are having fun and learning so I don’t have a problem with it.”

At the beginning of this school year one fifth grade girl could speak only French and could not read or write at all. Last week she was at the computer typing her research paper. I am continually amazed at how fast they learn. There are many volunteers within the ESL programs that helps the ESL student succeed and I am glad I am one of them.

Presently, I am working with students from Togo, Burma, Iran, Ethiopia, Honduras, and Vietnam. I find tutoring very rewarding and I think I get as much out of our sessions as they do. My grand children are also in Chicago, so I also get my “kid fix.”