Volunteer Spotlight: Linda F
This month we are pleased to feature Linda Freeman as our volunteer spotlight. Linda has volunteered at Literacy Source for 9 years, donating nearly 600 hours as a class assistant and tutor. We are honored to recognize her invaluable dedication, passion, and commitment to working with our student. She has really made a difference.
Here is what our ESOL 2 instructor, Kaeyoung, says about working with Linda:
“ Linda has been a part of our ESOL 2/3 day class as a class assistant over 2 years. She has strong teaching experience and is an excellent teacher who is able to take the lead. I have been very impressed by her sincerity and enthusiastic attitude toward all of her work in my class.
She is extremely helpful, provides thoughtful feedback, and brings many great ideas. She always warmly welcomes students and genuinely cares about them. She is kind, thoughtful, and respectful. She enjoys listening to students, values their individuality, and consistently shows respect for each learner. I feel very fortunate to have her in my class and am truly grateful for her hard work.”
Where are you originally from? If you’re not from Seattle what brought you here?
I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and spent my first 18 years there before heading off to Reed College, in Portland, Oregon.I successfully completed a Bachelor’s of Art in Psychology, but then bounced around for a few years, attempting to get financial aid or TA-ships for graduate school, but never managing more than part time studies while working day jobs. I did most of the classwork for a Master’s of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, while my husband was completing his own degrees, but didn’t do the student teaching I needed before moving to Seattle in 1994. I spent more years picking up evening classwork while working various retail jobs, but increasing health issues that turned out to be chronic conditions eventually led me to accept being a homemaker, and throw myself into volunteer work.
Why did you choose to volunteer at LS?
I started volunteering at Literacy Source shortly after the presidential election of 2016. I was deeply dismayed by the outcome and was looking for something to do that would feel meaningful; I heard about LS in my neighborhood Facebook group, and it seemed like a good fit for me. Part of my thought process was “Go where the vulnerable people are”. Since reading, wordplay, and language in general have always been a big part of my life, sharing language with underserved people, many of whom were immigrants, made sense. In retrospect, I consider it among the best decisions of my life.
What do you like about volunteering at LS?
I have met so many amazing people here. My first tutoring match was with *Jose, a native Spanish speaker who was functionally literate enough to have raised a family as a truck driver and a service station manager, but wanted to be better so he could read to his grandchildren. A few years in I a got certified to tutor in citizenship, and learned so much about who comes here, and why; Ada from Nigeria, who had raised a large family during a punishing civil war, and gotten all of them through college, despite never having gotten any formal education herself. In contrast, Aleksandra and her husband had grown up in the USSR and enjoyed professional careers. They rejoiced in the eventual liberation of their native Ukraine, but came to join one of their grown children in Seattle after the invasion of Crimea seemed to be bringing back the bad old days. Moving from one-on-one tutoring to assisting in a classroom widens the floodgates, and lets me get to know even more unique individuals. They broaden my world, and teach me more than I teach them.
The staff at LS are also wonderful. Denika, Erik, Cat, Corey, Britt, Kaeyoung, Caroline; all the fellow volunteers I’ve chatted with, trained with, or worked with in classrooms; and more names I’m forgetting - such a wealth of interesting, talented people, all committed to building a welcoming community where all kinds of people can thrive.
What might people not know about you?
I am not shy about my other main volunteer involvement, Choir of the Sound, but people may not know about my table-top role playing hobby, or my love of Renaissance Fairs. All three share elements of story telling and theatricality, and two out of three also include costumes. Come to think of it, teaching also involves a kind of performance; I guess I’m just a frustrated Theater Kid looking for a stage.
*Names have been changed to protect student privacy.