A little over a year into my career at Blackstone, when I felt in control of my professional life, I searched for volunteer opportunities to teach English and reconnect with an academic audience. Soon, I discovered Paper Airplanes, a nonprofit organization that pairs those seeking to increase proficiency in English and afflicted with regional conflict with virtual mentors fluent in the language.

Here began a lifelong friendship and one of my most rewarding tutoring experiences to date. Through a matching system that optimized for availability, student skill level, and gender preference (a key cultural variable in Middle Eastern countries), I was paired with Mounira H., a full-time Accounting professional and part-time student based in Syria. At the start of our weekly sessions over Google Meet, Mounira had basic proficiency in English but strived to further improve her grammar and speaking fluency. She had placed into the Upper Intermediate bucket (out of 4 possible options: Beginner, Lower or Upper Intermediate, and Advanced) through her Paper Airplanes entrance exam.

Over the course of consecutive semesters, Mounira and I jointly defined attainable goals for her English-learning journey and regularly tracked her progress and morale in her Student Learning Journal (SLJ). As her mentor, I utilized various resources and the pre-defined curriculum provided by Paper Airplanes to help Mounira move towards her targets. During each session, I incorporated speaking, reading, and writing elements and patiently allowed Mounira to grow her comfort with new vocabulary and grammar. In our most recent semester together, Mounira scored over a 90% on her final exam, and she continues to study English in hopes of someday taking her TOEFL and applying to graduate universities in the United States.

In 2023, after resuming my position with Paper Airplanes following a medical leave triggered by a severe car accident, I was paired with Zia A., who continues to contribute to my exceedingly positive impression of the organization as well as its participants, who remain ambitious in unthinkably difficult circumstances. Zia himself is a refugee who has relocated to Greece but originally hails from Afghanistan. Unlike Mounira, Zia began at a Beginner Level in his English-learning journey, but he is similarly dedicated in his pursuit of improvement. So far, he has advanced 2 levels in the Paper Airplanes Curriculum past where he started, with further milestones yet to be reached!

I learn something new from each interaction with Mounira and Zia, but here’s what I’ve learned so far:

1. Be nimble. Many times during our partnership, conversations between Mounira and I steered away from the pre-set curriculum. Instead of stemming our conversations and adhering rigidly to the curriculum, I gave way to Mounira’s curiosity and natural inclinations while still incorporating key elements from the original lesson plan. The same approach has proven effective with Zia, who views me as a friend. This way, my students gain trust in me as a mentor, and I deliver English lessons organically, making them easier to retain and recall in the future.

2. Be persistent. Scheduling conflicts are not the exception but the norm when setting up weekly sessions with my students. Despite the tendency of ad-hoc sessions to slow our momentum, Mounira’s conflicts were fully understandable given some of her situational constraints, such as electricity cuts in Syria and technology limitations. I stymied the impact of these issues by persistently messaging Mounira for her availability and repeatedly verifying that Mounira was equipped with the necessary resources to complete her independent assignments. Zia, a full-time employee, is available only in the evenings for our lessons, which translates to during the workday for me, given the time difference. As a result, I persistently contact Zia to arrange meetings on work holidays, aware that this is generally agreeable for both him and I.

3. Be innovative. Some form of technology was usually accessible to Mounira, but it was not always a laptop. Mounira was also more comfortable communicating over WhatsApp than email, which would have otherwise been our standard mode of exchanging course materials and updates. Combined, these factors required me to adapt resources and assignments to fit with Mounira’s available technology suite. In the case of Zia, given audio issues that we were experiencing on Google Meet, we’ve opted to start a Google Meet session that we both mut ourselves on, simply for screen-sharing, and carry out conversation through a simultaneous WhatsApp voice call. Whether we are digesting an audio file or collaborating on a written worksheet, I’ve begun to incorporate my students’ mediums of consumption into my lesson style.