This month, we're spotlighting volunteer Eve Juarez. She is our fabulous ESL 1 teacher, and her students adore her! 

LS: Where are you originally from? What brought you here? 

EJ: Upstate New York is where I was raised, along with my sister. She and her family still live there, near our parents. In the mid 70s I went to Sequim, Washington to visit a friend, and fell in love with this beautiful state. After a year I moved to Port Angeles, and three years later I finally settled in Seattle.

EJ: My husband and I have two sons, 19 and 20 years old. One is living at home so I'm still enjoying being a mom every day. I love to travel. It's very interesting to me to see how other people live and work, and to sample the food. It sometimes amazes me how we think we are all different from one another and yet we all have so much in common. My future plans include more travel, and I am hoping to do volunteer work to help people and families in recovery from addiction.

EJ: I feel so fortunate to have the rich life that I do. I want to give something in return. I have a fascination with language, and the people who come to LS teach me as much as I try to teach to them.

LS: Any stories or highlights from volunteering at Literacy Source?

EJ: One afternoon I had three students in class; one from China, one from Tibet, and one from Taiwan. They found a common dialect to communicate with each other, and were chatting for several minutes. In that short time I realized that I was the only one who hadn't a clue what was being said. This small moment of "being in the dark" gave me an awareness of a part of life that students at Literacy Source experience every day. Another day I was working with just one student, who was making great progress arranging words into sentences. The sentence was, "Where do you live?" She asked me, "What is 'do'?" I sat there with my mouth open, not knowing what to say. She began to laugh, and then the two of us laughed. And if you asked me that today, I still would not have an answer

EJ: I used to work the evening shift at Harborview Medical Center in the trauma unit as an x-ray tech. I've just been learning oil painting.

President Obama's Executive Actions on Immigration announced in November 2014 would allow for an expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and create a new Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Legal Permanent Residents (DAPA) program. These new and expanded programs have recently been put on hold, though, because of an order issued by a federal district court in Texas. It is unclear when the programs may be implemented. Both the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) are posting updated information on their websites.