Implication #7 (students as teachers)

7. In their capacity as workers and family and community members, many adult students are not just writers, but serve as teachers of writing and/or local writing consultants. (Tony, Diane, Charlene, Patrice, Z, Heather).

Sarah:

We had a Mac in the house before a PC. It came into the house after the business closed. We didn’t have one growing up, didn’t have one while I was in high school. We had a typewriter, I’m pretty sure we had a nice typewriter. My mother had always aspired to be a writer one day. And her mother had always wanted to be a writer and she didn’t have more than a jr. high education. My mom is presently writing what she believes are her memoirs. I inspired that. Which is funny—that I inspired that, when she’s the one who got the ball rolling in the first place.

How did that happen?

I had just finished writing a short story for a class. But it took on more of a life of its own. I’m thinking about trying to get it published. So, that inspired her, the fact that my experience was successful inspired her that she should get on the ball. I showed my short story, in the process, with her. Then she said, ‘I need to start writing.’ So, I gave her Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones. I gave her that book to read. It was a required book for The Writing Process, a course I took here.

She writes everyday. I think it’s more of a catharsis. I think she’s going back far—like to the teenage years. She’s shared some of it with me, not all of it. She’s writing it in chapters, in thinking that it’s going to be a book, she’s writing it like a book. She’s writing everyday.

Goran:

I was a tutor over at NHTI during my last year there. I was tutoring in the learning center. I was helping people with MS Office and C++. I had a bunch of people who had English as a second language and I was helping them and I was also helping everyone else who would ask for help. It was good for me because I could relate to them because I had been in the same position. And it was good for me to improve my English. The Director of the Learning Center actually awarded me for my work there.

Your job at the Learning Center, were you specifically there to help people who had English as a second language?

No.

Who was it for?

To help everybody who needed help. In any subject. I was helping some people—she was from China. I was helping her to write her papers in English. Even though that wasn’t really my job.

What was your job?

To help people with computers. How to use MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint. How to do C++ programming. I was helping them to use a tool to accomplish their work. But I always went a little overboard to help people. I guess that’s my personality.