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CHAT ROOM: Palomino and Meyer
get comfortable.
Rod Searcey |
At 10 p.m. on a recent
Tuesday night, the lounge at El Centro Chicano, the
Chicano/Latino community center in Old Union, was understandably
empty. But three minutes later, students and night-shift
janitors were streaming through the front door and plopping
down on the mismatched couches.
By 10:05, the computer cluster, conference room and
adjoining offices were filled. The conversational buzz
could be heard at the Claw in White Plaza—and
probably beyond.
Habla La Noche—The Night Speaks—was launched
two years ago by students from the Stanford Labor Action
Coalition. Two evenings a week, it draws 20 workers
to El Centro Chicano for English tutoring during their
10 p.m. to 11 p.m. “lunch break.” Another
dozen janitors, mostly women, show up at noon twice
a week for a day-shift program run by junior Laura Avina.
The ABM Janitorial Services workers use the sessions
to practice their conversational skills, unpack English
idioms and learn how to write notes to their children’s
teachers. Those with more English proficiency work on
autobiographical pieces. “Before coming to California
I was an art student,” Doroteo Garcia wrote in
one recent exercise. “We don’t want to be
a burden on this country. We only want honest work.”
Like most of his co-workers, Garcia comes from Mexico.
He holds down two jobs and hopes to someday get a driver’s
license. As election results poured in on Super Tuesday,
Garcia and his tutor, sophomore Alayna Buckner, used
CNN bulletins as the evening’s text. “I
have often felt like Habla La Noche was the first thing
at Stanford that really felt right,” Buckner says.
“It’s one of the most comfortable communities
in which I am involved.”
In the three years group co-president Paty Hernandez,
’05, has been tutoring, she’s become good
friends with her student, Margarita, and gone to her
home for dinner. Co-president Eric Eldon, a senior who
plays weekend soccer with men he’s tutored, says
the work and play “has been a way that I’ve
kept from feeling isolated within the privileged Stanford
world.”
Each janitor has a notebook with his or her name written
on the spine—Lourdes, Erica, Alejandro, Artemio,
Rosario—so substitute tutors will know where to
pick up with lessons. Alicia Palomino, for example,
uses photocopied worksheets to practice verb tenses
and vocabulary. “We always spend the first few
minutes of the session talking about how our lives are
going and what is keeping us busy,” says her tutor,
sophomore Lauren Meyer.
They chat again at the end of class, over a quick slice
of the pizza that arrives at 10:55 p.m. It is lunchtime,
after all.
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