The Republican Springfield, MA 01103
Tutoring volunteers spark ESL program
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Once a week, Mary Omartian travels to foreign lands.
Her one-hour journeys to Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Puerto Rico, Colombia,
Korea, Thailand, or wherever her bilingual students come from, started three
years ago when Omartian, an administrative assistant at Springfield Technical
Community College, joined Adopt-an-English as a Second Language-Student program
in which faculty and staff volunteer to meet with English learners for
informal conversation.
“I don’t know what the students are getting,” she laughs. “I am getting a lot
out of it, and that’s why I do it.”
A Springfield resident, Omartian grew up in “a European home,” where, along
with English, she was learning Armenian, the native language of her parents,
who came to America in 1915 from what is now eastern Turkey. They fled what
was probably the first genocide of the 20th century when more than a million
Armenians were killed due to Ottoman Empire policy.
Omartian said the tutoring “is a chance to learn more about the world. I
travel to foreign lands with these children. And they keep me young.
“Primarily, it’s learning about each other personally. We just sit down and
talk. I tell them a little bit about myself, and then they open up and I ask
them if they have families and about their country. And they ask me questions.
It’s just to make them feel comfortable to be here, just get them to speak
freely.
“The kids” are wonderful students who “are happy to be here and very
committed, very dedicated, very bright, very anxious to learn.
“And it’s fun. … Oftentimes, they can’t think of the English word and start
chattering to each other, start thinking out loud, helping each other around
and then they respond with the proper word,” Omartian said.
While the talks are good for their oral comprehension, her students are
getting much more because Omartian makes you feel at ease right away, which is
something vital for chatting with friends.
“In our Adopt-an-ESL-Student effort, last spring we had 23 volunteers, mostly
from the faculty and staff, meeting with 50 students,” said Setta McCabe,
director of publications at STCC. “There are volunteers from all over campus –
senior administrators, faculty in many different academic programs, ad
ministrative assistants, as well as other students. … They are such wonderful people.”
Regina “Jill” Mendez, the faculty member who organizes the
Adopt-an-ESL-Student program, said they also have a few volunteers from the community, some of
whom have been helping out year after year.
“It’s really like a conversation with a friend,” said Lyudmila Kolesnik, 21,
of West Springfield, who came from Ukraine two years ago and is taking an ESL
course at the college. “We are talking about everything. It’s fun and it
just makes the time fly by.”
“I like the program and the tutoring part very much,” said Inna Dudkina, 33,
of West Springfield, adding that when she came to America a year ago from
Ukraine, she barely could speak the language. “All the teachers are very patient and really friendly.”
The ESL program “prepares our students to enter the programs that they want
to,” said department chairwoman Pam Greene. “If someone comes into the program
without any background – and we do accept students who have absolutely no
knowledge of English into the program – our four semesters allow them to be
proficient enough to really depend on themselves and to participate fully and
satisfactorily in their classes.”
Alex Peshkov, a staff writer for The Republican, emigrated to Western
Massachusetts from Arkhangelsk in 2002. His column focuses on the Russian-American
community. He can be reached at [email protected]