Students in San Francisco are helping elderly immigrants to prepare for their Citizenship Interviews

For the third year in a row student "coaches" from San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco are helping senior immigrants become U.S. citizens through a program called Project SHINE-Students Helping in the Naturalization of Elders. The program, a national community service learning effort with sister sites in several other major cities, provides vital preparation for seniors who face the prospect of engaging face-to-face in English, and answering the 100 (often difficult) questions used by the INS in its citizenship interviews. Senior immigrants-who are among the approximately 1.8 million people currently waiting to take the citizenship test-must overcome a variety of obstacles to become naturalized.

Not least among these hurdles is the intimidation that many elders report feeling when confronting a large bureaucratic institution like the INS.

Project SHINE helps address language and literacy barriers that are often at the root of the seniors' fear, and provides an opportunity for intergenerational exchange that benefits college students and elders alike.

Last year, 100 students at both San Francisco State and City College and from a wide range of academic disciplines took part in the program. They assisted in 32 citizenship and literacy classes, serving over 200 native Chinese, Russian, Hispanic, and Southeast Asian seniors.

Volunteers role-played as INS officers in mock interviews, reviewed class material, and provided both linguistic and moral support for individuals and small groups. Yan Matan, a 74-year-old who prepared for her citizenship test with the help of the program reflects the feelings of many of the learners, "They help me study English, they help me practice the 100 questions, they talk with me," she said. Through an interpreter, she says what she can't manage in her beginning English; that her impressions of young people have changed since these volunteers have shown their generosity with time, with patience, and with their willingness to help her through this experience.

Faculty at both SF State and City College have expressed great enthusiasm for the program as academic issues come to life for their students. These faculty offer "project options" in their classes in fields as diverse as La Raza Studies, Asian American Studies, Sociology, Sociolinguistics, and, of course, TESOL teacher education.

Even some advanced level ESL students at both institutions are getting into the act, and are developing composition skills while serving older members of their own communities. TESOL teacher trainees are working in this project to develop learner-centered curriculum that grows from stories collected from the elders about their experiences.

While the elder learners and college professors are surely pleased with the benefits of participating in SHINE, the project undoubtedly find its biggest fans among the coaches themselves. "It was a truly brilliant experience," said one coach. "This helped me learn so much about a whole side of my city that I'd never seen." Many students, who themselves are immigrants, comment positively on the opportunity to work closely with elders in their own neighborhoods. "It made me see my own grandmother through different eyes," said one young Chinese woman during the final reflection and celebration at the end of the semester.

The seeds for SHINE were sewn at Temple University's Center for Intergenerational Learning in 1985 when gerontologist Nancy Henkin hired the author to use an intergenerational approach to addressing language needs of refugees in Philadelphia: Project LEIF, Learning English through Inter-generational Friendship, was born. Fifteen years later, Henkin received funding from the Corporation for National Service for intergenerational English language work in San Francisco. With the passage of welfare reform, attaining citizenship became a concern for many immigrant seniors and pointed educators in the direction of addressing naturalization programs. SHINE grew out of the expressed needs of immigrants in our community who told us loudly and clearly what they needed.

We are very excited about the prospects for this work. Elders learn language and prepare to become citizens, faculty find exciting ways to engage their students, and college students gain experiences that many of them tell us have changed their lives. In this project, we have found that everybody wins. We look forward to expanding, improving, and deepening our work and ultimately to documenting what we've learned. We want to share with others who wish to collaborate, as we have, in ways that benefit so many constituencies: older English learners, faculty, and college/university students whose civic commitment brings meaning to their education and depth to their vision of the place they can make for themselves in a world that needs them.

Gail Weinstein (with John Essex), San Francisco State University.