Volunteers' Stories 2019-20

   Everyone has a story, unusual, exciting, different.  Many of them are just waiting to be read by others.  From the front lines in Bosnia to the front office in Manhattan, Literacy Volunteers of America tutors come to us with fascinating backgrounds.  We are proud to share the highlights of these amazing individuals who bring their varied experiences to our students.  

   Enjoy reading about people like the former missionary who provided medical supplies to remote villages, retired business people, lawyers, healthcare providers, college students, building for the future, who generously share their wealth of newly acquired knowledge, and even mothers whose role as primary as caregiver for their children willingly juggle home life, work as well as tutoring.

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Christina Rahhal

Christina Rahhal is a free spirit who likes sharing what she has learned to help others find their way too.

That might mean teaching English, learning distance learning techniques, following your intuition.

Christina has worked in a mayor’s office, studied self-discovery, sold advertising space for a magazine, studied environmental science and photography, and found eating a certain way brought her greater satisfaction and peace.  Her search for the simpler life began early.

While she was a student studying environmental science and photography at the State University of New York, Purchase, Christina became involved in a women’s alternative health clinic. The clinic served students at SUNY and was a way for them to get information about things they might have been uncomfortable asking about at traditional health services.

After college, Christina worked for the Office of the Mayor under Rudolph Giuliani, dabbled in the intranet, then worked at Free Spirit magazine selling ad space.

Around this time, Christina participated in a self-discovery group called Transformations Made Easy. The founders. Ariel and Shya Kane created the group to focus on living in the moment and moving forward in your life. It connected with Christina and she became a seminar coordinator and worked the Kanes for 20 years.

While working as a seminar coordinator, Christina was also working for TAG Online, a website development and hosting company. At Tag, Christina started as an office manager and is now vice president of operations. “People here are very generous,” Christina said of TAG Online. “If they see you have a passion for something, they want to help you nurture that passion.”
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Seeking more time for herself, Christina decided to stop working for the Kanes.  She still wanted to share with other people. “I found about the LVA from the Montclair group on Facebook and said I can definitely do this,” Christina remembered. It turns out her mom is tutoring children in ESL in New Mexico.

Christina’s first LVA student is Hilal, a woman from Turkey. “It’s been great, I find her passion for learning English inspiring, she really wants to be able to communicate in English,” Christina said.

Carrying over from the seminars she ran on self-discovery, Christina brings a lightness to the lessons, knowing they do not have to be too serious. The tutoring sessions bring happiness to the tutor and student each week.

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Terry Waters
by Russell Ben Ali

In more than three decades in the classroom, Terry Waters has brought her hands-on teaching approach to students of different ages, in different subjects, even on different continents.
 
But, while each role brought new challenges, perhaps none were as trying as her current task: tutoring adult literacy students in a pandemic.
 
In fact, it’s been something of a test for Terry, a proponent of “realia” – or using physical objects and material from everyday life to help explain concepts in class. She was more than pleased to attend tutor prep classes led by LVA trainer Mary Kao, another realia advocate.
 
“I miss that way of teaching,” said Terry, who has three adult students in her group, including a young woman who speaks Spanish, French, and a Haitian creole, as well as the woman’s aunt. “I like to play games with the students. I believe in active learning. Computer stuff is not that active.”
 
Educators everywhere are grappling with the same difficulties. Converting to distance learning during the coronavirus crisis has raised universal questions about ensuring student learning outcomes and maintaining interest and enthusiasm among immigrants who may have lost jobs and been thrust into poverty almost overnight.
 
With few alternatives, teachers and tutors like Terry are learning to deal with it.
 
 “I am finding things online,” she said. “I email them the work we will be doing. I use Zoom so I have the work in front of me and they have it in front of them.”
 
Terry hadn’t planned on becoming a teacher, at least not initially. Not until she spent a gap year in college working with Kentucky school children in an impoverished area of Appalachia.
 
“I probably did some good, but it was more good for me,” she noted of the experience. By the time she returned to school, she was set on a life of teaching.
 
And it’s been a diverse one. She’s taught pedagogy, the method and practice of teaching, to university degree candidates in Austria, as well as to students in China. She taught elementary school children in working-class Flint, Michigan and she’s taught the children of immigrants in West Orange. She’s even trained future high school teachers through a course she taught at Montclair State University.
 
Outside of LVA Terry tutors a student in math, using WhatsApp, a cross-platform messaging service owned by Facebook. She also helps her grandson learn fourth-grade math concepts she says she didn’t study until high school.
 
As if that weren’t enough to keep her occupied, Terry is also a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), appointed by a judge to advocate for abused and neglected children within the legal and social service systems.
 
She brings a world of experience to her role as a volunteer literacy tutor. But she mainly speaks of what the experience has done for her.
 
She points out a recent assignment that she gave her group, a list of irregular English verbs to study. Irregular verbs are often a source of frustration for some students. He group nailed it.
 
“I asked them if this work was too easy for them. They said ‘Why are you surprised’? You sent us the list so we studied them,” Terry explained with a smile. “I found that I enjoy working with these motivated adults and am grateful that I can tutor during COVID so I have something purposeful to do. I have benefited.”

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