Compass Reflection (Grace)

In our Traditions of Giving and Serving in America class, we were each assigned a nonprofit in Porter County to profile. The profile includes the nonprofit’s financial status, information from their website, and our impressions from our site visits. I chose the Compass Education Program because I had never heard about the program, but I assumed that their mission would include education. In my early correspondence with the director, Jessica Burkman, I learned that Compass had recently changed their name to the Compass International Family Center.
I visited Compass on April 4th, during their program time. Compass currently operates out of an old school building near downtown Valparaiso. The students were already in their classes when I arrived, and I could hear children playing down the hallway. Jessica gave me a tour of the classrooms, where the students are split up by age groups, and there is a separate classroom for their citizenship class. I heard mixtures of Spanish, English, and other languages as I took my tour, and I began to understand the program’s shift to an international focus. When I sat down with Jessica after the tour she explained that the program had started with a focus on the Hispanic community. She explained that she met a Kurdish family at a park in Valparaiso and invited them to the program, which prompted further invitations extended to international families. I was particularly curious about how they were able to teach English to students who did not even speak the same native language. Jessica explained that in addition to the volunteer teachers, the program also relies on their more advanced students to help beginner students.
They form friendships as they all work together with the goal of learning English so that they can communicate more easily with their children who learn English at school.
Compass has both social and educational goals. They want their students to feel comfortable in their new country, speaking their new language. For both their young and

especially their adult students, Compass can be one of the few times that they get to interact with other non-native English speakers. Compass is also completely free so that families can learn English without having their families make economic sacrifices. Jessica said that families love coming to Compass because they can all learn at the same time and in one place. The student’s feelings about the program were obvious as they laughed, talked, and worked with each other throughout their classes that night.