Tutors draw on wealth of experience –
and patience
By FRAN HAWTHORNE
Special to Newsday

September 10, 2009

When Ketty Colbert came to Brooklyn from Puerto Rico in 1954, at age 16, she was one of only three Spanish-speaking students at Midwood High School. Although she'd learned some English in Puerto Rico, "I was afraid to make mistakes when I spoke, so I stayed to myself," she recalled.

Now 71, Colbert, of Mastic Beach, has been on the other side of the table for the past six years, helping non-English-speaking adults learn to read, converse and prepare for their U.S. citizenship test.

While Colbert's path from learner to tutor is somewhat unusual, scores of retired or near-retirement Long Islanders are doing similar volunteer teaching through various social services organizations.

Teaching Literacy
At programs run by Bellport-based Literacy Suffolk (where Colbert volunteers) and Freeport based Literacy Nassau, they help adults and older teens learn to read, write and speak English.

Tutors at the Mineola-based Family and Children's Association work with people of all ages who haven't earned a high school diploma to prepare for the General Educational Development (GED) test.

Typically, volunteers say their motivation is to "give back to the community," said Barbara Romano, 63, of Port Washington, a volunteer for Family and Children's who recruited eight friends to volunteer as well.

Often, they get what they give. "To see them [her students] having a discussion with each other in English - you can see you've made a difference," Colbert said. Volunteering has given me the best years of my life."

A Serious Commitment
Depending on the program, tutors volunteer for one to four hours a week. The two literacy groups require a one-year commitment, and tutors usually are partnered with the same student until that student achieves a goal he or she has set.

Family and Children's volunteers generally stay four to five years, according to vocational educational coordinator Drew Williford. A majority of the volunteers are in their 40s and older. Many, like Colbert, are former teachers, but experience in almost any field helps.

"Engineers can come in with great math skills," Williford said. "The GED has five subject areas [reading, writing, science, social studies and math] and if you've graduated from college, you probably know them."

"We have a lot of worldly knowledge that can help them," said Dick Grafer, 67, a retired partner at Arthur Andersen who lives in Port Washington and was recruited by Romano to volunteer at Family and Children's (where he is a board member).

He uses his experience at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he worked for a year in the 1970s through a government-business executive interchange program, to add some real-world insight to his social studies lessons.

The programs provide some training for volunteers, but officials say that a teaching credential isn't the most important qualification.

So, what makes a good tutor?
"The patience of Job," said Brenda Alui, director of tutor and student services at Literacy Nassau. All learners have different styles and rates of learning.

Accentuate the positive
"It's very important to have positive support and a tutor who's not frustrated," she
explained."  Somebody who listens, learns, is creative and finds a way to communicate," said Gini Booth, Literacy Suffolk's executive director.

Indeed, those qualifications explain why age can be an advantage for tutors.

After growing up in a military family that moved around the world, raising two children, working as a department store buyer and a special education teaching assistant, and nursing her late husband through four years of cancer treatments, "I've seen a lot, and it takes a lot to flap me," said Romano.

Some students prefer working with tutors their parents' (or grandparents') age.

"Speaking with someone who has so many years of experience works out better," said Chantel McCalla, 20, of Hempstead, who got her GED through Family and Children's last November.

Now enrolled at Monroe Community College in Rochester, McCalla says she is thinking of transferring to a four-year college for a business administration degree. She had dropped out of high school after moving to Long Island from Florida, in part, because it was hard to fit in socially.

The tutors at the Family and Children's Association "taught me every subject under the sun," McCalla said. "I got more support than at any high school."

Learning how to fit in
Arakel Minias of West Hempstead, a 21-year-old Iraqi immigrant, learned the basics of American life in the Family and Children's program, along with GED test preparation.

"They taught me what the Fourth of July is," he said. "They explained the gestures. I met people there to talk with." This fall he will start at Nassau Community College.

Grafer admitted that, when tutoring a young person with vastly different experiences from his -- say, a pregnant teenager or a recovering drug addict -- "there are probably things we can't relate to." To help conquer that divide, he said, he draws on his professional experience working with young employees.

And the teaching goes both ways. Romano recalls some of the students she's helped:
• The young man whose friend was shot dead next to him on a street corner as they went out for pizza (he's in college today).
• The ex-gang member who was pressured to rejoin when he got out of prison (at a party for the most recent GED graduates this spring, he was there, and "you've never seen anybody so proud in your life," Romano said).
• The teenage mother of two whose husband abandoned her (she just started her own party-planning business).