The End of the School Year
It’s time for reflection as this school year draws to a close. I am proud to have been a part of the teaching staff at Columbian High School as a tutor in English-as-a-Second-Language. Since February of 1999 I have been teaching two Chinese students, Wendy and Kyle Wang. When they came to Tiffin, they sat in classes at the High School and Junior High, but they understood very little of the lessons. They were 16 and 14 at the time. Happily, Wendy joined the Columbian High School Choir and soon was walking home with friends she made there in spite of their language gap.
I taught Wendy and Kyle one class period a day, five days a week. We worked on basic Laubach literacy materials and they progressed through Book I. Their mother works at the Happy Garden Restaurant, and they were surrounded when they were not in school by people who speak only Chinese. We are fortunate to have a superintendent who understood that much progress would have been lost if they hadn’t continued their lessons during the summer. The National Machinery Foundation gave the school a special grant so our work could continue.
Wendy and Kyle worked very hard and they progressed in the Laubach program through Book 4. At the end of that book, which is the last one in the program, they were nearly able to read at the fourth or fifth grade level.
In the fall, they both started classes at the ninth grade level at Columbian. They were very good in Math and I seldom had to help them with that subject except for some of the story problems. They took easier level courses in American History and English and made passing grades with a little help from me to fill in background. We read the fiction books they were assigned together. The science courses had so many new words and concepts in them that we struggled all year just to get a passing grade. We appreciated the fact that teachers were willing to give them extra time to look up words in their language so they could pass tests.
We spent a lot of our time studying supplementary materials for passing the Citizenship, Reading, Science and Writing portions of the Ninth Grade Proficiency Test. Although they haven’t passed all parts by the end of this, their second year in high school, they are close, sometimes missing a passing score by one point!
I am extremely proud of the hard work they have done this year. In particular, they have made great progress in English. Mrs. Deb Baker was Wendy’s teacher and I can’t say enough about the effort that both Wendy and Deb put forth. Wendy had a poem accepted in a national student’s publication. Rebecca Drabik, a new teacher, also inspired Kyle to work hard. They both learned keyboarding and did a lot of their work on the computers in the school library.
I also tutor a Japanese student at the Junior High School, Naho Horie. I see her two days a week and help her understand the questions on review sheets in preparation for tests. We spend a lot of time on Science, and Geography.
Another success story is the work of Tania Santillana, and her brothers, Carlos and Boris. Tania and Carlos have passed all parts of the proficiency test and now all three of them are able to make good grades without my help. Success for me is working myself out of a job!
Percy and I marked another milestone when we attend the graduation of our sixth grandchild, Brennan Andes, in Ann Arbor. We have four more to go. I close with a little poem I found in my files about graduation:
Dear Ones – today the chickadee
By Robin S Chapman
Comes for the bread crumbs
I left yesterday, reminding me
Of Josh, in his graduate’s
Cap and gown, walking across
The stage last week – his cap
As black as the chickadee’s.
So much happiness, in the tilt
Of both their heads! To be
An artist, young, the world
To flit through, sampling,
On learner’s wings!
– Mary