Using What We Have
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By Carolyn Hutton, Connections Facilitator
“He took what he had, used creativity, and made something useful.”
This is what German, an English at a Second Language (ESL) student and recent Connections participant, said at the end of reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. An experienced engineer by trade but apologetic about his language skills, German summed up the story beautifully, and the class agreed. We wrote his sentence on the board.
I thought about German’s words all that week. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is the true story of William Kamkwamba, a young inventor in Malawi who built a windmill from junkyard finds and a dream. No matter how the neighbors laughed, he held to his vision.
Students connected with this. Certainly, German understood the mind of an engineer. A young woman in the class understood ridicule. She said she was the youngest in her family. When she stated her dream to come to America everyone laughed. Others said it felt impossible to learn enough language to get a job, yet they persevered with their dream. Actually, “taking what we have, using creativity, and making something useful” is an apt description of what our students do every day.
The Connections program at New Hampshire Humanities also has a way of doing this. A page in a book sparks recognition, memory, knowledge in a student and inspires them to share it. This connection creates deeper understanding, not just for this student, but for the whole class. A common comment at the end of a series is not so much about what the facilitator or even the book brought but “I learned so much from my classmates.”
When I returned to this Connections class, inspired by German’s comment, I brought bags of random supplies: aluminum foil, cookies, pipe cleaners, tape. Students had 15 minutes to collaborate and “use what they had and use creativity to create something useful.” With much laughter and discussion, they did this. There was a vase of flowers, a necklace, a model bicycle with an obstacle course, and a hydraulic pump for water.
A lesson we can take away from German, William Kamkwamba, and Connections is “You use the materials you have. You make do.” There’s nothing truer for an adult education teacher! There’s nothing truer for our ESL students who create homes and jobs using limited resources of English and material things as they get started in this country. But for any Connections series, our greatest resources are the students themselves.
To learn more about the Connections program, visit www.nhhumanities.org/Connections.
