Teachers for a Day, Learners for a Lifetime

On June 22nd, 2021, the Songbird Youth Volunteer Group visited the Ridge Oak Senior Housing Center and became ESL and CSL teachers for a day. Due to the global pandemic and the inability to meet face-to-face, The Songbird organized “Stay-At-Home” performances in which volunteers would perform music, dance, and chat with Ridge Oak residents online. Luckily, since then, COVID-19 restrictions have lessened and more citizens have become vaccinated. As a result, the ESL/CSL teaching program is Songbird’s first in-person service since last summer.

The Songbird volunteers taught the residents who have English as their first language Chinese, and residents who primarily spoke Chinese English. Originally, the classes were going to be separated by what language the resident desired to become familiar with. However, the Songbird suggested having all of the seniors in one room to learn from each other’s mother tongue. Volunteers encouraged dialogue between English and Chinese-speaking residents, and facilitated discussions between them. In between lessons, the elderly practiced simple greeting lines with a peer who was fluent in the language. For example, one English-fluent partner would say “你好！我叫 Sarah”, and the other Chinese-fluent individual would respond with “Hello, Sarah. I’m John.” A smile would blossom across the senior’s face once he effectively communicated with the others in the room.

The Songbird first repeated the phrase in English, and then in Chinese. Service members were provided with two paper easels. Volunteers would write the Chinese and English meanings of the phrase on each easel, along with the Pinyin, the official romanization system for standard Mandarin. Since Pinyin uses the alphabet, the student teachers hoped that it would facilitate the learning process for English-speaking residents. The members also taught the seniors how to pronounce the Chinese phrases accurately. Pinyin utilizes four diacritics denoting tones to signify how to pronounce a word, from ending on a higher pitch to first starting out with a lower pitch, and then moving upward. The denotation of pitch is crucial for any individual who wants to learn how to speak Chinese. English does not have direct tones or accents within it’s language, distinguishing it from Pinyin, in which each word has its own accent. Though this was a new concept to many of the seniors, they immediately developed an understanding of the tonal Chinese dialect.

The volunteers emphasized that the most crucial aspect of mastering a English or Chinese phrase is to practice sounding out the words. A phrase one would commonly hear while passing by the practice room would be “Repeat after me”, as seniors would carefully sound out the phrases. Donned with their small notebooks and pencils, the residents were attentive to the task and willing to practice with those who spoke the native language. The Songbird was incredibly impressed with how the seniors enthusiastically asked questions and conversed with one another. As restrictions surrounding social distancing and wearing masks lessen in New Jersey, The volunteers hope that the seniors will be able to incorporate these daily greeting phrases in their own day-to-day lives. Soon enough, all of the residents will be experts in another language! The amount of Chinese individuals at Ridge Oak Senior Housing allows for the unique opportunity for seniors to speak Mandarin with one another. All of the youth group members are looking forward to more English and Chinese lessons with the residents, and as all classes do, proceed with more advanced phrases and definitions. The Songbird may have been teachers for only a day, but they gained the valuable lesson that there is no age limit to learning something new.