Julie Kletzing was wracking her brain to come up with an easier and fun way to teach English as a second language when she happened by a box of brownie mix.
“Suddenly, I thought, `Hey, let’s make brownies,’ ” the Wheaton College junior said. “What could be more fun than brownies?”
So Kletzing, 20, took the brownie mix to the home of the 36-year-old Vietnamese woman she tutors. “We had a ball making brownies,” she said. “We not only learned a little English, we also ate well.”
The brownie lesson was part of Kletzing’s weekly work with the Refugee In-Home Training program that is part of the college’s Office of Christian Outreach. She started with the program her freshman year. She has been tutoring the Vietnamese woman, a Wheaton resident, on Sunday afternoons since December 1998.
“Each student in the program is matched up with a refugee who has recently come to the United States, maybe within the last month to three months,” Kletzing said. “They go to the refugee’s house once a week and help them with English, help tutor them, and help get them adjusted to American life, because refugees often don’t know about things such as going to the grocery store or writing a check.
“The program just lets them know that they have friends here.”
Kletzing often ends up tutoring others besides her student, who is married and has three children, ages 3 to 8.
“Often there are family members who will sit in on our English conversations and try to learn, especially the husband. Or neighbors who are Vietnamese will come in and often someone will say, `Will you teach me too?’ “
Kletzing varies the way she teaches. “Part of the time we’ll have a formal English time where she has an English notebook and I’ll teach her vocabulary. Or I might teach her how to say `my, your, his and her’ and we’ll practice that.
“Sometimes we’ll share photographs to get the lesson across. I’ve brought photographs from my summer and we try to explain to each other what’s happening in the pictures.”
Kletzing also helps the family with practical tasks. “One week they showed me a bill they needed to pay and they didn’t know how to pay it, so I showed them how to go about writing a check and paying the bill,” she said.
Before working with the Vietnamese woman, Kletzing tutored a 16-year-old Russian immigrant.
“She was an only child and she lived with her parents and had limited English skills,” Kletzing said. “I don’t know if she knew too many Americans–she had mostly Russian friends at her high school.”
She often could relate to the Russian teenager. “Her favorite things were cars and she was very excited about buying a car, so two or three times we spent about an hour looking at car catalogs and she knew all the different brands of cars.”
Working with the refugees has broadened her life, Kletzing said. “Discovering that they didn’t know very much English helped me sympathize” with them more, she said.
She calls the tutoring extremely rewarding, adding that she looks forward to being able to share with them.
“It just enriches my life to have friends from another culture and to have a different perspective on the world. It helps me see who I am as an American and that there are a lot of other people out there.”
Also rewarding is the way her students have shown their thanks.
“The Russian girl invited me to her birthday party–it was just me and her and her family.” Kletzing said. “We had ice cream and that was really neat.
“Other times she would give me food like Russian borscht. I really enjoyed that,” she said.
The Vietnamese student and her family made a huge dinner for Kletzing–spring rolls, Vietnamese cake, pizza and fruit. “They wound up giving me a bag of about 20 more spring rolls for my family,” she said with a smile
Tim Sisk, director of the Office of Christian Outreach, said Kletzing is representative of many students “who are concerned about the outside world–what’s outside of her studies and Wheaton College.
“She’s a fine example of someone who is willing to give up her time to help others.”
Kletzing is studying Greek and Hebrew and majoring in ancient languages. “I’ve thought about going overseas and doing Bible translations for those people who don’t have a Bible written in their language,” she said.
She did just that this summer with the college’s Students Missionary Project in Papua, New Guinea.
However, because of the work she has done with refugees, she’s exploring another option: After graduating in 2001 she may return to school and get a teaching certificate in English as a Second Language.
Born in Bloomington, Ind., Kletzing and her family have lived in Wisconsin, Texas, New York and Massachusetts before they moved to Illinois two years ago. She lives in Batavia. She is a 1997 graduate of Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School in Hamilton, Mass.
Her father, David, works at Wheaton College as a faculty consultant designing courses. Her mother, Karen, a part-time private tutor, works with elementary and high school students. Julie has three younger brothers.
In addition to working with the Vietnamese student, this year Kletzing is coordinator of the Refugee In-Home Training program.
About 20 students are participating in the school program and Kletzing pairs them with refugee families. Organizations such as Wheaton-based World Relief, an international disaster relief agency that works to resettle refugees, help match the students and refugees. “We get refugees from Bosnia and Kosovo and Syria and Vietnam,” she said.
Kletzing hopes to continue working with refugees in some fashion after she graduates.
“I love to get to know people of other cultures and I love the opportunity to help refugees,” she said. “I’ve gotten to know these refugees and see what troubles they go through and what life is like for them in the United States. And as a result of that, I’ve come to admire them and want to help them.”
