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Ann Lander: Who Said Retired?

Ann Lander is doing something familiar in retirement—that’s because it is the same thing she did before she retired: teaching. Ann taught French for some 30 years, for six years in Clinton and more 20 at Valley Regional High School before she retired in 2002. Now she is back at Valley Regional three days a week, but teaching English as a second language to students presently enrolled at Valley who came to this country with little or no fluency in the language. In addition, she is teaching English to non-native speakers for Literacy Volunteers Valley Shore in Westbrook.

And she hasn’t abandoned French. For the past decade, Ann has taught a weekly French class at the Ivoryton Library. The class is free and open to anybody, but Ann cautions that it is not beginning French, rather an intermediate level class.

“It’s a pleasure to teach adults,” she says. “They do their homework and they all want to learn.”

Ann’s young students include a brother and sister, native Albanian speakers from Kosovo, who now live in Deep River, and a young man from Ecuador. All three are working not only to learn English, but to master their academic subjects taught in English as well. Her two adult students who are part of the Literacy Volunteers program include the mother of the students from Kosovo and a Chinese woman.

Teaching English, Ann says, presents particular problems for non-native speakers. There is a wider range of vowel sounds a vocabulary larger than that of many other languages and spelling and pronunciation that regularly challenge even native speakers

Teaching English as a second language, Ann points out, is about more than grammar and vocabulary. The teacher often becomes a guide and mentor as students adjust to a new country. Ann has helped students with gaining everything from citizenship to drivers’ licenses. For adults with children in school, a new language often means role reversal, where children learn language more rapidly and find themselves talking on behalf of their parents to doctors, teachers, and employers.

Ann not only teaches English as a second language, she also trains people who want to become English tutors for Literacy Volunteers. Workshops are held in the spring and fall, with meetings both in the morning and at night to accommodate different work schedules. There are seven training sessions, but they do not go sequentially for seven weeks. Ann explains that there is a break in the training so the volunteers can meet the person with whom they will be working before the training sessions are completed.

Ann emphasizes that no previous teaching experience is necessary to train as a Literacy Volunteer tutor.

“You don’t need a teaching background. Everybody has taught somebody something,” she says.

Unlike other Literacy Volunteer programs in Connecticut, where language teaching is done in larger classes, all the Literacy Volunteer programs in this area are one-on-one sessions, with the tutor and the student. Often the classes take place in local libraries or at the Literacy Volunteers headquarters in Westbrook.

“It’s very, very gratifying as you see people gaining skills, making progress, and gaining confidence,” Ann says.

Ann’s involvement with education as a profession started with her family. Her father was a teacher who became both the principal of Center School and the superintendent of schools in Old Lyme.

“I always knew I wanted to be a teacher,” Ann says, but when she entered the University of New Hampshire, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to teach languages or mathematics.

A freshman course in probabilities convinced her that math would not be her subject. She is certified to teach Spanish as well as French.

She took some time off when her son Karl was small. Karl, a graduate of the Coast Guard Academy in New London, has just retired with the rank of commander after 20 years of service. His last post was as executive officer on the Coast Guard icebreaker Healy. Now he and his wife live in Vermont.

As a teen at Old Lyme High School, Ann was a three-sport athlete, playing field hockey, basketball, and softball. She continued to play field hockey for two years at college, but dropped out when language classes conflicted with the sports practice. Now, she says, most of her athletic activity is restricted to Zumba class and to watching sports on television, but for many years, she worked as a referee for high school and college basketball and field hockey games. In fact, she was inducted into the Connecticut Basketball Hall of Fame for her work in getting female referees equal pay and recognition with their male colleagues.

That is not the only award Ann has won. She was District Four Teacher of the Year for 1989-’90, and this past fall, she won a Beacon Award, given to local residents whose involvement in community activities enhances life for all the residents of the shoreline.

Ann is a longtime member of the Old Lyme Town Band and was its president for many years. Now she serves as librarian. At first she played the trumpet in the band, but when she retired, she decided she wanted to go back to playing the French horn, the instrument she first studied as a child.

Ann says one of the ongoing pleasure of teaching English to non-native speakers is the cross-cultural understanding that develops; sometimes, nonetheless, it can be cross-cultural misunderstanding. She remembers a young Asian student she was teaching who persisted in asking in his rudimentary English, “Why you here?” Ann explained that she was there to teach him. And then he explained what was on his mind. “Why you here? In my country old people stay home,” he said.

Luckily for him, however, that is not Ann’s idea of retirement.

For information on Literacy Volunteers Valley Shore, visit www.vsliteracy.org. For information on language classes at the Ivoryton Library, visit www.ivoryton.lioninc.org.