Norwalker Tutors Children in Washington
By Dori Berman
WASHINGTON November 18, 2004–When Yazmin Kahn was nine or 10, her cousin found a wild turtle and, much to Kahn’s dismay, kept it as a pet. Her mother, Rana Kahn, remembers the two children arguing, with Yazmin insisting that her cousin release the turtle back to the wild, where it belonged.
Finally, one day when her cousin was out, Yazmin released the turtle herself, angering her cousin, Rana Kahn laughingly recalled.
“She’s a very passionate person,” Rana Kahn said. “She stands up for what she believes in.”
Yazmin Kahn, who will turn 22 next month, grew up in Norwalk but currently lives in Washington while participating in City Year, an Americorps program that places young people in an urban setting to perform community service. She spends her days tutoring students one-on-one in the D.C. public schools.
While the program commitment is for one year, Kahn hopes to stay on for a second year as a team leader. City Year development director Brett Norton sees Kahn in a leadership position in the future, whether with City Year or elsewhere.
“People with drive and intelligence and compassion generally find a place,” he said. “In Yazmin I see a great instinctual person who knows what the problems are before they arise, and that’s a great leadership quality.”
Khan graduated from Norwalk High School in 2000, though she spent her junior and senior years at the Center for Japanese Studies Abroad at Brien McMahon High School. There, she studied Japanese culture, history and language.
“I was extremely interested in the Japanese culture,” she said. “The program approached culture with what I thought was the proper attitude of immersion,” instead of only one class a day. At the end of the school year, the program participants put their newly acquired knowledge to use during a trip to Japan.
Both of Kahn’s parents are from India, though her mother spent much of her life in England. Her parents married and moved to Connecticut in 1980, where Kahn and her two younger sisters were born.
Her parents’ international roots influenced Khan’s desires to travel and learn other cultures, she said. She has visited England many times, and would like to travel to India and just about everywhere else.
After graduating from high school, Kahn attended American University in Washington, D.C., but returned to Norwalk after one year for financial reasons and took classes at Norwalk Community College. There, she wrote for the school’s newspaper, The Voice .
She said she plans to use the education award that City Year participants receive to return to college, and she hopes to study international relations at Georgetown University, also in Washington.
Kahn chose Washington for her City Year experience because it appeals to her on many levels, she said, and she plans to stay in the city for several years. Her younger sister, Shreen, is a student at American University, and some of Kahn’s friends from her year at the university remain in the area.
The diversity of Washington also appeals. A practicing Muslim, she said the Muslim community here is far bigger and more diverse than in Norwalk.
Each morning, Kahn travels into the city from the apartment in Silver Spring, Md., that she shares with three other Corps members, where she meets her team to prepare for the day. Corps members find their own housing and the program provides a stipend that amounts to approximately $150 per week after taxes, Kahn said.
On a recent, uncharacteristically warm November morning, Kahn stood in a circle with her teammates on the City Year’s Campaign for Literacy Education team. The City Year D.C. corps is broken into five teams, each performing a different type of service around the city.
Sunmer, the team leader, called on Kahn to lead the daily readiness check.
Khan declared “great” the word of the day. She then checked off each piece of the City Year uniform. All Corps members wear black shoes or Timberland work boots, white or black socks, khaki pants, white shirts and the signature City Year red Timberland coats.
Khan’s style is usually colorful and trendy, but in uniform she could almost pass for a young school teacher or a social worker. She is small in stature, with olive skin and black hair that falls above her shoulders. Her fingernails are long, but carefully squared, and perfectly groomed eyebrows frame her dark eyes. The tiny, purple stud that dots the spot directly below her bottom lip is almost invisible.
“You got your shoes?” she asked with as much enthusiasm as a 21-year-old can muster at 8:15 a.m., to which her team members responded with a synchronized, “Great!”
After checking off each item of clothing, Kahn asked her team members: “You got your hearts?”
“Great!”
“You got your minds?”
“Great!”
“You got your smiles?
“Great!”
“You got your souls full of grace?”
“Great!”
“You got your positive, can-do attitudes?”
“Great!”
City Year draws people from many walks of life. Some are college graduates from across the country who have not decided what to do next, others are residents of the cities they serve, seeking a way to give back to their own community. Some, Khan said, want to teach and are preparing for their futures.
“I’m here because I want to affect change,” Khan said, adding that, despite differing motivations, all members are devoted. “There’s no way you could get up every morning and do this unless you wanted to.”
Following the readiness check, Kahn and her team members walked to their first tutoring stop of the day, Shaw-Howard Elementary school. The Corps members fetched their daily lesson plans, which they had prepared themselves the previous session, and proceeded to different classrooms. After leaving Shaw-Howard each day, the team tutors at two more schools, teaching the basics of reading and math to students of varying ages, some of whom are far behind the skills expected of their grade levels.
“It’s easier with the younger kids,” Khan said. “But with the older kids, I feel like there’s more of an urgency. I would love to see my 15-year-old get all the way through-addition, subtraction, multiplication, division-so that she knows them when she gets to high school next year.”
Khan seems wise beyond her years, speaking articulately and thoughtfully about community service and the country’s problems. At a time when many of her peers are only voting because it is the trendy thing to do, Khan regularly writes letters to her congressional representatives, expressing her concerns about their actions.
Proximity to the nation’s political center seems appropriate for someone as politically-minded as Khan. She said she hopes to stay in Washington for a number of years, but does not wish to work on Capitol Hill.
“I’m more interested in social change and justice,” she said. “I’m a card-carrying member of the ACLU and I’m a member of moveon.org.”
Still, it will be years before Kahn settles down. There are countless places to visit. Another year in City Year possibly awaits her, and she has considered the Peace Corps as an option after that.
Where will she end up?
“Norwalk is a great place to raise kids, and its diversity is a strength,” she said, as opposed to the surrounding, more homogenous towns. “It will always be a base for me.”
Most likely, however, she sees herself in New York City, “because it’s the greatest city in the world.”
