From the first day we met my student Hung and I developed a special friendship. We had a great bonding experience on the first day, when after our lesson we both accidentally got on the wrong bus and suddenly found ourselves running together up Indian street looking for Hung's car, me late for another appointment, and us both laughing about our "big mistake." As we ran up the hill Hung commented between gasping breath, "You're 22 years old and I'm 42 years old! Why are we running?!?" before we both erupted in laughter again.
 
From that moment on, Hung and I became a number of things: friends, for one, but also fellow students and teachers learning about each other's language, history, and culture. The morning's events showed us that we both had things to learn and to teach, and by sharing our experience and laughing about (and learning from) our mistakes, we could develop a great friendship that we'll have for the rest of our lives.
 
I got involved with the Whatcom Literacy Council (WLC) about a year and a half ago when I first attended their information meeting at the Whatcom Library upon the recommendation of a mentor of mine. I went with the original intention of participating in the Adult Literacy program, but after learning about the English Language Learners (ELL) project I signed up for the ELL program, inspired both by the opportunity for international exchange, and the chance to help someone completely new to America.
 
With the exception of class projects at Western and working with the Asia University America Program, volunteering with the WLC was my first real teaching experience, which meant, as I mentioned above, that I was also learning about how to teach as I did so. I quickly learned that Hung is a very intelligent and clever person, and although he was a very advanced English student, that he struggled especially with pronunciation. Trying to help Hung express himself more clearly in English is what we worked on for basically our whole time together.
 
Working with Hung I learned about lesson planning and effective teaching methods, like using the question hierarchy, raising awareness activities and Total Physical Response (TPR). In many ways, Hung and I were perfectly matched for each other: both patient, earnest and drawn by technical details, many of our lessons involved first understanding the concept of language (basically, that the production of sounds create meaning and that that meaning is changed if the sounds aren't produced accurately), followed by fun lessons on sentence and word stress and targeted pronunciation exercises. There were days where we had to slog through pronunciation exercises but we always came through with Hung speaking more clearly and more aware (and confident) about his speech.
 
I spent a lot of free time outside the classroom with Hung, whether it was getting a cup of coffee after class or being invited over for dinner with his whole family. In this way, Hung and I were able to discuss cultural differences and opinions about the world, and also I got the chance to learn a bit of Vietnamese. Getting to know Hung's family was a very special experience for me, and memories of laughter over dinner with his wife and two kids, now that we have parted ways, brings a lot of good feelings to mind and make me miss them very deeply.

At first simply a desire to give back to the community, volunteering with the Whatcom Literacy Council has given me many things. Obviously I got excellent teaching experience, but I also learned about Vietnamese culture and history, and have taken with me a little bit of the Vietnamese language. Because of this experience, I also made a very special connection with Hung and his family, and have a friendship with Hung that will (thanks to email) probably last the rest of our lives. Thinking back, I realize that was able to learn as much as I taught and that working with the WLC was just as an incredible opportunity for me as it was for Hung and his family. The fact that WLC is able to facilitate this kind of experience for learners and teachers should inspire us all to do what we can to see that this organization continues on into the distant future!