At Catherine McAuley Center, English helps immigrants find jobs, settle in

After being in the United States for more than eight years, 41-year-old Francoise Kasine said she feels more at home  in Cedar Rapids than she does in her former home country of Rwanda.

And for that, she credits her English tutor, Ann Sullivan, and the services provided by the Catherine McAuley Center in Cedar Rapids where she's worked with a tutor to help get her citizenship and learn English.

The Cedar Rapids resident came to the United States with her husband and three children after 11 years of moving around the world in an attempt to get into America and escape genocide in Rwanda. Though she and her family left the east African country in 1994 for Tanzania, they lived in Zambia for five years before they were able to get approval to come to America - Colorado specifically - in June 2005.

Now, Kasine said she and her family are happy in Cedar Rapids because it's quiet, safe and a good place for them to rear their children. But she's also happy because she's become a U.S. citizen and is now confident enough in her English-speaking skills to function independently.

"They helped me to be a citizen, I'm a citizen because of them," Kasine said before her weekly English lesson on Tuesday. "... My English, too, is jumpy - and some spelling and pronunciation was so difficult - but now if I want to visit doctors or do my job, I don't need anyone to help me."

The Catherine McAuley Center

When the center was founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1989, it served primarily as a place to provide basic education for adults and a transitional housing program for women.

But after an influx of immigrants and refugees began coming to the Cedar Rapids area during the 1990s, the center began offering a program to learn English as a second language. Now, the majority of students enrolled at Catherine McAuley are in the ESL program.

The ESL program at the Catherine McAuley Center is unique because it offers free, one-on-one tutoring to students. The lessons are guided by a book and taught by volunteer tutors who go through a two-hour orientation program before they begin.

The program - with about 150 students a week and 100 volunteer tutors - has become so popular it has a waiting list of nearly 52 adults to be paired with a tutor. Wendy Arnold-Rodriguez, education program manger at the Catherine McAuley Center, said there are also about 20 current students requesting more time with a tutor.

Arnold-Rodriguez said the tutors typically are a mixture of retirees, students and business professionals who are matched with students based on availability. She also takes age, gender, personality and cultural expectations into consideration when making a match.

The center "has continued to grow steadily," Arnold-Rodriquez said. "I've been at the center seven years, and we've always maintained a waiting list, and every year I do the numbers, the numbers are always up.

"We're serving a lot of people, but we're continuing to see more demand."

In the full fiscal year 2013, Arnold-Rodriguez said the center served 291 students - 274 of which were enrolled in the English learning program -  with 264 volunteers. Students using the center represented 40 different countries.

There are so many students, some tutor and student pairs meet at the Cedar Rapids Public Library for their sessions because the center doesn't always have enough space.

 A Special Bond

Before coming to the United States, Kasine said she had tried to learn English while living in Zambia, where English is the national language. But it was difficult and hard to pick up, she said.

After hearing about the Catherine McAuley Center from family friends in Cedar Rapids, whom Kasine met while living in Tanzania and with whom she's kept in touch , Kasine began taking classes on citizenship and English in September 2010 while working part time.

Now Kasine meets with her tutor, Ann Sullivan, once a week. During their lessons, they catch up on each other's lives and go through the program's workbooks - which are designed to teach students English in a practical way, also teaching them what to do in certain situations.

One page the pair was going over on Tuesday walked through what to do if you have a plumbing problem, and the conversation one might have with a plumber on the phone.

Sullivan said she was drawn to tutor at the center after retiring from her regular job as a middle school teacher, and later as a counselor, because she wanted to do something meaningful. Now she has four students at the Catherine McAuley Center.

"This is probably one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, including all of my schoolwork," she said. "I've met wonderful people and I've taken part in so many meaningful things. Like with Francoise, I got to know her really wall, I went to her citizenship ceremony, I went to her daughter's eighth-grade graduation, I went to her son's citizenship ceremony - it's been like having another daughter."

Sullivan said she has a similar relationship with her very first student, whose mother is in Mexico. She described the bonds formed through the program as that of an extended family.

"I don't know that you're supposed to get that close to people, but it happened," Sullivan said.

A lot to be proud of 

After working on her English with Sullivan for three years, Kasine has a lot to be proud of - she and her husband have purchased a home and cars, she's helped her son get into college and she has a full-time job at the Eastern Iowa Airport at a parking kiosk. She said Sullivan has also helped her learn how to communicate with her children's teachers to make sure they're getting all the help they need in school.

"I feel like my teacher, my feeling is that she is like my mom, because my problem with speaking English was sometimes so confusing to me and uncomfortable," Kasine said, looking affectionately at Sullivan. "But I think to myself, who do I ask, who can listen to me very well and understand how I am? That's my teacher."

Sullivan said Kasine also has begun correcting herself as she speaks, which is a huge stride. She added that she feels the program is successful because students are able to work with a teacher alone, so they're not too intimidated to participate, or embarrassed if they make a mistake.

Kasine said that throughout her lessons, her tutors have been patient and encouraging. She said she sometimes goes to her weekly lesson with a communication issue she had during the week, and they talk through it, getting to the root of what may have caused confusion.

Even though Sullivan spent 34 years teaching, she said you don't have to be a teacher to tutor students in English.

"The important thing for people to know is you don't have to have one day of teaching experience because they train you well and the materials are really all you need," Sullivan said. "It's compassion for people, and a little patience - not everybody learns as quickly as others - but just a caring about people, and you just gain so much from it."