1 post tagged “literacy”

I attended the graduation tonight of the five women in the adult literacy and math class I have had the pleasure of assisting these past few weeks. The lead teacher  in the literacy section, Mike, asked me to work with Rosa, who is the student who has the most difficulty in reading.  Indeed, while the other students can actually read whole sentences, she has difficulties in remembering her letters or identifying single letters much less entire words and she especially confuses letters for which there is no corresponding sound in Kichuah, the indigeneous language of he Andean countries. There are about 6 Spanish letters and sounds like that. 

They prepared a wonderful meal of chicken and rice and potatoes.   Rosa made the potatoes and sat next to me along with her three year old daughter.  I so enjoyed chatting aimably, simply and humorously with her.  I was very happy to give her a chance to share some of her knowledge which is of her own first language, Kichuah, the language of the indigeneous people in the Andean countries. She delighted in teaching me the word for "delicious" which is "mishkii-mishkii", a lovely sound. When the other several Kichuah speaking women in the class heard that and my, apparently, quite acceptable pronunciation of it, they laughed and added their own ways of describing our meal.

As we said goodbye, Rosa's eyes were moist as were mine. I was so happy to have been some help to her these past few weeks. She can now write her own name and the names of a few friends of hers with minimal help. This is a big accomplishment for her, one that I am honored to have had a part in.