'I like seeing their lives improve'

Trusted guides give immigrants - primarily preschoolers' parents - an essential key to adapting to a strange land.

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 17, 2000

[Times photo: Michael Rondou] Quynh Huynh and her tutor, Patty Burrows, share a laugh during English lessons.

ST. PETERSBURG -- On the first floor of a small apartment building near downtown, a tiny Vietnamese woman is struggling to learn English.

"My name Quynh," she said during a recent lesson.

Pointing to her tutor, she said, "Your name Patty."

"Your book. My book," Quynh Huynh continued, pointing to the respective items and emphasizing the possessive pronouns she was attempting to master.

That evening, though, proficiency proved elusive.

Later during the hour-and-a-half session, she struggled with the word "when." The adverb, which sounds exactly like Mrs. Huynh's first name, posed a challenge for both tutor and student as they tried to sort when Mrs. Quynh had arrived in America.

The answer was Oct. 21, 1999.

Patty Burrows, a volunteer tutor with United Methodist Cooperative Ministries, took the session in stride.

"What's your telephone number?" she asked.

Mrs. Huynh, a 26-year-old mother of two young daughters, answered quickly and confidently, but pondered a while over her address.

In a pink sweater and turquoise pants, she sat close to Ms. Burrows on a brown couch in the apartment she shares with her husband, children and parents.

At one point, she put a finger on her temple, curled her toes and concentrated on reciting the alphabet. "Z" proved to be a puzzle. She then counted, showed off her knowledge of colors, and sped through the days of the week, blissfully skipping Thursday.

Whether she got things right or wrong, she seemed to enjoy her lessons. She smiled and clapped when right. With her head on Ms. Burrows' shoulder, she giggled at her mistakes.

Mrs. Huynh used to be shy.

"She's warmed up to me quite a lot. ... I really like her," Ms. Burrows said. "I wish I could speak Vietnamese so I could share more. I'm still down to about three words."

A dispatcher with the Largo Police Department, Ms. Burrows, 41, started tutoring Mrs. Huynh in December. She also teaches two refugees from Bosnia.

"I really enjoy it. I like seeing their lives improve," she said. "I've always liked volunteering and I was always searching for something that would touch my heart."

She discovered what she was looking for last fall, Ms. Burrows said, when she saw an advertisement for volunteers to teach English. The Gulfport resident arranged to take two weekends off from her job and enrolled in the mandatory 16-hour training session offered by United Methodist Cooperative Ministries.

Though she depends on teaching aids provided by the program, Ms. Burrows often introduces methods and material of her own to help her students learn.

"I improvise, using games and maps and toys, whatever it takes," she said.

Besides teaching them the language of their adopted country, tutors often go out of their way to help students in other ways, said Marti Lane, literacy coordinator and trainer for United Methodist Cooperative Ministries.

Grace Whitehair, for instance, a retired math teacher who has been a volunteer tutor since last fall, helped a pregnant student who needed help from the Department of Children and Families.

Additionally, the Gulfport resident, who started teaching four refugees from Southeast Asia, recently volunteered to take on another student when the student's tutor moved north for the summer.

For Ms. Burrows, providing extra help to her students meant borrowing her parents' car so she could take a Bosnian woman for a driver's test. Her own truck, Ms. Burrows explained, would have been too cumbersome for the novice driver.

She also helped the woman, a mother of two, open a checking account.

There are so many intricacies to starting life in a new country, Ms. Burrows observed.

"There's all the day-to-day things that you don't think of. I just can't imagine relocating to Bosnia or Vietnam," she added.

The goal of the United Methodist Cooperative Ministries' language program is to help make the transition smoother, said Ms. Lane, who runs the organization's recently relocated literacy office. Ms. Lane said one of the reasons the office was moved from Childs Park United Methodist Church to Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, at 301 37th Ave. N, was so it could be closer to the people it serves.

The English for Speakers of Other Languages program recruits volunteers who are 18 and older and conducts free volunteer training sessions several times a year. It then matches volunteers to non-English-speaking students.

"We have close to 120 active volunteers all over Pinellas County," said Marylina Carbungco, director of program services at United Methodist Cooperative Ministries.

"Our main priority is to match tutors with the Southeast Asian Preschool program," Ms. Carbungco said, referring to the school, at 5995 Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) St. S, that serves Southeast Asian children who speak little or no English.

Mrs. Huynh's older daughter attends the school, where Ms. Burrows also volunteers as a teacher's aide.

After the program matches parents of the preschool with English language tutors, it then tries to help other non-English-speaking refugees and immigrants, Ms. Carbungco said.

At present, though, with many of its regular tutors away in Northern states or Canada, the program is in desperate need of tutors.

"We've been trying not to accept new students," Ms. Lane said. "Of course, with learning a language, it's hard to take a summer vacation."

She said students' needs vary, depending on their country of origin.

"But," she said, "the first need is for a friend. Language and work are their next greatest needs. The problem is, most of them work and their shifts are constantly changing. They have entry-level jobs, so they try to pick up overtime and it's very difficult to try to schedule classes regularly and they get very tired. I wish we could find some volunteers who would be willing to watch the children while their parents have lessons."

The job of a volunteer tutor is not for the fainthearted, Ms. Lane said. "It's hard work. It takes about an hour of preparation for every hour of teaching.

"The cross-cultural experience is very challenging as well as very rewarding. For example, with just the tone of your voice or a hand signal, you can give a completely different message than you intended. Once I wore a pin of an owl and my student, who was from Thailand, would not do anything in the lesson that night. She just sat there, so I went and got her husband and told him, "I have done something. Could you come and see?' "

The woman's husband saw the pin, Ms. Lane said, and explained that the owl is a symbol of death and that to put it where someone could see it is to wish that person dead.

Despite potential pitfalls, volunteers find their work rewarding.

"It's turned out to be something that I really feel good about," Ms. Burrows said. "I don't sing, dance, sew or cook. ... I was always someone who thought I had nothing to give."

Her students have proved her wrong.

"It's overwhelming to see how happy and grateful they are," she said.

Volunteers needed

United Methodist Cooperative Ministries will offer two free training programs for volunteers who would like to teach English. The first session: 6:30 to 9 p.m. June 16, and 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. June 17. The second session: 6:30 to 9 p.m. June 23, and 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. June 24. Both at the Asian Community Association, 450 34th St. N, Suite C (above the Hoa Lan Oriental Store). Training material will be provided. Call (727) 327-7018.

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