By Maria Rose

I love words. And writing them. And reading them. And understanding them. But when I attended an international school in Strasbourg, France, for four months in fifth grade (and travelled Europe with my family for another four months), I had a much more difficult time with these ‘words’.  For example, learning how to multiply fractions might not be an entirely impossible feat, but when the teacher speaks in a language you do not know at all, the difficulty level rises considerably.

But the worst part was the reading. I was used to being able to look at a sentence and know what it meant, what information was being conveyed. The markings on the page were meaningless to me. During classes at the international school, when I had no clue what was going on, the teacher asked me to look at magazines. I rifled through brightly colored pages filled with pictures and those infuriating words. I remember staring at the sentences and the jumble of letters that made absolutely no sense. It left me feeling weak and helpless. I hated not being able to understand words.

So when I found out an Ethiopian family had recently moved to Harrisonburg, and remembered what it was like not knowing the language, I immediately volunteered to help teach them English. Through some people at my church, I asked around and before I knew it, I was all set up to work with the family. Then I started thinking…how much could I, a sixteen-year-old girl, actually help them? It takes people months to understand the basics of a language and years to learn it completely. I doubted I would end up helping them much at all.

The first day I went to teach them, I was nervous. With Reese’s peanut butter cups, markers and coloring books in hand, I began playing with the four young and adorable kids. As we stumbled through shy hellos and introductions, they began to loosen up a bit. I practiced the alphabet with both the kids and the parents and taught simple body parts, like ear, hand and hair. That night, I left with a sense of strange contentment—the kind of satisfaction that one feels after helping someone else. (If you have never felt this way, help someone pick up their books after they have dropped them—it feels great.)

The next time I visited, I was so excited to start teaching them new things (colors were next on the list) but found that they had not yet remembered the alphabet. I could not grasp the idea that something that came so easily to me and made so much sense was so difficult for another person. So we went over…and over…and over the alphabet (after two weeks of focusing on that, we still go over it). I began to feel like I was not making a dent at all in their learning experience.

Nothing deterred their spirits though, and I was determined to let nothing discourage mine. They gave me 100 percent effort, all the time, and I would give them nothing less in return. They have so much enthusiasm for learning; when I come, the kids open the door, yell my name (“MA-reea, MA-reea!”) and pull me to the table. Regardless of whatever I am teaching them, be it the alphabet or colors or participial phrases, they are eager to learn it and try their hardest. By teaching them, I have learned that every little bit one contributes counts, no matter how small it is.

And that has made all the difference.