Voices of Project Literacy - Watertown Free Public Library

I would like to say that I feel like I was born again.Do you have any idea how difficult it's to live in adifferent country with a different language? Yousee people and try to talk, to express yourself, butyou are unable to let out all your thoughts! It's likea prison!I'm glad to have this opportunity to learn a new language in a safe and incentiveenvironment. No matter where you come from! Here at Project Literacy you are a person.No culture, no religion, no colors, no language, can put you apart. Here's a place thatwill make you work and grown up together! Sharing information and knowledge. Everytime someone in somewhere is trying to do their best, to make us better citizens to ourcommunity. Thank you.– Leo and Flavia, StudentsOne of the four students who had been coming to my weekly class for over five yearsasked me for the first time, “Why do you teach us?” This student had recently gotten alittle pensive. She and her husband had recently landed excellent jobs in industry, andshe knew that they both would have to leave my class to take them (which they did, afew months later).Unsurprisingly, there were a variety of reasons why I taught my class: a desire to dosome kind of public service; a love of teaching; an impulse to honor my parents, who wereteachers through and through. When I answered, however, it was with a cliché: we (theUnited States) are a nation of immigrants, and immigrants make us strong, as long as wedo what is needed to allow them (who become us) to thrive.Later that night, I considered some more and decided that, clichéd or not, the thoughtsI had expressed in that answer really had seeped into my blood over the past six-plus yearsof teaching.– Jim Greiner, Tutor25