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.

---

Lisa Batitto

Attend a single Lisa Batitto literacy session and you’re likely to leave singing her praises. At the very least, you’ll be singing.
 
That’s because Lisa, who joined LVA as a volunteer tutor five months ago, is a huge advocate of using pop music song lyrics to teach English to adults.
 
“I like to take the class and tie popular song into it,” explained Lisa, who uses the verses to teach grammar, vocabulary, idioms, and culture to Serhad, a student from Turkey, and Erika from Ecuador.
           
“We go through the song lyrics and both students started singing a beautiful duet,” she said of one tune. “They balance each other out really well.”
 
While singing your way through class may seem peculiar to some, the use of song lyrics has long been lauded by academics who find that it helps maintain student interest, and is useful in teaching grammar, vocabulary, and culture. Songs can be used as writing prompts and are even said to enhance memory, they say.
 
Lisa’s students sing while learning idioms like “Holding my breath” from the Katy Perry song, “Roar”, and the provocative double-negative “We don’t need no education” from Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.”
 
Serhad and Erika even enjoy imitating song stylists as unique as Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, and Janis Joplin.
 
“It’s because they’re having a good time and they’re laughing that they tend to remember,” Lisa told a group of volunteers who attended a recent tutor support workshop she presented, “Laughter is the Best Teacher”.
 
She recalled her own school days when, while sitting in a classroom through what she called a “really dry lesson”, she struggled to stay focused.
 
“But then other times you think of a lesson where the teacher had you so engaged that you couldn’t wait to go to class again,” Lisa said. “And that’s the kind of energy I try to bring into my lessons with my students.”
 
She uses the website “Tune Into English” (www.tuneintoenglish.com), for its selection of songs and exercises for students, as well as YouTube, although she cautioned tutors to beware of culturally-insensitive material on that site.
 
Lisa came to LVA with a bachelor’s degree in communications, TESL and TEFL certificates, and a history of teaching practical English to students outside of the traditional classroom with an organization known as Language a GoGo.
 
She has worked as a public relations manager for both the Montclair Art Museum and the Newark Museum. While a museum worker, she learned of LVA.
 
“I have really been lucky,” she said of her experience as a tutor. “I have two enthusiastic students. Both of my students like to take risks. Classes are challenging. They are both willing to be silly.”
 
Her sessions have focused on everything from taking selfie photos to cooking, and from discussions of the art of Vincent van Gogh to the music of U2, Van Morrison and The Rolling Stones which, so far, has kept students engaged.
 
“I like Lisa a lot,” said Serhad, the student from Turkey. “She makes learning very pleasant.”

---

Amy Mahoney

​The pandemic struck suddenly, taking Amy Mahoney by surprise, as it did every other educator who’d earned her stripes in front of large classrooms and small groups.
 
But for Amy, who’s been to Poland and back to earn a TESL certificate and gain valuable teaching experience, it was just one more hurdle to clear.
 
“I am not a high-tech person so I have had to adapt and develop new techniques,” the volunteer tutor. “Distance learning has been more challenging.”
 
Since the early days of the crisis, distance learning has brought new obstacles, among them ensuring universal access to a computer, a tablet, or a phone, and a strong WIFI signal for all, as well as compensating for the loss of personal interaction and the ability to communicate through body language in class. But Amy is coping.
 
“My students have been up to the challenge and I have as well,” said Amy. “You have to learn to roll with the punches in this uncertain world right now.”
 
This literacy volunteer has worked as a therapist and mental health counselor for more than 25 years, including a post as a bilingual therapist in Florida. And she’s long held a special place in her heart for immigrants, as well as a passion for working with English Language Learners.
 
Amy taught ESL at The Elizabeth Coalition to House the Homeless. While there, she learned of LVA through an online service that matches volunteers with suitable work in non-profits. She said she was particularly impressed with LVA’s training for tutors. From that point on, it was a go.
 
“That appealed to me,” Amy said. “That was a great beginning. I loved the training, the peer interaction, and the trainer, Mary O’Connor.”
 
After training, she was assigned to a basic literacy student with whom she worked for one year. But her experiences at LVA and the Elizabeth coalition spawned an interest in delving further into teaching, she said.
 
So Amy went on to earn a certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) at The New School, a unique university in New York City. The certificate program has a reputation for its vigor.
 
“It was very challenging but rewarding,” Amy said of the experience. “I did my practicum in Poland.” That program was coordinated through a university in Poland, with intermediate level students, ages 14-65.
 
Later, she returned to volunteer at LVA and, for the first time, worked with students from China and Haiti.
 
“Teaching pronunciation was a challenge,” Amy acknowledged. “Both students brought different stories. One of my favorite parts of teaching is developing the relationships with the students and the stories that they bring with them.”
 
She varies her sessions, moving purposely between grammar structure and life experience. “One class may be grammar focused, another class could be about text messaging,” she explained.
 
Amy’s background is in psychology, a field in which she earned a bachelor’s degree, with a minor in Spanish, from The State University of New York at Cortland. She received a master’s degree in clinical psychology from The New School.
 
In her personal life, she’s been married 31 years and has two sons, ages 24 and 30. She has a deep interest in meditation and the spiritual realm within oneself.
 
She’s a Kansas native who moved to New York in the 8th grade which, of course, drew the interest of fellow students who knew Kansas for one thing.
 
“It helped me to become very flexible and adaptable,” she said of the move. “I got made fun of (with) … ‘Is your name Dorothy? How did you get here? Did you click your heels?’”

---

Christina Rahhal

Christina Rahhal is a free spirit who likes sharing what she has learned to help others find their way too. Christina was born in New York City, raised in Brooklyn, and now resides in Montclair. She has a passion of sharing herself and making a difference in other people’s lives. That might mean teaching English, distance learning techniques, and following your intuition.
 
While Christina 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. This clinic served students at SUNY and was a way for them to get information about topics they might have been uncomfortable asking about at traditional health services.
 
After college, Christina worked at the NYC Mayor’s Office under Rudy Guiliani, as Seminar Coordinator for Living in the Moment Seminars with Ariel and Shya Kane, and now for the past 20 years she is Vice President of Operations for TAG Online, Inc., a website design, development and hosting company located in Clifton, NJ. “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.”
 
Christina is also a Certified Health Coach. “Food is incorporated into everyday life,” Christina said. “A lot of people aren’t educated as to what foods to eat to lead a long and healthy life.”
 
Christina also found LVA as an opportunity to utilize her skills.
 
 “I found out about LVA from the Montclair group on Facebook and said I want to do this,” Christina remembered. It turns out her mom was also tutoring children in ESL in New Mexico.
 
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 student and tutor each week. And, of course, learning. Sometimes the student takes on the role of the tutor and Christina learns a lot about her student and her culture. Food is always a good ice breaker and in Christina’s case, an opportunity to educate beyond teaching literacy.
 
Christina’s first LVA student is Hilal, a woman from Turkey. “It’s been great, I find her passion for learning English inspiring.” Hilal really wants to be able to communicate in English,” Christina said.

---

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.”

---

---