I was reminded the other night of how much I don't know about my students, despite having worked with them for months.
We were starting a unit on transportation, and our list of possible modes of transportation included airplanes and helicopters. One of the questions was, "Have you ever been in an airplane?" The student, a middle aged man who is in the Columbian army and is in the US as part of an assignment to the Colombian embassy, laughed and said that yes, he'd been in a helicopter. One of his friends laughed and said "paracaísta"--parachutist. It turns out that he regularly jumped out of planes and copters, doing patrols around the country during the 1980s and 90s.
This description of an adrenaline-fueled soldier battling narcotraficantes didn't square at all with my mental image of this person as a laughing, joking family man who probably rode a desk. We got to talking later, over slices of pizza, about the recent violence in Mexico, and how it compared to the situation in his country in years past. As we were talking, it hit me: he'd lived through the violence when revolutionary groups attempted to subvert the Colombian state, and were committing random acts of terror as well as killing civilians. Not only had he lived through it, but he'd probably been in the military at the time, actively fighting these insurgents. This is the same military that has since been accused of committing some horrible atrocities while trying to eradicate those responsible. I'd heard about this era of violence in my Latin American history classes, but it was a sobering realization that this same man who was struggling to be able to say "I ride a bike" had regularly jumped out of airplanes over the jungle and had survived some of the most legendary violence in modern Latin American history.
It reminded me that what we learned in our pre-service training--that all adult students come to English class with a wealth of life experiences--really was true. It reminded me not to make assumptions about people, and it reminded me to keep firmly in check any feeling of superiority. It reminded me to be grateful for things in my life that I take for granted--like having grown up in a stable country, without the threat of war over my head. It reinforced my commitment to what I'm doing: giving people the skills they need to be able to express themselves in English.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Un Semestre Nuevo
A late Happy New Years' (and happy MLK Day!) to everyone! The Arlington Works! AmeriCorps members have been quite busy since returning from the holiday break--here are some of the highlights.
At Edu-Futuro, Sarah has launched the inaugural session of after-school Spanish classes at Barret and Campbell Elementary schools. She's working with kindergarten through fourth grade students, providing out of classroom enrichment in support of the FLES programs there. The spring semester of Escuela Bolivia is off to a great start--despite snowy, wet weather more than 80 students came to the first day of class!
I'm happy to say that there were quite a few ESL students there as well; while it was fun doing one-on-one tutoring for most of the fall semester, I'm excited to be leading a real class. I'm happy to announce that the PARTICIPA classes at Hoffman-Boston Elementary are off to a great start. I'm especially grateful to have a co-facilitator, who's delivered these classes before, because the breadth and depth of information we're trying to cover is enormous. These classes are for immigrant parents, and we get into the ins and outs of the American public school system, from the general--the educational path from elementary school to a Ph.D--to the specific--for example, how to understand your child's 4th grade report card. I'll be starting ESL classes there the week after the last PARTICIPA class, and I'm hopeful some of the parents will decide to enroll in that as well. Jessie has been interviewing more mentors for ELP I and II, and is also getting ready for the ELP I launch, which is coming up this Friday--seems to be a recurring theme here, but this month has flown by!
I know that the AmeriCorps members serving with REEP have been busy as well. Skye is co-teaching a beginner level morning class, and Marie is now teaching in the evenings. I'll let them fill you in on the specifics! And speaking of REEP members, we're all happy to invite a brand-new part-time member, Sara Fry. A native of NoVa, she's teaching a drop-in class at Virginia Gardens, subbing, and assisting at the Arlington Employment Center.
Yes, that's right--AmeriCorps members are now back at the Employment Center! Sara and I are each spending half a day there, getting to know the staff members there and familiarizing ourselves with the different services they offer. Our end goal is to be able to bring some of the resources back to the CEC, so that it's easier for our students to access some job-related websites, and offer workshops on job search skills like writing a resume or interviewing skills. I'll come back with more updates when we have more concrete information; it's still in the exploratory phase right now.
We're also excited to begin planning a related part of our AmeriCorps project: how we're going to deliver technology workshops. At the moment, we're reviewing the new REEP Work Unit technology modules, and brainstorming on how to best provide our students with a finished product--a resume, for example--after comparatively few hours of instruction. Tenatatively we're aiming to offer these workshops during the REEP program breaks (the weeks of June 18 and June 25), but again, this is still early days and those dates may change.
Keep checking back for more program updates! I'll be better about updating this blog more often, and hopefully can even include some pictures in the future!
At Edu-Futuro, Sarah has launched the inaugural session of after-school Spanish classes at Barret and Campbell Elementary schools. She's working with kindergarten through fourth grade students, providing out of classroom enrichment in support of the FLES programs there. The spring semester of Escuela Bolivia is off to a great start--despite snowy, wet weather more than 80 students came to the first day of class!
I'm happy to say that there were quite a few ESL students there as well; while it was fun doing one-on-one tutoring for most of the fall semester, I'm excited to be leading a real class. I'm happy to announce that the PARTICIPA classes at Hoffman-Boston Elementary are off to a great start. I'm especially grateful to have a co-facilitator, who's delivered these classes before, because the breadth and depth of information we're trying to cover is enormous. These classes are for immigrant parents, and we get into the ins and outs of the American public school system, from the general--the educational path from elementary school to a Ph.D--to the specific--for example, how to understand your child's 4th grade report card. I'll be starting ESL classes there the week after the last PARTICIPA class, and I'm hopeful some of the parents will decide to enroll in that as well. Jessie has been interviewing more mentors for ELP I and II, and is also getting ready for the ELP I launch, which is coming up this Friday--seems to be a recurring theme here, but this month has flown by!
I know that the AmeriCorps members serving with REEP have been busy as well. Skye is co-teaching a beginner level morning class, and Marie is now teaching in the evenings. I'll let them fill you in on the specifics! And speaking of REEP members, we're all happy to invite a brand-new part-time member, Sara Fry. A native of NoVa, she's teaching a drop-in class at Virginia Gardens, subbing, and assisting at the Arlington Employment Center.
Yes, that's right--AmeriCorps members are now back at the Employment Center! Sara and I are each spending half a day there, getting to know the staff members there and familiarizing ourselves with the different services they offer. Our end goal is to be able to bring some of the resources back to the CEC, so that it's easier for our students to access some job-related websites, and offer workshops on job search skills like writing a resume or interviewing skills. I'll come back with more updates when we have more concrete information; it's still in the exploratory phase right now.
We're also excited to begin planning a related part of our AmeriCorps project: how we're going to deliver technology workshops. At the moment, we're reviewing the new REEP Work Unit technology modules, and brainstorming on how to best provide our students with a finished product--a resume, for example--after comparatively few hours of instruction. Tenatatively we're aiming to offer these workshops during the REEP program breaks (the weeks of June 18 and June 25), but again, this is still early days and those dates may change.
Keep checking back for more program updates! I'll be better about updating this blog more often, and hopefully can even include some pictures in the future!
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