A Literacy Program for Columbia
by Rachel Anderson

Thanks to COC's very successful Village Voice newsletter, I arrived in the village and found that not only did everyone know my name, but they also knew that I was here to teach. I soon discovered that both men and women in the village are greatly interested in bettering themselves and increasing their families' income. It also wasn't long before I found out my main obstacle would be "shame."

I have been teaching ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) abroad and also to immigrants in Columbus, Ohio for the last six years. Thus far, I have not experienced this "shame" that is involved in adult education in this village. All the people that spoke to me about wanting to learn to speak, read, and write better in English were averse to going to a well-known public place because of "shame." It took some convincing that I could not be a tutor for everyone in the privacy of their own children-filled homes. I managed to organize two leveled classes at our adorable little village library and they have been very successful so far. Most can speak English quite well, albeit a Creole English that lacks subject-verb agreement.

During my second intermediate level literacy class I had four women working hard on sentence structure when we all heard a truck approaching. As is the habit in a small community, we all looked to see who it was. Suddenly, one of my women ducked down underneaththe table! There was lots of murmuring in K'ekchi and I asked her what was wrong. She explained to me that it was her uncle in the truck and she didn't want him to see her at the library because he would tease her. When I inquired further, she explained that she was too old to be learning because school was only for children. She is my age (31) and had her first child at 14. This shed some light on the whole "shame" issue and I hope that the brave adults that are seen coming to my class will help others to not feel ashamed of learning.

In addition to these classes, I have also been teaching the Standard Six classes twice a week in the morning. These sixty students are studying hard to pass their high school entrance exam and I have been asked to train them in Creative Writing. This is proving to be very challenging. Not only is the grammatically incorrect Creole language a barrier to writing an academic paper, but also the local teaching style severely inhibits students from thinking outside of the box. My didactic teaching style - a standard in North American education - is sometimes challenging to the students.

Overall, I am finding that more and more people are coming to me wanting assistance in school subjects, and our house sometimes has people waiting in line for help with homework. This is an excellent community in need of my skills. I am happy to be here.

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