Clairmont Presbyterian English Classes Build Confidence, Friendships

Each Wednesday evening on the first floor of the education building at down a narrow hallway in a large multiple-use room suitable for meetings, classes and piano playing, three teachers and four students sit around two tables and practice the sometimes confusing, always rewarding art of learning English.

The students are all women and all live near the church. Three of them hail from Iraq and one from Haiti. When they arrive at the classes, they greet the teachers—including Michelle Hulme-Lippert, the wife of associate pastor Bobby Hulme-Lippert—with a flurry of warmth, high fives, cheek kisses and hugs. Families are often discussed. The weather was looking bad this particular night, and would lead to storms that devastated Tuscaloosa, AL, which in a way was a teachable moment. It allowed for teacher Will Hudson to discuss the English names for different phenomena like thunder and lightning.

Then, it was time to start. Hulme-Lippert and fellow teacher Jackie Protos set to work with their students, Myrlande Laurent and Olfat Al-Roubai. Last week’s topic of discussion was the world of work, and there had been homework on the subject. The chapters of the textbooks used in the class, Verizons, include a picture at the end with many details and prompts the students to identify them as a way to review the concepts introduced. An accompanying workbook strengthens the lessons using fill-in-the-blank, matching and other exercises.

The lessons often deviated slightly from the textbook to allow the students to link their own lives with the concepts. Each student discussed the jobs they’d held in their native countries: Laurent had been a receptionist and at one point worked for Haiti’s national television station, while Al-Roubai had been a first-grade teacher. Real-life examples seemed to help the students better understand what they were learning.

Telling time, pets and the various words used to describe family members were also on the agenda for Rasha Adnan and another student who both use a level two Verizons book.

The very small ratio of students to teachers allows for individualized instruction on concepts like the tenses of the words is, are, was and were, plus grammar lessons about the words can and cannot as well as learning about the word before. Confidence and comfort are emphasized.

A discussion of buying things to cook segued into talk about how often the students themselves cooked. Laurent said she did not cook often since it was just her and her husband. Al-Roubai shared a story of a time when her husband brought her breakfast in bed. Hulme-Lippert talked about her husband’s valiant attempt to make a salad and how he asked her about ten different questions in the process of preparing it. The stories made everyone laugh and made the students feel comfortable talking in an unfamiliar language.

After reading a paragraph in a round-robin style and answering comprehension questions about it, and after the announcement of a test in two weeks, the casual, comfortable class ended with another flurry of warm goodbyes.

Hulme-Lippert, who has experience teaching similar English classes elsewhere, started the classes in fall 2009 and targeted them for residents of the Azalea Village Ministry, which provides temporary rent-free housing in seven different buildings adjacent to the church. The housing has been utilized by Hurricane Katrina evacuees, refugees and seminary students. Azalea Village began in 2005 and works in partnership with organizations like Decatur Cooperative Ministry and Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta. Three of the current students live in Azalea Village.

Word of the classes spread quickly and at one point, there were eight students. The class is kept purposefully small so that students receive individualized attention and to lighten the load on the teachers: Hulme-Lippert once taught in a class of twenty.

“It’s very much a relational thing. We’re really getting to know Myrlande and Olfat and so that’s really neat. I like that we’re friends,” Hulme-Lippert said. Laurent and Al-Roubai are also neighbors and often visit or call one another to practice their English. Hulme-Lippert and Bobby have especially noticed a growth in Al-Roubai’s confidence when she speaks.

“It’s been really kind of neat to see [the students] growing in their confidence,” Hulme-Lippert said. “I just feel like it’s always really exciting…Every time I walk away, I just feel more energized and excited.”

For more information about the program, please contact Michelle Hulme-Lippert at michelle.lippert@gmail.com.