Daily Mississippian

Issue date: 6/20/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Domnica Negru

Media Credit: Domnica Negru

Teaching English to Hispanic students might be hard. But to teach English to Hispanic children when English is not your native tongue, might be even harder.

Jiaee Kim, an Ole Miss international student from South Korea has been in the US for only a year but manages to teach English from scratch to Mexican immigrants' children.

Kim drives everyday with her friend 50 miles south-east from Oxford to another city just to tutor. The town is called Vardaman and is known for its sweet potatoes.

According to recent data from the area, the Hispanic population in Vardaman has grown significantly since immigrants have fluctuated to the city.

They are actively involved in the local economy, working the sweet potato plantations and in the furniture industry.

"Vardaman is called the capital of the sweet potatoes and there are a lot of immigrants working on the fields," Sister Jo Ann Villademoros said, who hosts the ENRICH in her Catholic Charities buildings.

"It's not a matter whether they'll learn English. It's matter where they learn it," she said.

Kim is tutoring Hispanic children struggling in school because of language barriers. She helps the students with writing, reading and math.

"It's really different from what I learned from the textbook (Kim is a TESL major). At the first time I thought that teaching means just providing the knowledge to them, but now I realize that is really hard to keep their attention during different activities. We communicate with body language and eye contact," Kim said.

Kim's knowledge in Spanish is limited to "Hola" and "Gracias".

She said that she will try to learn Spanish soon because she wants to understand what the children say during class among themselves.

This is the reason she finds it hard to sometimes keep them under control.

"When they speak Spanish during class I ask them to switch to English, but if they ignore me, I might really get upset and then I yell at them "....." which means" Be quiet" in Korean, but however, the children just laugh at me," she said.

The Hispanic children were not really used to pronouncing Korean names and soon found a nickname for their teacher.

"I want them to call me Miss Jiaee, Miss Kim, but children call me Miss DJ. Last week they kept calling me like that, so I tried to ignore them and I think today it worked a little bit".

Teaching Hispanic children opened Kim to the Mexican culture.

It was with her students that she got to taste Mexican food for the first time, as well as learn about their family relations.

Kim thinks that compared to Korean parents, Mexican parents are friendlier and less conservative.
"Korean parents think that working hard is more valuable than spending time with the family. In school I barely spoke with my father."

She said that Korean parents are very cold in expressing their love physically, that is why they barely hug or touch their children.

"Once I tried to go arm by arm next to father and he turned and said- you act as if you my girlfriend. I was really shocked".

The children Kim is tutoring are in elementary school. The youngest is four and the oldest is in the fifth grade. His name is Jose Alvarado and he was the only one brave enough to give an interview. "I think it's good to learn English. I will have more job opportunities", he said.

A limited number of immigrants' children from Vardaman can benefit from English tutoring.

Those who had problems at school because of their bad knowledge in English, were recommended by their teacher to the organizers of the ENRICH program.

Barbara Marsh, state coordinator of ENRICH said that presently foreign children from seven different locations in Mississippi are studying English as a second language. Marsh chose to bring the program ENRICH to Vardaman this year because the town of about 1000 people has a growing population of Hispanics, not only from Mexico, but from many other Latin countries.

Marsh said she prefers to have non-native English speakers as teachers.

"I think the fact that Kim is from another country its an asset because she can understand better how these children are struggling," she said.

Kim said what makes her want to go to Vardaman early in the mornings everyday is because the children remind her of her childhood.

"I spent my childhood in Japan, for about six years. From kindergarten to 4th grade and I spoke Korean in my house and Japanese in school. I grew up in a bilingual environment, just like them. I participated in afternoon class in school, too. Students in Vardaman take me back to my bilingual experience in school and home when I was little. When I teach children, I try to remember how I studied and what kinds of activities I did in school" said Kim. "Through teaching them I realize education is the most precious thing in the world," Kim said.

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