Embassy News

"My experiences are wonderful" - Interview with English Language Fellow Jennifer Holder

Ms. Holder with her students  (full size photo)

Many African Americans commemorated in February are famous names recognized all over the world such as Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Denzel Washington and Michael Jordan. But the vital work done by many African Americans doesn’t always make the headlines. Here is an exception. Ms. Jennifer Holder, a U.S. State Department English Language Fellow, works in Pécs to help Roma high school students develop their English language skills. The Pécs University Newspaper recently conducted an interview with Jennifer on these activities. We are pleased to repeat this interview here to highlight an African American whose work helps to strengthen the ties of friendship between the U.S. and Hungary.

"My experiences are wonderful"

Jennifer Holder is English language fellow in Pécs, teaching students of the university and younger students at the Gandhi Grammar School. A brief introductory interview follows.

How long have you been in Hungary?

I arrived in September 2007 and since then I travel back and forth between Pécs and Budapest. I work with students in both cities. I am an English Language Fellow and take part in a project that works with Roma students from 9th grade to 12th grade.

How are the students you teach?

My experiences are wonderful. A lot of times they get on my nerves, kids are kids. They want to learn but they also want to have fun. What I like the most is that they have very good questions. I find them very motivated and very interested in learning English. Of course one can learn a language from a book, but I feel they love the opportunity to practice what they have learned. I also find my students to be very open - very-very normal people, so to speak.

Do they understand you easily?

I don’t really know, some students say that my accent is hard to understand, but others find it pretty easy. Students see a lot of American movies, listen to music, so my accent may sound familiar to them. They say they can understand me. Right now, I am speaking at a slower pace than normal, so I hope they are telling the truth. For university students I teach less language and more of the cultural background. In the Gandhi High School I try to make learning fun by using things like the computer version of The Game of Life projected on a screen for English in context lessons. I travel a lot, so sometimes I don’t see them for weeks. When we have a class together we talk, have conversations on different topics.

What did you expect when coming here?

My degrees are in special education and English as a second language. I chose to come to Hungary because I had friends with Hungarian and Romanian background and I was eager to see this region. In the Gandhi School, I teach Roma children and I am very excited to see how this minority lives in Hungary. I am optimistic about Hungary’s future. I have to be optimistic, that is why I am here. What I hear from the Roma students is that it is still hard for some of them to get into college. We have been through these same problems in the United States and I am happy to find that there are people here in Hungary who work to solve these problems, to remove these barriers. Things don’t get better when only one group works but when all groups works together in solidarity. For example, if the people in Hungary and Romania can work together to solve the problems confronting Roma, they can really make things happen.

(Published with the kind permission of the newspaper.)

Posted: 03/11/2008