Ana Santog, 08-09: Changing the World One Word at a Time

Like many students at De Marillac Academy, a tuition-free 4th through 8th grade Catholic school in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco,

Sara was learning English as a second language.

Due to the language barrier, inadequate prior education, lack of support at home, and a number of other factors, Sara was reading at a second grade level in the fifth grade.

One of my responsibilities as a teacher’s assistant in the fifth grade classroom was to work with Sara to improve her vocabulary, reading comprehension, and fluency. While the rest of the class would read silently to themselves during their daily Independent Reading time, Sara would read aloud to me. When she came across an unfamiliar word, we would take time to clarify so she could better comprehend what she was reading. We would review each of these unfamiliar words everyday following until she was able to pronounce the word, explain its meaning, and use it correctly in a sentence.
Throughout first semester, I was nervous whether our work together was actually improving her reading skills. On day during a casual conversation with a friend of hers, she used one of the words we had been reviewing earlier that month. She did not realize it at first, but then she turned to me with an amazed look on her face. She had used a word that she had not previously known how to pronounce, let alone its meaning, in a normal conversation without even thinking about it. She beamed. From then on there was no doubt that our work was helping her.