She wrote the number “8” smoothly. Months prior, it would have taken her five tries to get it. She was close to remembering all the colors of her home country’s flag. She wrote her name and birthday without issue – things she hadn’t yet learned when we started working together. Her English vocabulary was expanding. She understood simple words and phrases I said often during our classes together. Perhaps the progress was slow, but she was learning English and how to write.

For the past year I’ve taught English to a new American. I’ve taught English as a second language before, on multiple occasions, but she was my first student who couldn’t read or write. She was also my first student who couldn’t speak Spanish fluently. The lack of Spanish mattered since it was the only language I spoke other than English. She and I had no language in common, but we came together over her desire to learn English and my hope to teach her English. We came together over her desire to learn how to read and write and my belief that such knowledge is a human right.

Before she and I started working together, I’d never taught someone the alphabet or how to write. I found it interesting how her writing progressed just like children’s writing does. At first, her letters and numbers were large and sloppy. With time the shapes of the letters and numbers became more precise and smaller. At first, her spacing was off – she frequently ran out of room on our little whiteboard halfway through a word. Now, word spacing is seldom a challenge for her.

She impressed me with her focus and hard work. It was apparent she studied between our weekly classes. She studied English despite running a household and raising four children – three of whom were in middle school or younger. While helping her learn important things, like her birthday so she could fill out forms, I discovered we were born the same year.

Our life journeys have been different despite sharing a birthday year. Yet, our paths intersected over English. I wish that we could communicate better. I want to learn more about her. I want to hear her thoughts about the world. Perhaps, someday, we’ll be able to have such a conversation.