Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

The Terraces resident Helga Marcos (left) and Russian immigrant Yelena Shapiro share some laughs during their English tutoring lesson.

Terraces residents help with Russian transition

By Shari Kaplan

Helga Marcos, a retired administrative assistant, enjoys maintaining an active lifestyle and doing things to help people in the community.

Yelena Shapiro, an electrical engineer who immigrated to California from Russia nine months ago with her husband and sons, wanted to improve her English and her chances of obtaining a job and to adapt to the American lifestyle. Ukrainian native and design engineer Vika Vashchenko, her husband and daughter were in a similar situation.

The women were matched through The Terraces of Los Gatos and the Jewish Family Service of Santa Clara County. Originally in a teacher/student relationship, they have now become friends as well.

The Los Gatos-based JFS has many programs to ease the transition for Russian immigrants, including resettlement services, case management, employment resources and vocational programs. Among these are ongoing English as a Second Language classes that cover written and verbal skills, accent reduction and conversational practice.

When The Terraces activity director Nancy Larsen posted a notice about the JFS program, many seniors volunteered, including Marcos and fellow resident George Fullmer.

Marcos taught ESL when she lived and worked in San Francisco; she also participates in The Terraces' program to improve the English skills of its non-native employees. She is also a former member of Toastmasters International, a club whose focus is on speech and communication skills.

"I enjoy being part of The Terraces team, and I also look at it as a way of giving something back to the community. I want to see [the Russians] get into the work community as soon as possible," she says. "It's much more than just conversational skills; you have to zero in on what the need of each individual is."

With Shapiro, for example, Marcos says she took special care with telephone skills because Shapiro was intimidated by communicating on the phone. Marcos helped her through role-playing conversations and weekly "practice" phone calls, during which the women chat about whatever comes up.

"This language is wonderful, and Helga helps us to understand its beauty. Now we can read, speak and understand Americans," Shapiro says. "We want to work and want to be helpful and therefore are looking for a job. We say 'thank you' to all the people who help us to live here."

"This has been a learning experience for me, too. There's a give and take in this kind of thing," Marcos adds. "I've learned a lot of interesting things about the lives these people had in Russia."

Fullmer agrees. He and wife Rusty have also become friends with their "students," Valentina and Rombakh Gennadiy, and their sons. They've even had meals at the Gennadiys' house, where Fullmer says he discovered some tasty Russian dishes and learned some interesting facts about the flora, fauna and geography of the country.

Almost anything can be a learning experience, Fullmer adds, citing the time Valentina broke her ankle and he sent her a card featuring a little animal with a bandaged foot to commiserate with her "tough break."

"On the back of the card I wrote 'here's your English lesson' and I explained what a pun is," Fullmer says with a chuckle.

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