A person of great talents

3 October 2007

There are a lot of different ways of spotting talent. On TV, NZ Idol puts the spotlight on up-and-coming singers. Dragon's Den picks the new entrepreneurs.

Spotting the talent
But a sharp-eyed teacher, or a thoughtful ESOL home tutor, can sometimes be one of the best talent-spotters there is and Emmanuel Turua is a great example of this.

Four mornings a week you'll find him at Porirua College, working as a teacher aide in an English class for adults run by ESOL Home Tutors (Porirua).

Emmanuel is a New Zealand-born Pacific Islander, with a Tahitian mother and a Rarotongan father. The students are nearly all women, and nearly all Asian.

Drawing on his talents
This multi-talented man sings with them, draws for them, works alongside them in learning the language, and they love him. And he's there because when he was in the seventh form, one teacher saw his potential and took a chance on him, and others later saw the same potential and continued to open doors.

When you listen to Emmanuel talk about himself, it's easy to see why his students have so much respect and affection for him. Born and raised in Porirua, he completed his seventh form at Porirua College. After a year of doing nothing much he went back to the sixth form as an adult student at Mana College, to polish up his music, drama, art and English. He went back again for another year, mainly to help and encourage other students.

At Mana College he formed an acapella group, The Chemistry Boys. It was there that a teacher, the late Glenis Chiaroni, saw his potential. When she transferred to Tawa College in the early 1990s, she persuaded Emmanuel to join her there as a teacher aide, and taught him how to teach others. The cliché ‘he's never looked back' seems to fit Emmanuel exactly.

Not that he chose an easy road at all. In 1996 he was one of the early tutors who set up a music academy particularly for kids who had been kicked out of school. He worked with CYFs and IHC kids until 1999.

Joining ESOL Home Tutors
In 2001 Emmanuel started training to be an ESOL home tutor, began to help as a volunteer with the Adult Asian English class at Porirua College, then became a paid teacher aide. Porirua College also saw his talents, and he was asked to teach a music class at the college, and now works with a disabled student at the college every afternoon.

Is it an unusual match, for him to be working with a class of Asian women? ‘Not really. It's not much different to what I was doing before. You get refugees who've been through a war, or kids who've been through tough broken-up homes, and they're all similar, in that they find it difficult to concentrate. You just have to respect them. Be a listening ear.' But Emmanual is much more than a listening ear, he's an excellent tutor.

As Jan Latham, who is an experienced teacher running a multi-level, multi-cultural class at Porirua says, ‘He contributes his music and his art, but he also has a great sense of humour and heaps of patience. He can take the students through little steps so that the ones with the greatest difficulty stay with him. That's one of his greatest assets, that he can repeat and repeat and repeat but give the lessons a little tweak so he can hold their interest. He's got a manner that the students really click into, and they work well for him.

Building a sense of trust
He gives the class that extra lift and they really love him.' He shares some common ground with his students, and they look to him for help in particular areas. ‘Sometimes I look at their face in the morning, and I know something has happened. And they say "Oh a man swore at me" or "Someone said to me, Go back home!" I can say "You did nothing wrong. It's not your fault." And they listen.' Do they listen because he, like them, is not one of the majority in New Zealand? ‘There is a bit of that.

But also they know now I'm able to help them. They trust me. And if the problem is too big, or I can't help them, I take it to someone else.' Emmanuel is a person of great talents. He sings with the Adult Asian English class every morning, he draws and he does graphics to illustrate worksheets and other ESOL resources such as literacy games (some of his drawings are included here). As well as teaching adults during the day, after school he helps at a homework centre. One night a week he works with a learner through ESOL Home Tutors (Porirua).

Most of the weekends are taken up with church activities. In the school holidays he's off helping with a holiday camp for kids. He's quite clear about the driving force behind this full-on life; it's the satisfaction of helping people develop their own strengths, particularly people who are up against it. As Jan Latham says, ‘He puts his whole self into helping other people.'

Teamwork in all things
And what has been the most important thing for Emmanuel in getting to where he is now - other than being ‘spotted' in the first place? He is quite clear about that too - it's the support, from his colleagues and friends at the Adult Asian English class: teacher Jan Latham and co-tutor Sherry King; from the ESOL Home Tutors' (Porirua) coordinators (Suzanne Apanui and Ariadne Fountain), and teamwork, in all things. By Adrienne Jansen