Our charter is that we tutor adults 18 years of age and over, but as a part of interacting with the families we do also come into contact with their children, and are in a position to clarify for the parents our cultural norms and problems, and by example can influence the behavior of the children.

First Story:

One family that I tutored for about 8 years is from Vietnam.  The parents have service jobs (laundry, kitchen) at a local convalescent home. They live in a small 2 br apartment in downtown Grass Valley. Their daughter was 5 years old when they arrived here in 1995. She is now a senior at Nevada Union with a 4.0 gpa, taking AP courses and early Sierra College courses, with good prospects for a science  math University education (provided appropriate financial grants can be acquired). They are all U.S. citizens now.

This success was not by accident, for it can be hard for foreigners to become integrated in Nevada County, especially for kids in the school environment. Immigrants can sometimes fall into the “at-risk for problems" category, including being easy marks for drugs. But as part of the tutoring of English and cultural values, we had many conversations about their concerns for their daughter.

We talked about keeping her active and not allowing her to have too much idle time, and about her parents knowing who her friends are and meeting their parents, too. We explicitly talked to her about her interactions with other kids, and about how she should feel inwardly strong enough to choose her friends wisely by their thoughts and behavior.  Not everyone had to be good friends.  We explicitly talked to her about the idea that in interactions with other kids, both in school and out, it was possible (probable?) that at times she would be invited to join what adults would consider risky behavior, sex, alcohol, cheating, drugs, etc, and that many kids said “OK” in order to be thought “cool.”  We encouraged her to recognize consequences of behaviors, and to be strong enough to say, “NO, thanks.” We made sure she always had enough money to contact a taxi if necessary to remove herself from a situation she felt was getting risky, and to feel inwardly strong enough to do so, not to worry about what other kids would think about it.

While her father helped her as needed with math homework, I helped as needed with English essays and ideas on logical thinking, logical documentation.  I also encouraged her to seek counseling from her teacher’s as needed; many times immigrants are shy about asking teacher’s for help, and I assured her it was important for her to do so if she had questions or confusions about how to improve her work. I also mentored the daughter socially, taking her to a few plays in Sacramento, including Sacramento Theater Company, Broadway Series, and Music Circus, as well as to local events such as the Story Telling Festival and a Shakespeare play (with some coaching in advance).

She is now a talented, confident young woman winding up her high school years with honors, and looking forward to University training.

In another instance, I tutor a woman from Mexico who has 2 school-age children, a son in grade 5, who seems to be doing fine so far, and a daughter who just completed her first year in high school.  The mom cleans houses for a living (was a nurse in Mexico), and the dad and older brother work in landscaping.  They rent a small trailer on a lot in Grass Valley.

Last year, during one of our sessions, our lesson was about words that express emotions, and I asked the mom what kinds of things made her feel sad.  She said her daughter. So we talked about it, and during her first year in high school, the daughter’s grades were rapidly slipping, and she had been put on detention for cutting school.

Well, as to the grades—the daughter’s English was only marginal, and she was attending a class for ESL kids at the high school, but it wasn’t helping enough. Also the daughter is very shy and self-conscious about her English, and hesitates to ask questions. So I spoke to the teacher’s for the mom (algebra and life science) and learned where she was having problems.  Some friends of mine are scientists and one is fluent in Spanish, so they agreed to tutor her over the Winter vacation.  They helped her with some extra credit work in science, showing her how to make a poster and write a paper, and helped with algebra problems too.  Her biggest problem was with multiple-choice questions where she saw too many words that she had not studied in addition to the ones she had studied, and she got confused.  They helped her with test-taking strategies.  By semester end her grades were B’s in those subjects. So far she seems to be maintaining, but we’re watching.

As to the cutting classes—it turned out to be a misunderstanding due to cultural and language miscommunications.  She had missed a day of school due to illness, but her mom didn’t understand that she needed to communicate that to someone at the school, so the school assumed that the girl was one of the growing number of Hispanic students that were more frequently cutting classes.  She wasn’t. The detention was withdrawn.

Because she is shy and wants to be liked but has difficulty communicating, I will continue to work into the mom’s lessons issues about kids in school, kids and drugs, kids being strong to say “NO”, and so on.  The story is a continuing one.

Bev Stout

Literacy Council volunteer tutor