class structure

I am going to write here a breif description of the two...or three different classes I taught this summer.

On Wednesday nights, I was a one-on-one tutor, basically, with Sofia. We worked from 6 to 7:30. Sofia's biggest thing at the beginning of the summer was her desire to be able to sit through an interview and answer questions with no trouble. This had always been a problem. She could fill out her job application with the help of her children, but always struggled with the interview, and oftentimes, was turned down from a job because of her English. So, quite often, our classes focused only on interview questions and vocabulary. We would sit for an hour and a half sometimes just practicing and practicing those questions. We also focused on job applications. I would print out sample job applications and we would just, again, drill through those questions and work on vocab. We would always start our class off with discussing past weekends, that week's plans, and what Sofia's day was like. This gave me an opportunity to help her work on speaking in the past/present/future. Other days, we would work on basic grammar and speaking skills. I often used pictures, which as I said earlier in this blog, always were great because they provided so much room for different descriptions.

A lot of times, Wednesday night's for Sofia served as an almost therapy time. She would talk to me about her children and their struggles in the U.S., especially the two of them that were undocumented. She would talk to me about her personal relationship with her boyfriend, fights with her older daughter, and other times just vent about how hard it was for her to get a job.

For my Saturday class (11-12:30), I also worked with adults. This class was a little less steady because sometimes I would have random people show up one or two weeks, and then I would never see them again. Or, they would come into my class, entirely oblivious to things my other students and I had been studying for a few weeks. This made those classes very very difficult. My two most steady students though, were Jesus and Sylvia. This class was not entirely different from the way I taught Sofia's class. I used a lot of Spanish to explain things. With Jesus and Sylvia though, since they were both beginners, we focused on more basic English, like introducing yourself, going to the store, identifying objects in your home, greetings, numbers, addresses, etc. I also used pictures in this class, and some of the material/lessons overlapped with Sofia's class.

The Friday night youth class was entirely different from the two adult classes. I always spoke English with them. We focused more on writing and reading. I attempted to do weekly vocab words with them, but they weren't really compliant with that. We did a grammar lesson each class though and they kind of hated that. Like I said in earlier posts, they really enjoyed our conversations about things we read, or conversations about language and writing...but I had to always throw grammar in because they needed a lot of help with some basic concepts. I felt more nervous around them than I did with the adults which is a little weird since they were not very much younger than me. They were just more intimidating, I guess, and wouldn't always listen to me, whereas with the adults, I never had to worry about them acting up or talking to each other as I was trying to speak.

.....

Evaluation of Goals

I can't believe it is the end of the summer and the beginning of my senior year. Absolutely unbelievable.

I am grateful to have done this internship. The most important thing for me to do then is now evaluate whether I satisfied my learning goals.

First Goal:
To explore a career in teaching English. This internship will help me learn about what kind of teaching career (if any) that I want to do in the future.
How to meet my goal: creating assignments, organizing lesson plans, creating a teaching portfolio, and organizing each individual class.

I think Casa Guadalupe for sure satisfied this goal. I have learned so much about teaching--oh my gosh! I can't even begin to explain how CRAZY being a teacher is. It is a lot of work to plan a lesson--and then you have to hope that that lesson actually goes as planned! And more than half the time, whatever you planned for the day changes because of an extended class conversation or because halfway through your lesson you realize "shoot! that wasn't a good idea AT ALL" and so you change it on the spot to come up with something that will make your students more engaged. You have to be innovative and make your assignments creative so that students (especially the ones in high school!) don't realize that you're trying to teach them grammar. You have to come up with different ways to teach the same thing if the students don't get it the first time, and that is HARD. Just try and come up with metaphor's and simile's on the spot while trying to explain what they mean. Similes are easy, but try the metaphor on the spot technique and it is HARD. You have to be 100% organized, or else you lose track of a million things. This happened to me several times this summer. My teaching portfolio is currently a pile of all my lesson plans and resources. I guess most importantly, I've learned that working with ESL students is something I would definitely want to do if I do decide to go into teaching. I loved being able to use my Spanish--because then they felt like they were teaching me, too. I would, however, want to do it in a setting different than Casa Guadalupe. The only problem I had with this setting is that because it wasn't a required class--like let's say, a high school class--people weren't completely committed to attending and doing their work.

Second Goal:
To learn from the people I am teaching.How to meet goal: My class will be centered around the individual needs of my students. I have created lesson plans for each of the first six classes, however, I am keeping in mind that these plans will change as the needs of my class do. I plan to allow my students to teach me how to teach.
This one is a given. Read the rest of my blog, and you will understand why. I was constantly changing up my lesson plans based on who was coming that day. In the high-school level class, it took me awhile to figure out what best satisfied their needs. As for the adult class, I was constantly changing it up and switching things around because my students were changing a lot too. Having a consistent base though with Sofia, Sylvia, and Jesus, helped me stay on one track with them, but when different students were thrown in the mix, then I had to change my lesson plan so that they would feel included though. For example, with Sofia--one day, she brought in a job application, and so the lesson plan I had that day was thrown out the window. Instead, we worked on her job application and understanding the vocabulary and questions. Job applications were something that we had worked on before, and so it was also a way for me to evaluate if what we had learned before helped...and it did. There were a few questions that Sofia had remembered us discussing from previous classes, and so she was able to understand them when it came to filling out the application. But there were also a lot of things that she didn't understand, and that further helped me identify what else we needed to work on.

Third Goal
To benefit the community of Cold Spring by allowing students to share their work (younger class) and to benefit the community by enabling communication through common language--English.
How to meet my goal: For my class that will focus on writing creatively, I plan to organize an exhibition showing the writing samples of the younger people in my class. I think this will ultimately benefit the community of Cold Spring because it will help bring both communities together under common interests--art, creativity, and writing. For my adult class, I am planning an excursion or two into the community (the grocery store will be one of them), where my students can practice their English while in a “classroom” setting, enabling them to further interact with the community.
Unfortunately, I didn't satisfy this goal. :( I wasn't able to get the thing organized with the Cold Spring library, nor was I able to take my students on trips. The structure of our class (at least with the adults) didn't permit it.

Fourth Goal:
To become more aware of the struggles immigrant populations experience upon coming to the United States, and to understand the role of English language in this struggle.
If anything, this is one of the things I learned the most. See this entry.

Fifth Goal:
To integrate my own experiences with immigrant populations with what I have learned in my English classes.
How to meet my goal: Observe and analyze the ways in which things I have read in my English class manifest themselves into the daily lives of ordinary people.
See this entry and this entry.

You're too white to get it

I was teaching the youth class one day, and after class, the kids were snickering and giggling about something. I asked, "What is so funny?!" and Pato, the oldest of the youth (17) said, "Ahhh miss, you're white, you'll never get it!"

I kind of just laughed at this, but whether he knew it or not, Pato was making a very good point. How can the white "other" understand cross-cultural differences if he/she has never experienced or lived within that culture? Pato didn't know where I grew up or much of my personal background, and I am sure if he did, he might have thought differently. But as a teacher working with multi-cultural students, how do you bridge the cultural gap if you've never experienced the other culture up until that point, in the classroom?

I mean obviously you aren't going to have to act "differently" simply because you are working with multi-cultural students. But how do you begin to understand their hardships, experiences, etc., if you've never lived within their community? Does teaching within that community automatically bring you into that culture? I say no because a lot of students are still hesitant to the "other" even though the "other" is right within their own center.

I guess it is kind of like reading a book about lets say...Africa. We can feel sad about Africa, we can think what we want about Africa, but how do we ever truly understand Africa unless we ourselves have experienced it? To go back to Derrida from theory--how do we move away from our already established "center" in order to deconstruct--pull a part--understand the "other"?

This is a kind of random post...one that I had been thinking about for awhile. Steve I would actually love to hear your feedback on these ideas because if you can tell or not, I am a bit lost on this one...

Dealing with goodbyes

I have a hard time saying goodbyes.  My Aunt Mary always makes fun of me for this, especially when I cried after a 1-week day-camp.   This summer has brought a lot of difficult goodbyes.  I had to say goodbye to a wonderful friend who will be spending her semester in Chile.  I was a mess! Crying like a baby...oh goodness. 

About a month ago, after that wonderful class that I had with the kids where I introduced Michelle Serros' poetry to the kids, Omar, the boy who had given me a hard-time the entire summer, but finally opened up and shined in my poetry class, told me that he was leaving.  He was being sent to Texas by his parents to stay with another relative because he wasn't doing well enough in school here.  He would be there at least for the rest of this year, and then if he ended up doing better, he would be allowed to come back. 

I felt almost like a bomb had been dropped on me. I was upset because I felt like I had finally gotten through to him in our poetry class.  I was so very proud of him that day and was looking forward to learning more about what his strengths were and also looking forward to seeing him shine more in those areas. 

He gave me this news on Friday, and for the following week, I had scheduled individual appointments with the kids on Monday and Tuesday night to discuss an essay I was having them write.  Omar didn't write his essay, but he came to the meeting anyway, to give me something he had made me.  The week before, he asked me if I liked cats or dogs.  He had graffitied my name with a cat on it.  Very talented.  At our meeting, I kind of lectured him, in a good way though, I guess.  I just told him how much he had impressed me that day in class and how I knew how smart he was, but that his attitude sometimes covered that up.  I asked him where he wanted to see himself in a few years--what kind of path did he want to continue on? I asked him to think about his parents and how they are struggling for him and his siblings.  He thanked me and I told him to keep in touch with me and let me know how he is doing.  

I guess this would be another thing that I would deal with as a teacher/professor.  Saying goodbyes, all the time.  I guess it is something you have to get good at or at least learn to live with.  I'm not sure it would be something I would ever get good at. 

Sofia

As I sit here writing this blog, I have already had my official last class with Sofia.

Just to refresh your memory on Sofia, she is the lady I have worked with since the beginning of this summer...my one consistent student.

When I first met Sofia, she was quiet, a bit shy, and hardly spoke any English to me.  Slowly, she began to open up more and more, and by the end of our last session together, most of our conversations, at least as they pertained to class, were always in English.

We usually began class discussing pretty basic things.  What did you do this weekend? What did you do today? What are you doing this weekend? How is the family doing?  My goal with that little warm up was to get Sofia to use past, present, and future verbs/phrases.  It worked out well, though I think she began to expect those questions and got a little bored with them.

Another thing we worked on a lot was job applications and interview questions.  I re-visited these a lot during many of our sessions.  For one of our final classes I had her fill out an entire job application by herself--and for the most part, she understood all of the questions on it.  There were a few that she needed help with, but I was really impressed with how well she was able to work with it on her own.  

What I found also worked well with Sofia, as it did with Jesus and Sylvia, was the use of pictures.  I would use pictures--either ones that Sarah gave me or some out of the oxford picture dictionary--and simply ask questions like:  What is he/she wearing? What colors do you see in this picture? What are the people in this picture doing?  What does the expression on their face look like? 

Pictures were a great way for my students to use and learn a variety of vocabulary.  

Most of my instruction with Sofia had started off in Spanish, and I still used a lot of Spanish toward the end of the summer, but I found this is what worked best for her.  I would say something in English and then try and find the equivalent in Spanish.  I found that this helped Sofia, Jesus, and Sylvia put the phrase and/or word into a better perspective.

In some of the books I got from the library this summer about ESL instruction, many mentioned the "English Only" model.  I decided not to follow this model, just because I thought of my first French classes and how lost I would have been had my teacher not used my native language to guide me through those beginner lessons.  Also, Sofia had told me how much she liked that I used Spanish in class because she had a previous instructor who had only used English and she said she was lost half the time because of it. 

I guess what I really want to write about in this blog about Sofia, is how much I learned from her.  Sofia is a single mother, raising five children and a grand-child.  She is jobless, undocumented, and didn't speak much English when we first met.  I read about women like Sofia in Jane Juffer's book Single Mother last semester, yet meeting someone  face-to-face and interacting with them every week, totally changes how you understand situations like these.I wasn't just reading about it in a book anymore--I was living it with her, every week.

During many of our sessions, I found myself getting upset about people's judgements of undocumented immigrants, for obvious reasons.  Sofia and I am sure many many immigrants consistently shatter the stereotypes that undocumented immigrants are lazy.  There wasn't a week that went by where Sofia wasn't looking for a job or trying to apply for one.  

One day she said to me, "I am so glad I met you.  You are like my friend.  I have no one to talk to at home but the kids, and there are many things that they do not understand and that I cannot tell them.  Coming here once a week is a time for me to release and wind-down and have me time."  This statement really struck me.  I thought about the women Betty Friedan interviewed for her book The Feminine Mystique.  The women in Friedan's book had a completely different politics of location, or to use Klein and Juffer's terms, they were in completely different spaces.  They were mostly white, middle-class, college educated women, married, and with a few children, who found that they were bored with the mundane conditions of their everyday lives.  It seemed though, that with that statement from Sofia, their differences in space and time were almost eliminated.  Here is Sofia, not college educated, not middle class, not married, yet she still was facing the same things that white women in the 1950s faced.  Is the "loss-of-self" feeling something that transcends time, space, and culture?

As much as I might have taught Sofia these three short months, I don't think she knows how much her story and her experiences have impacted and taught me.  

Updates, Updates, Updates

Summer is supposed to be slow. Or at least that is what we're told.  Unfortunately, as you can see form the last date of my blog, this summer has been b-u-s-y. Busy. Work, internship, and a million other smaller things.  I'm trying to maintain my sanity. 

Where to begin?  I feel like there is so much to say.  I guess I'll start with class progress.

Since my last update, my adult class has been pretty consistent.  I acquired two new Saturday students a few weeks after my last update.  Their names are Sylvia and Jesus, brother and sister-in-law.  Both of them began at a very raw level.  Jesus just came to the United States this year...I want to stay in May.  Sylvia has been here a little longer, living in Los Angeles before she relocated to Cold Spring.  Both are from Mexico. 

Sylvia is quick to understand, repeat, and ask questions.  She is curious and never hesitates to stop me when she does not understand something.  I appreciate that a lot.  Jesus is a little more difficult. He is hesitant and becomes frustrated very easily.  He mostly becomes frustrated with his inability to immediately pronounce things correctly.  Time and time again I have to remind him that he is new at this and he won't get it perfectly right off.  I push him, a lot, but in a good way.  He writes himself off the minute I ask him a question, but I always push for him to go ahead and try, and a lot of times he does just fine.  This past Saturday though, for the first time in awhile, we had two new students join our class.   Both of them were younger men, one from El Salvador and the other from Guatemala.  I became a little bit frustrated with Jesus because it seemed that last Saturday he completely gave up.  He wouldn't try anything and I think he was nervous about being put on the spot in front of two new people.  After class he came up to talk to me and said in Spanish, "I'm not doing very well, am I?"  I kindly said that what he needed to do was go home and practice what we did each Saturday.  He looked a little disappointed, but I assured him that I did see some progress in him, especially in his pronunciation.  

I have had a good time getting to know both of them though, and see them grow.  Weekly, I start off with a warm-up emphasizing what we've worked on the week before.  Most of my class with them has consisted of speaking and conversation, though it seems that the grammar always has an underlying presence.  I recently started using pictures in class, asking them to point out and describe what is in the pictures.  This is a good exercise and I've noticed that they both enjoy it.  The majority of my instruction with them has been in Spanish.  I don't know how to decide whether this is a good thing, or a bad thing, but I feel it helps them more to understand what I am doing.  I also compare a lot of what I teach them to the equivalent in their native tongue.  Most of the time, this helps clarify things, but I find I run into problems when there is no Spanish equivalent.   Both have been extremely dedicated to the class.

Now on to my Wednesday class.  Sofia, the woman that I have mentioned earlier in this blog, is still a regular attendee...at least to my Wednesday night classes.  She initially was coming Saturday's as well, but ran into problems because she visits her boyfriend on those days.  Fair enough.  But anyway, there was a period of about 2 weeks where I did not see Sofia at all.  I was sad, at the same time, frustrated, because I would show up for class Wednesday nights and she wouldn't be there.  She also wouldn't return my calls.  I almost started to give up but I called her before one class on Wednesday and she told me she would be there.  She explained that for the past two weeks she had everyday appointments in Saint Paul for her immigration status.  

Sofia has made A LOT of progress.  Like with my other class, I also start off my Wednesday class with a warm up. I ask Sofia about her week, her day, and her weekend plans (all in English).  I have seen so much progress in her.  She is less hesitant about speaking English.  She surprises me every week when I realize how much she knows and how much she has learned.  One of my favorite parts of teaching is when you're trying to explain something and someone just isn't getting it, so you try to explain it in a different way, and there is a moment when you KNOW that someone gets it... you can SEE the light go off in their head.  I have had a few of those moments...I adore them! I love the excitement in Sofia's eyes when something just clicks.

I have become really close to Sofia. I feel like she trusts me a lot, and part of me is sad that this coming to an end so soon, just when things have started to pick up and I can finally see big differences.  That will be for another blog, though.

Now on the kids.  The "youth."  My feelings about them are a little mixed at this point.  I have seen two or three of them shine, while the other two or three refuse to do any work for me. I don't have it in my heart anymore to tell them they shouldn't come if they don't want to learn.  So they come, every week.  One thing worth writing about is the day I introduced some poetry by Michelle Serros, an American born Latina writer who I was introduced to in high school. The poem we read was called "Mi Problema", where Serros discusses the criticism she faces by members of the Hispanic community for not being able to speak Spanish.  The kids really really enjoyed our discussion and our reading of the poem.  For the first time, Omar, who had consistently given me a hard time time and time again, shined.  He participated in the class, and I was so so so very impressed with him.  It took me awhile to figure out that changing it up and trying to appeal to different kinds of learning is a good idea.  The kids who were normally ignoring me, tuned in when I changed it up.   At the end of that class, Nativida came up to me and asked me if we could read more of Serros. 

Another thing I had the kids do was write personal essays.  What those essays revealed was both heart-wrenching and beautiful.  One of the kids wrote about difficulties he faced with losing family members, and another kid wrote about her abusive father who left her, her mother, and her siblings.  It was tough reading those essays, but I loved their honesty and trust. 

I still have a ton more to write about.  Perhaps tomorrow.  Two more weeks left.  I can't believe how fast it has all gone.

Saturday Class No. 2: Men, men, men.

I just got back from my second Saturday class.

Sofia, the woman I've worked with for the last two classes, showed up right on time. I waited for about 10 minutes for others to show, since Mayuli said there would be a few more coming today.

Sofia and I started our lesson. I started off with basics again--introductions, so I could get her speaking English. I am slowly learning that she knows a good amount of English. This makes me happy.

About 15 minutes into the lesson, a red car pulls up and four men step out of it. Sofia suddenly got really nervous, not like scared-nervous, but giggly-nervous. Right as the men walked into the room, the entire dynamic of the class changed. Suddenly, Sofia who had been so apt to speaking with me and answering all of my questions, became almost like a 13 year old girl in a girl/boy classroom--timid and giggly. It made me feel a little bit intimidated too.

I introduced myself to the men and then had them introduce themselves to me (all in English). Mario is 20, Jaime is 45, Ovidio is 29, and I never really got Yovani's age (I'll explain later). Yovani isn't afraid to ask any questions and he gladly helps the other men in the class by giving Spanish translations for them. Of all of them, I would say he is the one who made me most nervous.

We began with emotions and the question "How are you feeling today?" I gave them one of these to look at:
We worked on the first row: Aggressive, Agonized, Anxious, Apologetic, Arrogant, Bashful, and Blissful. For a few of them, I had no idea what the Spanish translation was, so I acted them out, and they laughed at some of the things I was doing. I pronounced each of them several times, and wrote them on the board (in the way that they would be pronounced).

I then used another worksheet for objects around the home. I asked them to tell me what each of them had in their home, using the pictures. One of the men had to remind me to speak slower, which I was grateful for. When he asked me that, I was reminded of my time in France when I constantly had to ask people to repeat because they were speaking too fast.

The last activity we "officially" worked on today was similar to our introduction activity, except I had them introduce each other to me. There was an odd number, so Ovidio and I were partners. It was a good exercise to reinforce what we had done earlier in the class.

As our class was wrapping up, Yovani asked me if I could tell him how to say "No es me culpa" or rather "It is not my fault." He said that where he works, he often gets blamed for things that he did not do and wants to be able to defend himself. He also asked how to pronounce "guilty." Interesting...

I got some strange looks from the older man (Jaime), which freaked me out a little, but I think I'll be able to handle it.

At the end, I thanked them for coming and told them that it was a pleasure to have met with them. Jaime said they all really enjoyed learning from me, and that they were glad to help me with my Spanish, too.

The men are planning to come every Saturday. I will still be meeting Sofia on Wednesday's and Saturday's so I hope Wednesday's will be a good day for her not too feel overpowered and intimidated by the men in the class.

:)