By Quincy Allan Hodges
The New Citizens Press
In a world of cell-phones and computers, there isn’t much room for teachers or instructors to check the usage of your speech or grammar but founder of Private All Ages Language School (PAALS) has a different ideal.
Marilouise Smith-Mays founded PAALS nearly eight years ago and has been tutoring students of all ages in grammar and speech as an English language instructional specialist. After 36 years of teaching, primarily English, French, and Spanish throughout Ann Arbor, Japan, and more recently Haslett High School, Mays decided to retire.
She began reading the newspaper along with her siblings at a very young age. Mays said “I was reading when I was in preschool”. Before stepping foot into kindergarten, she was reading at a very high level and her dad made sure she knew ever word she read.
Mays attended Adrian College and would later transfer to Eastern Michigan University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in English with specializations in French and Spanish. She then went on to obtain her master’s in Adult Continuing Education from Michigan State University.
The former teacher wanted to continue helping students in their grammar and language so deep down PAALS was establish because of her love of teaching. The tutoring is conducted in Mays’s private home and she uses many tools that include board games, dictionaries, and grammar books.
Coming from a foreign country can be very difficult because of all the new adjustments you have to make to assimilate to the new culture. Tim Wong, who’s a former student of Mays, came from China when he was 18 years old. He said back at home he didn’t receive much education because at the time, the economy wasn’t in good shape, so he had to work to support his family.
Wong said when he came to the United States he had to start from the bottom and work his way up. He struggled in high school until he met Mays. He said they would meet in the library and at her home, where they would go over his writing, speech, and grammar.
The former student said “she is a friend, teacher, adviser, and a mom”. When Wong makes any major decisions, he says Mays is the first person he asks for advice.
Even though the internet has been around more than a decade now, in the last couple of years there’s been huge advances on the World Wide Web. We have seen “Facebook”, “Youtube”, “Myspace”, and so many other websites dominate the way we communicate with each other.
The democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama has tapped into the online revolution and has created personal profiles on many different social networking websites to interact with the young generation and his campaign has set milestones when it comes to online fundraising. The internet is here to stay and Mays said parents should invest in the computer instead of a television.
But the internet isn’t all peachy cream with the former teacher. She says we are going to lose a lot of kids to the internet if we as parents don’t intervene and monitor the content our children are consuming.
Mays’ says “people have forgotten to be civil”. People use to invite each other over for dinner and have face-to-face conversations. Instead they are now using their cell-phones and the internet, which is not bringing people closer and “friendship is chipping away” says the 36-year veteran.
The former teacher works for the Capital Area District Library as a Library Assistant and can be contacted at 517-351-7838.
