Tutor Spotlights

Congratulations to Pam Lester, LVSC's 2025 Volunteer of the Year! 

The LVSC Volunteer of the Year award is presented to an outstanding volunteer whose dedication to their students and commitment to LVSC goes above and beyond. This year’s winner has truly gone above and beyond.

After training in October of 2019, Pam first worked with a basic literacy student who was struggling to pass her nursing school entrance exam. Through much hard work together, the student passed!  Pam took on another student during the toughest days of the pandemic, always tutoring with empathy, patience and friendship. Then she volunteered to learn how to use the online Burlington English curriculum to work with beginners and volunteered many hours this past winter to help a group of landscapers improve their literacy. She is now set to tutor a new group of beginners.

At LVSC's Annual Meeting & Recognition Night, Pam spoke eloquently about her students when receiving her award: 

I feel such deep respect for the courage of all the men and women I’ve assessed and tutored. I’m humbled by the courage it takes our students to leave their native country, leave the comfort of their native language, give up family ties, their careers for the promise and hope for a better life in an ever-uncertain environment. I respect their courage to reach out for help and commit to learning a new language from a complete stranger. Many walk to class in all kinds of weather or pay for rides. Their polite gestures, smiles and expressed gratitude make all the lesson planning so worthwhile.

Pam is also a dedicated assessor, a substitute teacher, and attendee of many of our events. In fact, people lined up to bid on the garden cart she donated to our silent auction in March!  She is soft-spoken, but her actions speak loudly. She is dedicated to helping others and represents the very best of LVSC.

Tutoring has deepened both my pride in being a US citizen and a heightened awareness of the obligations I inherited to preserve the freedoms we enjoy here. Our students, more than many of us born in the U.S. understand the fragility of our freedoms and opportunities we have here. Many have lived in circumstances we hope to never experience. May we continue to learn from them and preserve our freedoms through the gift of literacy.