Continuous Improvement, Lady Bird

Do you remember when you learned how to line up? I mean form a line with other people. If you're like me, it seems like I always knew. My first memory was of standing in line after recess at Washington Elementary School, waiting to go back into the school. Everyone would wiggle around and be loud. You know who you are Robyn, Paula, and Sally. Then the teacher would blow the whistle, indicating we should straighten up.

I'd never thought about lining up as a skill. Then one of my friends became a Kindergarten teacher. She explained that she had to teach the students how to line up. I think me and my pals were precocious learners - but we did have the benefit of Mrs. Luin's awesome Nursery School, when I learned to sing "Way Down Yonder in the Paw Paw Patch" and ate sugar cubes and graham crackers with Kool-Aid.

When I attended LSI Refugee Community Services (LSI) training last Saturday, the instructor explained the literacy challenges refugees face. We learned about the "intake" process when refugees visit LSI Community Services.

Volunteers were told there are different learning styles for literate and non-literate students. Just because a person has not attended organized school or a certain level of school, that doesn't mean they lack intelligence - just opportunity. Refugees from countries with different types of alphabets and pronunciations have a variety of challenges when learning English - from making rounded letters to how they hold their mouth and tongue when speaking. Some students don't understand that when given a worksheet, you write on the lines provided. They must be taught all of these things. The adult brain does not learn as quickly as the child's, providing additional barriers. Despite all these things, LSI does this training and many other great things in our community.

I volunteer as a classroom assistant with an Intermediate group. Most likely the students I work with have had the opportunity to go to school in their country of origin, as they have met a certain testing level to attend this class. We started a new semester after Christmas and have seen an influx of students.

Sue, our instructor, amazes me with her kindness and flexibility as she works the new people into the classroom. They appear at any time, while the class is in the midst of an activity. Sue brings the new students up to speed as much as she can, making them feel welcome, at the same time, assessing their skill level.

By the end of class Tuesday, there were eighteen students. Thankfully, we also had five volunteers, unlike the week before when I was the only one. We worked on describing people - hair, height, weight, age. It was a cold-hard reality to see that my age group is "old'. They needed to figure out when to use a or an or nothing.

List of words students practice

For example: Leslie has a blondish (or is it gray? only my hairdresser knows) hair. Sue would ask them if that sentence is proper. Most would say NO! (Some can be very dramatic) There is no a. Then when they do worksheets, some get it wrong, and I ask them to say the sentence out loud - would you say "He has a brown hair"? No, they agree. They erase the a.

On Tuesday, the students had a worksheet with adjectives and their assignment was to identify those types of words in a short story. I find that at times, I'm unsure what the right answer is. Did you know that when saying "football player", even though football is usually a noun, together with player it becomes an adjective? It is good to show students that we make mistakes too.

Many times the volunteers look for examples on our phones to show students, as even simple things we understand, they may not. For example the word "unusual". Sue is good at coming up with ways to describe words like that. She said our usual days for class our Tuesday and Thursday. If we came on Wednesday, it would be unusual.

I continue to struggle with ways to assist students with the worksheets without blurting out answers! I feel I'm making progress, but it's so much harder than I ever thought this would be. Add in my lack of knowledge of each student's culture. Sue has been very encouraging after my individual/small group work with students during the second hour of class. I tell her what happened and how I reacted. Last week she told me I have good instincts. That made me feel really good.

Just like the program I oversee at DNR, Environmental Management Systems, I'm striving for continuous improvement in this volunteer role. Wish me luck!

 I've seen so much about the movie Lady Bird and wanted to see it before it disappeared from area theaters. I knew it wasn't likely one Paul would want to see - so decided to go by myself. That was probably only the second time I've gone to a movie alone, and I enjoyed my company.

The movie was super! I laughed out loud, chuckled, teared up and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The movie is about a high school girl in 2003 in Sacramento, California coming of age. She goes to a Catholic school, so those scenes brought back childhood memories. Though Atlantic didn't have parochial school, the mass scenes were great. Lady Bird's angst to "get away" was not something I could identify with, but I knew kids who felt that way. Actress Saoirse Ronan was cast perfectly as Lady Bird, as was Laurie Metcalf as her unique "good mom/bad mom" mother. I loved the movie.