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BY DAN VOCK

Walk into the Sunday school wing of Foundry UMC on a Tuesday evening and you’ll hear a cacophony of sounds, many that you might recognize from childhood.

Make no mistake, we’re all grown adults teaching and learning English, in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class, but we do break out the “Alphabet Song” pretty frequently.

You’ll hear teachers call out phrases and a chorus of students repeat them. “I am.” I am. “You are.” You are. “He is.” He is. You might even hear students and their teachers trip through silly tongue twisters, especially if you’re in my classroom.

But the sound I love most of all is laughter. We laugh a lot together. You really know a student is engaged and following the conversation if he’s laughing or, better yet, cracking jokes.

Laughter is a great part of our time together because, let’s face it, English isn’t exactly easy to learn or teach. Pronunciation alone drives students up the wall. Not only are there new sounds in English that aren’t in Spanish, but it seems like there are no rules for how to pronounce words you see written down. Why does “word” rhyme with “bird” and not “Ford”?

All I can tell my students is that, if English followed its own rules, we’d all be eating “JUH-lap-en-ahs” and “TOR-til-uhs” instead of jalapenos and tortillas. Those exceptions, at least, make sense to them.

The students do their fair share of joking around, too. One of my favorite moments in my year or so of teaching came at one of our end-of-semester parties, when all of the students and teachers get together for a nice, tasty meal. At this particular dinner, a few students put on a puppet show. The script was a mix of English and Spanish. The show was a riot. The students mastered not only how to pronounce English phrases but also how to make faces with green-faced, dread-locked
puppets.

At Foundry, in Washington’s DuPont Circle neighborhood, we join with our neighbors to take on a lot of challenging issues. A lot of them certainly are not laughing matters.

Foundry volunteers work to ensure that day laborers who congregate in the Home Depot parking lot and at the corner of 15th and P are treated with hospitality. Our members bring them food and offer them friendship.

Part of the church’s outreach to the day laborer community was to help found and continue to support the Union de Trabajadores (Workers Union), which recently convinced District officials to enforce stronger protections against wage theft, a persistent problem in the day laborer community.

In addition, the Union de Trabajadores has also focused on creating more work opportunities for day laborers by publicizing the Union’s contact information in churches and local neighborhoods.

A grant from the Baltimore-Washington Conference has made it possible for Foundry to strengthen day laborer organizing in the District by helping to support a full-time day laborer organizer in partnership with Jobs with Justice, as well as continuing to build Foundry’s ESL ministries and outreach to the sites.

Foundry celebrated the victory and our affiliation with the union over Labor Day weekend. We invited the workers to our 11 a.m. service — which included several elements in Spanish and headphones with instant translations from English — and recognized their work. Then we invited them to lunch.

Foundry members who aren’t involved in the day laborer ministries met our friends. And, judging from the smiles I saw and the comments I heard, the workers appreciated that Foundry welcomes them.

That type of fellowship really invigorates me. It gives us the chance to realize that our neighbors are not just equals, but friends. And that’s amazing considering the background of everyone who gets together on those Tuesday nights. We really are a mixed bunch. Most students originally came from various parts of Latin America, but we also have a few from Africa. I’ve taught a few line cooks and a chef at a French restaurant, painters, carpenters, dry wallers, an iron worker, students and even a lawyer.

The teachers are pretty diverse too. We’re from all parts of the country. I’m a reporter and I’ve taught alongside a law student, a Navy engineer, a job-seeking college graduate, a domestic violence worker, an international business consultant and retired volunteers.

Soon, I’ll be traveling with other Foundry folks — including several teachers —- to Arizona and Mexico to learn more about troubles along the border there. It’s part of our church’s effort to engage the larger world, and I expect the experience to be eye-opening.

But honestly, I’m amazed how much I’ve already discovered just by reaching out to our neighbors right here at home and listening to what they have to say. And, of course, by cracking a joke or two.

Dan Vock is a member of Foundry UMC and serves on the mission team.