Connection to Ouside Reading-Three Cups of Tea

Chapter 12-Haji Ali’s Lesson
Education was the most important thing in my family. My Grandmother would always say, “If you don’t go to college you will work for half price for the rest of your life.” I could never understand how people didn’t know how to read and write, especially as adults.
When I first walked into the Cohen Adult Literacy Center, the stereotypes were already there. I just knew that the people who could not read or write were either stupid, lazy or a combination of both. I never dreamed how far each of the students would be from this stereotype. I was stunned and floored by how smart each of my students were, how much they would teach me and how they would change the way I thought about the illiterate. There was the husband and wife team from China who were biomedical researchers at Vanderbilt University. There was the Vietnamise mother who had sacrificed her life and family to give her children an incredible opportunity. There was the man who was an Iraqi refugee. They were there because they were motivated. They were there because they wanted to learn. They were there because they recognized that people like me would judge them because they were not as fluent in English as I was. I was ashamed of the beliefs that I previously held and committed to changing my mind and helping to educate people about the struggles of non-English speakers in our country.
The idea of stereotypes brought me back to Chapter 12 in the book Three Cups of Tea. In this section, Haji Ali is telling Greg about the importance of learning from people who are different. He says, “We may be uneducated. But we are not stupid.” Mortensen follows up by saying, “We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We’re the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their ‘shock and awe’ campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.”
We are never going to be able to move forward and change our world if we are unwilling or unable to change the way we think about people. By sitting down and just talking to my pupils, I was able to embrace a new way of thinking. They changed my perception about the state of literacy in our world. They allowed me to understand that education is not just how much you can read in an English book. It is about the mutual respect and growth that can come through meaningful conversation. For me, it was about changing my misguided views on the people who just needed someone to sit and talk to them so that they could change their own lives.

Service Learning Reflections, Part 3

Connection to Outside Reading- What’s in a List? By Jack Goody

During one of my tutoring sessions, I had the honor of talking to “A.” A’s story inspired me and challenged me to think about a world that is outside of my pampered, “America is always right” paradigm of thinking. He was a Christian refugee from Iraq. I was surprised to learn that Saddam Hussein and his regime had protected his family, because as A said, “We didn’t cause any trouble and ultimately Saddam didn’t want to have any rebellions.” After the fall of Hussein, his family was forced to flee to Syria to escape the persecution he faced from his own people. He and his brother and their families were sent to the United States, his sister headed to Australia, while the rest of his family crossed back into Iraq. He had not seen any of them in several years and the lines of worry crossed his face. He was polite, courteous and eager to learn, not at all the image of the angry violent Arabic men and women that are splattered all over our media outlets.

He spoke proudly of the language he, and his family spoke. He said it was the oldest language still in use today and it was very similar to Aramaic. Aszure (my spelling is incredibly incorrect) is the language used by the Christian people in the Islamic world. They see it as a way that distinguishes them from the rest of that world. He was quick to say he was not Arabic, he was Aszury. I was so embarrassed to sit and not know anything about this beautiful history. I thought back on the words on Jack Goody in his piece What’s in a List. He writes, “We tended to underemphasize the achievements of societies that employed earlier forms of writing and the part these played in social life and in cognitive processes.” Many Americans view themselves as so culturally superior that they can’t see the value that other languages and histories play. This language is one of the oldest languages in the world. It has so many stories and beautiful lessons. Literacy is not just valuing one’s own opinions, but seeing the importance of other cultures, ideas and languages. This experience opened my eyes and encouraged me to see a world that is outside of my own little bubble.

Service Learning Reflection, Part 2

Consideration of Material

Albert Einstein once wisely said, “I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” The adult literacy center was constantly striving to provide an environment and conditions that were best suited to their student’s learning. They take the short amount of resources that they have and try to utilize them to the best of their ability. At the adult literacy center there was no shortage of material that could be used to help these students better grasp the concepts being presented. Books, dictionaries, thesauruses, maps and bookmarks lined the walls. However, the greatest tools in that old school building were those that inspired and evoked conversation, not those tools that taught phonetics. While those were important aspects to the learning process, they were not tools that inspired the, “Eureka!” moments.

All of the students I was responsible for tutoring were very good readers. It actually said in their introductory packet, not to let them read because that wasn’t enough of a challenge. They had great vocabulary, they were the ones that taught me things. Two of my students, a husband and wife pair, were biomedical researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. They did not need me to teach them vocabulary. They needed me to talk to them, to converse, to teach basic social skills that are so under appreciated. The husband told me that he wanted to learn to be a better speaker of English because he wanted to be able to present his papers at conferences and to be taken seriously. He blew through the assignments that were given in less than 15 minutes and we spent much of the rest of the time talking. He was fascinated that I was majoring in political science (I guess they do not get a lot of say in the way government is conducted in China). However, the most fascinating conversation was about the map that was posted at our station. I got to point out where I was from and he was telling me about the places he loved to visit and vacation in China. Even though we had such a slight language barrier, we were able to unite and communicate by pointing out places we had visited. This map built bridges that united two very different cultures. This is why teaching materials are so necessary to the tutoring process. They open the doors to conversation, mutual respect and appreciation.

Service Learning Reflection, Part 1

Connection to your own literacy experience

I was an only child for five and a half years, before my goober brother decided to come along and mess up my perfect little world. I had a lot of attention from my elementary school teacher mother and my engineering father. They were, and still are, to of the most opposite people who have every lived. My Mother creative and bubbly, my father, serious and analytic. Their choices for bedtime stories always mirrored their differing personalities. My dad would advocate for the book where I might possibly learn something. My Mom would choose the book that rhymed or had beautiful literature. However, there was one book that they would fight to read to me (not kidding, it was a battle over whoever was the one lucky enough to read it to me). Matlida brought my family together in such a beautiful way. One of my fondest memories is curled up in my white iron bed, smushed between both of my parents because neither of them had been willing to back down from the fight. These kind of experiences are what made me fall in love with reading. My parents sacrificed time for themselves to sit and read with their child.

I began to think about the sacrifices that parents made after my session with a mother from Thailand. She had been in the United States for over 20 years, however, she still struggled with English. However, she had somehow raised two children who were incredibly successful in this country. One child was studying business at New York University and the other was getting ready to go to the University of Tennessee to study biomedical engineering. She had sacrificed so much of herself, giving up her family and friends to come to a country where she knew no one just for the opportunity for her children to have a better life. Her struggle with literacy came because of her sacrifice for her children; my literacy and love of reading came because of the sacrifices of my parents. Literacy is not something that is just given or received. It is something that must be worked to obtain and many times we must make tough choices, give up precious time and energy in order to obtain it.