Day 3 My student

After thirty years of assigning grades, I'm free from that horrible task. When you teach Level 0 English as a Second Language, (ESL) there are no written tests; you just pass your students on to Level 1 or decide they need more practice. I don't have to give a final exam, I don't have to create a "rubric that quantifies their experience" in my class, I don't have to label them with a letter or numerical symbol. ("Level Zero" is harsh enough.)

Honorine, from West Africa, showed up last week. She was a student last year but attended sporadically. In fact she stopped coming to class the last few weeks of the semester. She still doesn't know the alphabet and has trouble remembering simple vocabulary words, yet she can speak French, her own language, and she converses with students from Togo in their language. I really don't know how many languages she can speak. I think she's been in a Chicago quite a while. She does hair for a living.

"Sue," she asked me while we were in the computer lab. "Can I talk to you late?" After everyone was working on the computer I asked her if there was a problem. Her face pinched, her voice deepened and she began talking about her sister and water. "No water. Not right." She shook her head, held my hand. "I'm sorry for your troubles," I said to her, patting her hand. I felt guilty remembering my scolding voice when I had reminded her earlier in the class about trying to come on time. It sounded like she and her sister were fighting.

"Can you help. Apartment, two bedroom."
Does she want to get away from her sister? I considered trying to find a social worker for her to talk to. No, she said, they wanted a new apartment. They had been living in a place with no running water, but she didn't say for how long.
How could I help her? Did I want to help? Did I want to get involved? Then I remembered how I got my apartment.

"Let's try Craigslist-dot-com," I said and began typing "2 Br Uptown" into the search bar of the site. After a short time we found four apartments not too much above her budget of a thousand dollars a month. "My sister is good at English; she can call." Before I left the lab, I walked back to Honorine and told her, "Tell your sister to try to get a little lower rent. It's the economy. It might work."