In 1996, the late Sister Maris Stella Hickey bought a former convent house adjacent to the St. Augustine School in Hartford. The building was restored and opened to the public in 1997 as a community adult education and social service center. When I arrived at the Jubilee House, I was greeted by Sister Anne. She introduced me to the other tutors who were mostly older white women and former teachers. All of these women were paired with an adult student hoping to learn English. It seemed as though the majority of the adult students were women. For a while, I was idly waiting to be assigned a student.

Eventually, Sister Anne placed me with a Hispanic woman named C. C’s tutor was not present, so I was filling in. The first thing that C. asked me was if I spoke Spanish. I replied that I could speak some Spanish. Sister Anne gave me materials such as a teacher’s workbook and vocabulary flashcards. At first, I flipped through the vocabulary cards and asked C. to identify what each picture was. If she did not know a word, she would record it in her notebook. In addition, I also asked her to use the word correctly in a sentence. While I was tutoring C., I noticed that the demeanor of the other teachers with their students was much stricter than mine. C. and I joked around about the Super Bowl game and laughed about some of the obscurities of the English language. Everyone else in the room seemed intensely focused on their lesson. At 10:30, teachers and students took a fifteen-minute coffee break. I was unsure of where to sit, so I sat with C, and several of her other friends who all spoke Spanish. For the most part, C. and her friends spoke Spanish with one another and discussed their families. However, at many points they asked me questions in English such as where I attended school and where I was from.  It seemed that most of the other teachers were sitting together at a separate table.

After our refreshments, C. and I resumed our lesson. This time we discussed topics in her workbook and completed several preposition exercises. C. was better with vocabulary, but seemed to struggle more with grammar. Overall, however, C, was very eager to learn and we had a very productive session. Since it was my first time tutoring, C. showed me around the convent and instructed me on what is normally done during these sessions. Although I will probably be placed with another student in the next session, I appreciated C’s adaptability, kindness, and sense of humor.  Julia T.