Roma parents help tutor children

Sixty percent of Slovakia’s children classified as “mentally disabled” are Roma. Most just don’t know Slovak well enough to be classified as “standard.” Given this situation, and the need of several church members for work, we took four days of the February 2016 school break week to help ten of the church’s Roma children in grades 0 – 4 improve their Slovak reading and writing skills. Three parents plus my children (aged 12 and 15) taught grade-appropriate materials. The parents did not receive “pay” for teaching, rather a “reward” at the end of the week approximately equal to what they would have received had they been selected for extra community service work (about 1 euro an hour).

We met at the Hlinné Cirkev bratská church. The children wanted to come, even though we had no candy – only a healthy snack during ten minutes of the three hour daily
tutoring sessions. In fact, more children asked to come than those who were registered. The parents explained the lessons to the younger children using Romani. Progress was made by up to 21 words per minute faster reading speed of an unknown text. Now we are considering ways to continue.

Lisa van Vuuren, April 12, 2016