VENTURA : Volunteer Helps Croatian Native Learn New Skill

Anna Marusic put off her education more than 18 years ago to tend to her family.

These days, the Ventura resident, a native of Croatia, spends up to eight hours a week in the county library studying English and learning to read in the language she has spoken for years.

“I never was able to spend too much time with books,” she said during a tutoring session at the Helen P. Wright Library in Ventura last week. “I was always working and taking care of my family.”

After four months in the county’s adult reading program, Marusic is well into her fourth lesson book and can read such traditional American publications as newspapers and magazines.

“She understands quite a bit already,” said Terry Cicone, a former elementary school teacher and Marusic’s volunteer tutor. “But the basic phonics and vocabulary in this program help her immensely.”

They met earlier this year, after Marusic decided to study English and Cicone was looking for a way to contribute to the community. They have since become close friends who spend much more time together than the two hours a week a typical tutor donates.

“I came over for a lesson last week and Anna had a whole dinner cooked for me,” Cicone said.

Cicone is one of about 400 volunteer tutors who spend a couple of hours a week teaching adult students the fundamentals of English.

For Pat Flanigan, director of the Ventura County Library Services Agency adult reading program, the match of Cicone and Marusic is a perfect one.

“It works because of the one-on-one attention that these students get,” she said.

“Usually these are people that are not comfortable in classroom situations, either because they’ve been away from school for a long time or they didn’t perform well while they were there,” Flanigan said.

Many of the students enrolling in the program already speak English, but they have never studied it formally, Flanigan said.

“Anna put off her own education in order to take care of her family,” Flanigan said. “But she’s typical in the sense that at least half of our students speak English as a second language.

“It would be very difficult for someone like her to start (learning to read) in a classroom,” she added.