English as an afterthought

Here was English class today:
First, the whole plan depends on whether both women are there, or only one. The gap in their learning levels is constantly increasing, and it's harder all the time to make just one class that offers something to them both. So every week begins with two potential lessons. L, the one who struggles more, is able to come much less often. Her job, whose schedule seems to change without warning, prevents her half the time, and a battle with vision trouble and doctor visits takes up the other half. M, the one with more learning history and more confidence, has only her three cute children for distraction: aged 11 months to 6 years. M does great - I think she'll meet her goals eventually, with the language. I worry about L though. Right before my eyes, the story seems to happen yet again: she's trying to make a life in this country, but just the survival may keep her from gaining the language, and so the empowerment, that she needs in order to make anything more than a laborer's life...I feel partly responsible; I know I'm not, and can't be, responsible. I don't know.

I do know that, whether or not this is a failing on my part, I can't bring myself to push her to speak more English in class. We're supposed to be doing total immersion, actually. But she asks M or I to translate, and she speaks Spanish only, and my heart sinks because here, at least, I know how she feels. For all the lonely all-Spanish conversations I've sat on the outside of, hearing the intonations of jokes and the outside of laughter, waiting for the kindness of just one person, anyone, to turn and translate, and include me for just a moment. Maybe I'm supposed to be challenging her more, asking her to dive in and learn on all these levels at once. But I can't bear the thought of offering that kind of alienation to another person.

We meet in M's kitchen, surrounded by kidsounds. We don't know if L will be able to make it today, so we start where we left off last week, in the workbook. 15 minutes into this, L arrives. She hasn't been able to attend for almost a month, so I've prepared a review for the next class she's a part of. Try for a graceful transition -- finish the set of sentences we were reading, and suggest she look at this chapter for next week. There's only this one moment to try to learn something. "I'd like to do a little review", I say, and then discover I don't have copies of the pages I wanted to read together. There's a knock at the door. A neighbor arrives, with a little girl. She sits on the couch, begins conversing with M and L, and sets her daughter on the floor next to M's daughter, who soon starts to cry loudly. The two boys join us at the kitchen table. How about a game, I suggest. Luckily I can at least find the scraps of paper that I've made some games with - conversation phrases to pair up, body parts and family terms to match to their counterparts on cards. There's 15 minutes left and it goes by in a blink. Sure hope we learned something today.