VIRGINIA TECH STUDENTS SHARE LIFE’S SUCCESSES AS THEY TRANSLATE FOR SPANISH-SPEAKING IMMIGRANTS

BLACKSBURG, December 17, 2002 -- News about the birth of a baby may not be a standard subject for student-faculty communications, but the arrival of Marleni del Cid’s new daughter, Jennifer Espino, prompted a barrage of e-mail messages on the Virginia Tech campus.
The birth on Nov. 27 at Roanoke Community Hospital of Jennifer Espino, who weighed in at 6 lbs. and 11 oz., was no ordinary event. The newborn baby brought together an immigrant family, students studying Spanish at Virginia Tech, and the university’s Service-Learning Center, where students may earn credit for community service work.

The program under which Jennifer’s mom received the personal attention of a student translator from Virginia Tech is called "Crossing the Border through Service-Learning," the brainchild of Spanish instructor Gresilda (“Kris”) Tilley-Lubbs. This community service course is designed for Spanish majors and minors and other students who want to have an immersion experience in the Latino community. Each student is assigned to a family from either Mexico or Honduras for the semester so they have the opportunity to interact on a personal level.
The grassroots program is driven by the needs of the Latino community. In Marleni’s case, she was pregnant at the start of the semester and developed gestational diabetes during the course of her pregnancy. Virginia Tech student Claiborne Marshall spent countless hours with her, interpreting at medical appointments, tracking down needles for blood checks, and even driving mother and baby home from the hospital.

"Crossing the Border" had its roots in Tilley-Lubbs’ own experience when she spent two-and-a-half years working at the health department as an interpreter for Latina women. During that time she became deeply involved in the Latino community and saw evidence of urgent needs for cultural mediation. She became a one-woman social service agency. Because she was also teaching Spanish full-time at Virginia Tech, she sought -- and was given -- permission to design a course that would get Spanish students into the community to help new immigrants navigate in what is for them a strange new setting. The departments of foreign languages and literatures and teaching and learning both support Tilley-Lubb's work.

That is how "Crossing the Border" first came into being. Since January 2001, when Tilley-Lubbs taught the first class, 15-25 students have enrolled each semester.
The course combines the academic, community service, and critical theory, helping students become agents of positive change in society. A reading packet complements practical experience and includes articles, chapters from books, short stories, and memoirs. Many of the readings are written by Latinos living in the U.S.; some are articles that have social justice as a theme.
The students travel to the Roanoke Valley twice a week to visit their Latino families, who represent a wide spectrum of educational, social, and linguistic backgrounds. The experience is a teaching/learning one for both the families and the students. The students teach English as a second language (ESL), translate documents, translate at doctors' appointments or parent-teacher meetings, and make phone calls -- in other words, they do whatever the family needs in order to help them adjust to a new culture.

One student, Kari Wilson, who took leave from her job as an elementary school teacher to enroll in the master’s in education program at Virginia Tech, is assigned to a school, not a family. She is serving as an ESL tutor for Latino students at Fairview Elementary School in Roanoke. Fairview administrators, who asked Tilley-Lubbs to include them in her program, hope that this independent project will grow into a larger partnership between Tech and their school.
"Crossing the Border" students write a weekly reflective journal to explore how the readings for the week apply to life events for their assigned families. The class also meets on campus for two hours each week to review the readings and projects. At the end of the class, students write a paper in which they discuss how they have changed since the beginning of the class.
Over the course of each semester, the students develop a close relationship with their respective immigrant families. At semester’s end, the students host a reception for the families to celebrate their linguistic successes. This semester’s holiday gathering will be held Saturday, December 14 at the Oak Grove Church of the Brethren, in Roanoke.

Tilley-Lubbs confesses she has learned a lot from the program as well. She has gone to several academic conferences and made presentations about "Crossing the Border," realizing in the process that one unique aspect of this program is the close relationships students develop with the individual partner families. She is even doing her dissertation on "Crossing the Border through Service-Learning: A study of cross-cultural relationships."

Michele James-Deramo, director of Tech’s Service-Learning Center, which promotes the integration of community service and academic study to enhance learning and deepen civic responsibility, said, "Baby Jennifer’s story offers good insight into how our students make a difference." Other Service-Learning projects include Appal Corps, in which students partner to help rural Appalachian communities, and Virginia Tech Outreach Program to Schools (VTOPS), an umbrella partnership with Montgomery County schools under which students serve as mentors, technology consultants, resident experts for gifted students, and special subject tutors.
For more information on the Virginia Tech Service-Learning Center, visit its web pages at http://www.majbill.vt.edu/SL/.
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Photo available at:
http://128.173.153.34/ and then go to the folder labeled "Crossing The Border"
Cutline for that photo is VT student Claiborne Marshall helps translate for Marleni del Cid and MD John Gaughen.