Students Honored For Civics Tutoring

Soon after Lynn K. Trever—a member of the dining staff at Harvard’s Greenhouse Café—first came to the U.S., she found herself toiling for 16 hours a day while eight months pregnant.

A native of Cambodia, Trever began working at the age of eight and says she often regretted not being able to obtain a better education in her youth.

But despite her exhausting work schedule and her lack of formal schooling, Trever decided she wanted to become an American citizen.

She recounted her tough path to citizenship in an inspirational speech at the Kennedy School last Tuesday, as she and 17 other Harvard employees were honored for passing their citizenship exams with help from Harvard undergraduate tutors.

These employees participated in the Citizenship Tutoring Program, which matches employees preparing for the citizenship test with volunteer student tutors. The free program is run collaboratively by the Institute of Politics and the Harvard Bridge to Learning and Literacy Program.

To Trever, who thanked the program repeatedly throughout her speech, Citizenship Tutoring made all the difference in allowing her to become a naturalized citizen.

A HELPING HAND

In the summer of 2002, the Bridge Program first began to tutor University employees who were hoping to obtain citizenship. In the fall of the following year, Russell M. Weinstein ’07 founded the Citizenship Tutoring Program in order to connect undergraduate students with employees preparing for the exam.

In its inaugural fall, the program started slow, drawing only about five volunteers. But in subsequent years, participation rapidly rose to include more than two dozen students.

One of the program’s key strengths lies in the fact that some of its staff are naturalized immigrants themselves.

Two of the Bridge Program’s liaisons to the undergraduate tutors—Tamara S. Suttle, the program coordinator, and Ana Roche-Freeman, an ESL instructor—immigrated from Barbados and Ireland and became citizens in 1998 and 2008, respectively.

Suttle and Roche-Freeman not only work with the undergraduate tutors during the year, but also perform tutoring duties during the summer.

They have a unique perspective on the apprehensions and fears that immigrants may face while taking the test.

“There are some questions that, if you don’t know English very well, are difficult to understand,” Roche-Freeman says.

The two have seen how the naturalization process has changed, even over the past few years.

In October of 2008, the test format was altered to include a more extensive civics section in which the examiner can choose any 10 questions from a list of 100 that the test-taker must study ahead of time.

In addition, Suttle and Roche-Freeman say that they understand how the rising cost of the test raises the stakes for prospective citizens.

While Suttle says she paid less than $100 to apply, the cost today is $680.

FORGING FRIENDSHIPS

The student program chair for Citizenship Tutoring, Julia B. Konrad ’13, emphasizes that the program offers volunteers a unique opportunity to build relationships with Harvard employees.

She says she realized just how connected she was to these workers during her first tutoring experience. Her “tutee,” Jose, realized when they first met that he had seen her name on her door earlier that day when cleaning bathrooms.

“The bond you make with your tutee is unique—these are people you see all around the campus,” she said.

Jacob J. Hutt ’13, a volunteer who joined the program as a freshman, also says he finds these bonds to be extremely meaningful.

Last spring, Hutt began working with Manuel Mendes, a native of the Cape Verde Islands and a custodian in Paine Hall.

Hutt tutored Mendes intensively for the two months before his scheduled test date.

“My experience with Manuel was different than most because we had so little time,” Hutt says.

Like many other participants in the program, Mendes had to overcome a language barrier, made additionally difficult by the fact that English is his third language—he is a native speaker of Portuguese and also speaks some French.

Yet Mendes’ grasp of the English language was strong enough that he ultimately focused his preparation less on the speaking and writing portion of the test.

“Because he had English speaking and comprehension ability, the thing we needed to spend most of our time on was the history and civics portion,” Hutt says.

The time crunch and long hours of preparation allowed Mendes and Hutt to bond.

Hutt skipped class to accompany Mendes to the John F. Kennedy Federal Building to take the citizenship exam.

Hutt provided much-needed comfort to Mendes, who says he was “very scared” to be tested on material that he had worked so hard to learn.

Ultimately, Mendes passed.

For some citizenship tutors, the process of preparing their tutees for testing can also be very personal.

Gresa Matoshi ’13, an immigrant from Kosovo, joined the program her freshman fall, soon after becoming naturalized herself.

“For me having personally gone through the process of becoming a citizen ... making it easier for someone else to learn the questions and master this test is really important, because I know I was privileged to know the [English] language and [American] history,” Matoshi says.

PURSUING THEIR DREAMS

In addition to citizenship tutoring, the Bridge Program offers classes in English as a second language, computer literacy, and GED and college preparation.

Once proficient in English and prepared for college-level academics, students of the Bridge Program often move into the Harvard Extension School to take classes at the discounted Harvard employee price of $40 per class. Many students hope to someday receive a degree.

One of these individuals is Kalan Chang, an Ecuadorian immigrant, who was naturalized this past year with help from Citizenship Tutoring. Chang says he hopes that becoming an American will help him gain access to greater opportunities as he pursues his education to become an accountant.

“In my opinion, the American dream is not a vague desire to have more, but the chance to become more,” Chang says.

When Chang immigrated from Ecuador in 2005, he says he “felt excited and lost,” in a foreign land attempting to navigate by street signs he could not understand.

Eventually, he got a job working as a custodian at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“This country has been really good to me,” he says.

“The only thing it has asked of me is to pay taxes,” he adds, jokingly.

Citizenship Tutoring volunteers have also gotten more involved in vocational and pre-professional instruction in the past year.

Under Konrad’s leadership, the program has expanded to allow student volunteers to take part in ESL and computer literacy tutoring under the umbrella of the Bridge Program.

STANDING PROUD

At the Citizenship Celebration Dinner this past Tuesday, the 18 graduates of the tutoring program were called one by one to receive certificates honoring their attainment of citizenship.

Before an audience including their family and the program staff—as well as University President Drew G. Faust and IOP Director C. M. Trey Grayson ’94—the graduates beamed as they were recognized for their accomplishments.

The undergraduate tutors were also acknowledged with a round of applause for helping to make the day possible.

But to some, being able to see their tutees succeed was more than enough reward.

“I can’t think of a program where one person can make more of a tangible impact on a person’s life,” Hutt said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following corrections.

CORRECTION: APRIL 9, 2011

The April 8 article "Students Honored for Civics Tutoring" misspelled Lynn K. Trever's first name. It is Lynn, not Lin.

CORRECTION: APRIL 12, 2011

The April 8 article "Students Honored for Civics Tutoring" misstated the Harvard employee price for a course at the Harvard Extension School. It costs $40, not $400.