Category Archives: Jubilee House

Stories about tutoring English to immigrants and refugees

Learning English–Loss of Status or Occupation and Starting Over

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For this past semester, I have been working at Jubilee House. Throughout my placement, I have worked with a variety of students, although Pi Mu has been the most consistent. Coming to the United States is obviously going to be a very difficult affair. Whether it be due to a language barrier, inability to find employment, discrimination, inability to access resources and understand rights, or simple homesickness, there are many challenges that immigrants face. The immigrants and refugees at Jubilee House have come to learn English and utilize this great resource. They also come to Jubilee House to gain social capital, find a cultural broker, and make connections in their new homes.

Upon arriving in the United States, many find that their situation has completely changed, although this is not always positive. A number of the immigrants I have worked with have experienced a loss of status. One woman I worked with from Honduras, Bea, had attended university in Honduras and received a masters degree. Her current level of employment in the United States was not specified to me, but it is clearly below her education level. She has faced enormous difficulty getting her degree recognized here. As such, it is almost as though she didn’t attend school at all – all of that hard work and financial investment for essentially nothing. It is an unfortunate reality faced by many immigrants. This loss of status is not only evident in employment and perceived education level. It is also present in the level of independence held.

Unable to speak the common language, immigrants are isolated and incapable of accessing certain resources and agencies. The act of getting a drivers license, applying for and collecting food stamps, applying for a job, procuring an apartment, or even getting around can become incredibly hard tasks. For those with children who were either born in the United States or who have been able to pick up English easily, one’s identity as an ‘adult’ is somewhat challenged–another example of loss of status. The parents become, in a way, reliant on their children’s language skills in order to go about day to day tasks. For a great majority of my students, gaining back that independence is a primary motivator for learning English. The loss of status and place in society is a difficult, painful transition for many, and one that is incredibly common and prevalent. Niaill H.

Tutoring at Jubilee House 2017

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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.