From UCLA
In this diverse, non-majority majority metropolis, where more than 40% of the population is Latino, it's so counterintuitive a practice it just has to be cool: Take students from suburban Westwood, bring them eastward, back into central Los Angeles, then have them teach Spanish to poor, struggling folks there. Huh? It works. Really. In the case of the poor, mostly immigrants who flock to Centro Latino for Literacy downtown, they may speak the language but they don't know how to read or write it; some barely know how to grasp a pencil, their awe-struck student instructors say. Still, those who come to learn do so after days of toil at two or three jobs and while juggling families and other responsibilities. These adult students' desire to improve themselves and their thirst for knowledge proves inspirational for the young instructors, who often find themselves not only polishing their own Spanish skills but also recommitting to their studies and community responsibilities as a result. There's other instruction offered at the center, too, with ESL classes and some personal finance for the 500 participants annually from the center's surrounding downtown community; grad students also run creative writing programs and do research about language and learning. The program was the brainstorm of a linguistics prof who was confounded that her students could leave school without ever really conversing in and using a language that's as common as Spanish is in LA.
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