Musician helps immigrant students learn English

by Shawn Rocco, News Observer

RALEIGH Mary McLaurin and her 12-string guitar have been training immigrant students' ears to the peculiar rhythms of the English language for more than a decade.

Lately, the musical pair has also helped coax students' hopes and fears into original songs that resonate with the heartbreak and uncertainty of leaving home for a new land.

McLaurin, 56, started visiting English as a Second Language students at Wake Technical Community College in 2000 and was soon rotating among half a dozen classes with her guitar.

Early last year, she helped create an entire class devoted to music-based learning, which she co-teaches with a paid teacher. This year, she won a community college systemwide volunteer award for her efforts in ESL classes.

It's an odd niche for a deeply religious mountain girl who once hoped to reach out to the world through overseas missions work. Instead, she said, the Lord kept sending her home.

"I realized the world is here in Raleigh," she says. "The question was, 'How are you going to reach out to that world?' "

In the music class, students improve their English through singing and crafting their own songs. McLaurin says music helps students understand language - and themselves - in a unique way.

"Music reaches them in a deeper place in their brains and in their hearts," McLaurin says.

Susan Ballard, the class co-teacher who nominated McLaurin for the award, said her partner's enthusiasm brings tangible benefits to students.

"Mary motivates and encourages students," Ballard wrote in her nomination. "Consequently, every semester sees a significant result in the literacy level increase of the students and in the finished product of an original song."

Missions near home

McLaurin grew up in an Ashe County musical family that would often gather around the piano to sing hymns and popular music.

She didn't take to the piano or guitar right away, but resolved to when she was in sixth grade. A family friend organized train trips though the mountains to see fall foliage, and a troupe of young musicians would travel along and put on a show.

McLaurin wanted to be on that train, and she was promised a spot if she could learn an instrument. She scanned the Sears catalog and settled on a four-string baritone ukulele she figured her small fingers could handle.

"I learned a few chords and went back, and they put me on the train," she said. "It was wonderful."

She eventually moved on to play the guitar, never going long without an audience. She played 4-H talent shows and camps during her youth and later played at contemporary church services that had started to favor guitars over organs.

She favors the 12-string guitar now, thanks to its ample sound, which she says is ideal for group singing.

McLaurin says she inherited her compassion for others from her family along with her love of music.

She felt her place might be mission work, and she went on several mission trips during her college years. But she always felt drawn back to North Carolina.

She moved to Raleigh and landed a job monitoring home schools for the governor's office. It was shortly after home schooling was authorized, and she traveled the state checking on schools.

A few years later, she started a full-time job at Gateway Fellowship Church, where she oversees several youth ministries. She now lives in Cary.

'She makes it fun'

In her years of volunteering, McLaurin expanded her contact with the ESL students, arranging monthly luncheons and taking them on trips to the mountains, where they stay with local families.

She also began to envision a larger role for music in ESL classes and approached Ballard about the possibility of having students write songs. The music class was born.

Ballard says the power of song is well-known among educators.

English is what educators call a stress-time language; the emphasis a speaker puts on certain syllables matters. Music exaggerates those stresses, making them easier to hear and understand.

"Music is so helpful in learning English because our language is like a song," she says. "It's a much more subtle way to get at the grammar and syntax."

Professed music lover Oscar Chavez says that hearing and singing English music has helped him understand more words, whether he's listening to the radio or a person's speech.

Chavez, 23, is taking the music class for the second time.

He says Mary's guitar trains his ears while also holding his interest.

"She makes it fun," says Chavez, who is from El Salvador. "My ear helps me to understand the sounds of the words more and more."

A lot of what McLaurin and Ballard do during classes is what they call "searching for a vein," as a miner might.

In their case, they're searching for possible songs.

On a recent Tuesday, one such vein seemed to appear in a class built around the song "My Favorite Things." McLaurin sang it in her boisterous voice, making every word clear and slowing down when students had a hard time keeping up.

Afterward, the class made a list of things that they like and dislike.

Several students said they like it when their families, such as children or grandmothers, are with them, but not when they're apart - most have family members in their home countries.

The two teachers planned to explore the idea further in future classes.

"What we're looking for is something that's going to evoke an emotion that's strong enough that you can put a song together about it," McLaurin says.

Once identified, the students build upon the original idea with sentences. The teachers lead the discussion and suggest grammatical fixes.

Later, various sentences will be written on large sheets of paper and rearranged in the best order.

The results are a poignant collection of songs with titles such as "Hope for a Better Life" and immigrant tales woven throughout.

One song, "Omar's Dream," began with a few sentences of broken English about a student's love for his war-torn home country, Somalia: "I love peace my country ... one day the people said please throw the gun away..."

Students filled in lines by capturing love of one's country in metaphors:

"Like a mother's arms to me,

Like paradise or a family,

My country, my people you are.

Like air that I need,

Like one more heartbeat,

My country, my people you are."

It's a painstaking process, one that brings students great pride in their accomplishment.

McLaurin says it also allows students to explore sometimes painful experiences.

"How are you going to really communicate what it's like to be away from your country, your home, your family? Who's going to ask you?" she says.

"That's what this does. It improves English and increases confidence, but it also gives them a voice."

http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/09/25/1515984/learning-english-in-universal.html