Monthly Newsletter

November 2014
Featured Story

Whats Cooking
Sweet Potato
Casserole

Hassan Alamer is one of the volunteers for the Adult Literacy program at the CPC. Hassan was born and raised in
Alhasa, Saudi Arabia. In 2006 he made the journey to the
United States to study engineering. He and his wife recently
moved to Tucson from Phoenix. Hassan currently is working as an Electrical
Engineer at a utility co-op down in Benson.
Hassan got involved with the Adult Literacy program back in January of
this year. His main inspiration for getting involved with the CPC was because of his strong belief for social justice and equal opportunity for all. Hassan says, I have had a lot of privileges that have put me ahead of the
game in life, and I feel obligated to help others who have not had the same
opportunities Ive had.
Hassan feels that the most rewarding part of working with the head start
parents is the positive impact you can have on a whole family. For Hassan
there is nothing more rewarding than having an impact such as that.
Some advice that Hassan gives to prospective volunteers and current volunteers would be to do anything you can. Hassan states that, There is always
a privilege you enjoy and maybe unaware of how you can use it to make a
difference in others lives.

Whats Going On In Tucson

Four Corners Festival- November 15 2014 Event
location: Skyline & Campbell Ave
Veterans Day Parade & Ceremony
November 11, 2014 Event Location: 330 W Franklin
St.
Viva La Local Fall Food Festival
November 16, 2014 Event Location: 4502 N. First
Ave.
El Tour November 22, 2014

Ingredients

4 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups cornflakes cereal, crushed
1/4 cup chopped pecans
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 1/2 cups miniature marshmallows

Preparation

Bake sweet potatoes at 400 for about 1 hour or

until tender. Let cool to touch; peel and mash
sweet potatoes.
Beat mashed sweet potatoes, sugar, and next 5
ingredients at medium speed with an electric
mixer until smooth. Spoon potato mixture into a
greased 11- x 7-inch baking dish.
Combine cornflakes cereal and next 3 ingredients
in a small bowl. Sprinkle diagonally over casserole
in rows 2 inches apart.
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Remove from oven;
let stand 10 minutes. Sprinkle alternate rows

with marshmallows; bake 10 additional

Teaching Tips
Try to know each student's needs
and preferences first, and do your
best to motivate the student by
giving him/her challenging activities that he/she is capable of doing. An instructor
should be able to determine the appropriate level of
difficulty that a particular student can handle.
Be creative when presenting lessons. Although Adult
Literacy lessons should be formal and systematized, an
instructor could still use videos, music and other forms
of media related to the lessons.

Student Spotlight
Rosalinda Magallanes came to Tucson in 1997 from Nayarit, Mexico as
a newlywed in hopes to find work.
Her dreams were to save enough
money and finished building a house
Rosalinda and her husband had started. She luckily was able to find a job quickly, but her plans
changed and made Tucson her permanent home when her first
child was born in Tucson followed shortly by her second.
Rosalinda and her husband decided that staying in the United
States was the best thing to do for their children.
Rosalina explains how her children do not understand many
words in Spanish, so it becomes difficult for her to communicate with the kids. Learning English has become Rosalindas
main priority because it is difficult understand her childrens
teachers at conferences, and has even become embarrassed to
attend the conferences because she doesnt understand English
well enough. She finds it very important to learn English so that
she is able to communicate with everyone and be able to participate in community activities.
When going out Rosalinda would become very embarrassed if
someone would come up to her and ask a question, most of the
time she would just walk away because she couldnt communicate with them. Her husband is able to speak a little English but
mainly about work. Rosalindas children would ask her when
she was going to learn English.

There are various barriers involved when it come to Adult

Literacy. Probably the most difficult barrier to handle is the
language barrier, which is why many instructors still struggle
to correct the pronunciation of some of the English words, the
grammatical errors, etc. However, it is still the responsibility of
the instructor to make an effort to break these barriers and
create a good learning environment. By and large, still, being
an ESL teacher is not easy because there are so many things
to consider and there are just so many things that he/she
needs to learn.

Originally Rosalinda bought a self-learning course for English, but

found it difficult due to all of the distractions at home, so she then
began researching English classes she could attend. Desperately
searching for an English class, she finally found the Child-Parent Centers when her son enrolled in the Head Start program.
When Rosalinda first started taking English classes through the CPC
she thought she was too old and doubted that she would be able to
learn anything. Luckily though Rosalinda began to get the hang of it
saying, The pronunciation is very difficult, but I thank God I am learning some English.
Rosalinda says her English had greatly improved and has learned a lot.
She gives a lot of credit to the teacher, who Rosalinda claims to be
very strict, but is very happy with. Rosalinda states , He is very strict,
but if he wasnt so strict I would not do the homework. Our teacher is
giving his time to us so that we can learn, when he could be doing other things such as spending time with his family, so I motivate myself
more to study English.
This country is the land of opportunities for my children. Despite the
fact we do not know English very well, they will have a better life. We
are very happy but I want to be able to communicate with others
better Rosalinda says.