While many people are complaining about having to transition their lives (job, education, shopping, etc.) to doing things online, I am one of the people who was already doing that. My job is completely online. I live in Vietnam, but I do not have a job here.
I work for a Chinese company and I teach children English online. Just like any other job, some days are great and some days are terrible. Last night I had an interesting lesson.
My student was an 8 year old girl who goes by the English name Maggie. She is one of my more difficult students. She often walks away from the computer in the middle of the lesson which leaves me to sit and look at an empty room until her parents peek in the door and place her back in front of the camera. When she can be bothered enough to acknowledge my presence, she likes to ignore the lesson and just show me all of her toys. However, every now and then, she is somewhat attentive. Last night was one of those times. Almost.
The lesson was about the various ways people work with animals. It discusses sheep herding, police dogs, rescue animals, and service animals.
Since my primary purpose is actually to teach English, I always encourage a lot of extra dialogue. I want my students to practice conversing in this new language. Instruction is great, but practice is necessary to get good at anything. So, to start off, I asked Maggie to look at the picture and tell me where they are.
As usual with Maggie, I got silence. So I used the trick that works with most children. I suggested a wrong answer.
"Are they at the library?"
She shook her head.
"Well, where are they?"
Once again, I got a blank stare. Now, this girl can speak English. It is quite limited, but she understands me and could answer if she chose to. So, I cranked up my classroom personality to "clown" which is just one setting lower than "dancing monkey" and tried harder to get her to engage.
"Would you like to go there? You could throw snowballs at your sister."
Maggie leaned toward the computer and activated her pen. She often draws or writes answers instead of talking to me. She is so much fun. 😒
"Maggie, where are they?"
Hell? Thank you, Maggie.
While that was not the correct answer, it was engagement and I wanted to reward that. Hopefully, we could build from here. I decided to run with it.
"They are in hell? I guess they could be in hell. I know that I hate cold weather and snow."
She furrowed her brow and shook her head. She drew under her previously written word.
AH! Not hell, but HILL.
I thought she was making a joke about how it would be terrible to have to be there, but she was just answering my question. In English, we would probably say mountain. But her English is not that good. She took the Mandarin word (山 - Shān) which can mean mountain or steep hill and simply misspelled it. She wasn't trying to make a joke.
That explained why she never smiled the entire time. Well, that and the fact that she really doesn't like me.
But to show me that she did know what she was talking about, she labelled the rest of the picture also.
I turned to the next page, but she never did smile.
For those of you who may not know, I live in Vietnam. Before coming to Vietnam, I spent two years in Beijing, China. I have lived in these countries because of my job. I teach English to non-English-speaking people. I actually have a Master's Degree in TESOL.
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
I have done a lot with this degree, but it didn't start out that way.
Working on the degree, I obviously had a lot of classes to take and papers to write. However, the most challenging part was getting my practicum hours accomplished. I had to complete 120 hours of instruction myself before getting the actual degree.
Unfortunately, I lived in a small town that didn't have many opportunities for me to be able to teach English. I checked around everywhere and could not find anything. The closest I came was the local high school. They had a 16-year-old boy who had recently moved there from India. He spoke a regional Indian dialect and had no knowledge of English at all. I went to the school and offered my services to teach the boy English since no one there was qualified in this type of education. They thanked me profusely and said they had been worried about what they were going to do with the boy. However, the background checks and legal hoops required to allow me to go through the school were quite extensive and the school really drug its feet on getting things done on their end.
I eventually moved to Indianapolis to have more opportunities. I even found an apartment in the middle of their unofficial Mexican district. This part of the city had so many Spanish-speaking immigrants that many of the street signs were in Spanish rather than English. I figured this would be the perfect place to find what I needed.
The day after I unpacked I walked into a community center to see if they knew any place where a person could go to learn English. A woman there told me "I think the church up the road used to do something like that." So I headed up there to check it out.
I pulled into the parking lot at John Wesley Free Methodist Church and stepped inside. I met the Associate Pastor and explained to him what I was looking for. He broke into a huge smile and invited me to sit down so he could explain their English Outreach program.
They taught English once a week right there in the church. Every Wednesday night and the next session of classes would be starting in only two weeks. He was thrilled to see me because they were still a few teachers short. He gave me the books they would be teaching out of and asked me to come back the next week to help with the registration of students.
I was thrilled to have found a place to meet my hours so soon, but I knew it would not be enough. Teaching a two-hour class once a week would not add up very quickly. I contacted my academic advisor to let her know that I had finally found a place to teach but would need to find another also. She told me that preparation time counted as well as teaching. Awesome. That would add a bit more time, but I would still need more.
After two weeks of teaching, I realized there was a major problem with the church's entire English-teaching system. The church had six different classes being offered at three different English proficiency levels. There were one or two teachers in each class, but every teacher was just a well-meaning volunteer who had no actual idea of how to teach language acquisition. Plus, the book that was provided was basically just a nice picture dictionary. It was not a textbook and offered no guidance for a classroom setting.
This meant that there was no lesson structure provided. Each teacher just did the best they could from the book. For myself, I was writing up complete lesson plans for each week. Soon it was discovered that all of the teachers could use a lesson plan. Over the course of the next month, this program was basically turned over to me and I redesigned the entire thing. I put together lesson plans, worksheets, computer files, and instructional materials for each of the age groups and proficiency levels while also convincing the church to change to a different book for the classroom. I also taught a few classes to the teachers of the classes to help them know better how to teach this subject. It was amazing.
What had started as a search for a place to teach evolved into an opportunity to use much more of my education. I was doing program management, curriculum development, language assessments, and teacher training. It was a lot of work, but all this extra work meant that I met the hours needed for my degree very quickly. Plus, it gave me a lot of hands-on experience in a volunteer setting before actually entering into the professional workforce.
ESL is an intimidating field and I was quite nervous about how my career was going to work out. I am so thankful for having landed at John Wesley. They did not pay me for my services. This was a volunteer ministry, but they did thank me publicly several times. They wrote me glowing recommendation letters. They gave me some fantastic experience. And most importantly, they provided me with a safe environment where I could develop my confidence and learn that I really could do this.
So much of the awesome life I live today is due to the opportunity that church gave to me and being willing to take a chance on the stranger who just wandered through their doors one afternoon.
This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.
I spent almost two years in Beijing working in a public school teaching English to third, fourth, and fifth graders. I have lots of stories from this experience, but my biggest challenge was trying to promote creative thinking.
I'm not going to get into a lot of detail here, but the Chinese educational philosophy is radically different than American philosophy. One of the areas this is most apparent is in creativity. Chinese schools typically teach their students to learn facts, memorize, and then state them. They will spend hours hammering words over and over again.
Many times upon entering class some excited student would want to perform for me a monologue he had delivered at some competition over the weekend. He would then launch into a speech or recite a poem in perfectly executed English. Afterward, I would ask him about the content of the words he just said and he typically had no opinion and didn't even know what he had said. He had memorized a bunch of sounds and regurgitated them for the judges.
I had no intention of producing English-sounding robots. I wanted to help my students effectively communicate in English.
The problem with communication in this type of environment is that it requires independent thought. This was a foreign concept to the students and it took months to break them free. In the beginning, if I asked the class a question, no one would answer unless there was already a pre-programmed response.
If I showed a picture of a boy walking a dog and asked them what they saw, a few might volunteer that they saw a dog or a boy. The more adventurous ones might even point out that it was a sunny day. However, if I asked where the boy and dog were going, silence fell over the room. I would try to elaborate. Tell me a story. A boy and his dog are out for a walk. Are they going to the park? Are they going to the beach? Is that actually his dog or is it someone else's? I would get nothing because there was not a 'correct' answer that had already been taught to them. They honestly had no idea what was expected of them.
To answer those questions would require some imagination. It would require using the words they already had in their heads and creating a unique sentence formulated on their own. That was not the way they had been taught to learn. They had only been taught to read the script and keep saying it until you pronounced it correctly.
I soon changed my strategy by presenting them with the words I wanted them to use. I used words they already knew but asked them to produce a few sentences using the words I provided.
I had this screen up in the classroom and asked for sentences. It was brutal. No one seemed to understand what I wanted. The few who timidly agreed to give it a shot would say things like, "I have many homework." or "My teacher is tall." or "We had cheese for dinner."
OK. We are getting closer. Can anyone use more than just one word? I have six words here? I called on one of my more outgoing students and prayed he might push this a little further. He stood and stared at the board for a long time. After what seemed like an eternity, he whispered: "I have mathhomework."
This may be a very simple sentence, but I had been at this for weeks. I exploded with excitement. I jumped and cheered so loud, I scared a couple of students in the front row. I ran over, picked the kid up and introduced him to the class as a genius. HE USED TWO OF THE WORDS IN ONE SENTENCE!
I put him down, told him how great he did and I saw the light bulb go off. He looked at me at said "Teacher, can I do THREE?"
Yes! Give it a try.
"I want to play, but I have mathhomework."
This time the class joined me in cheering for him. They understood what had just happened and a couple of hands shot up. "TEACHER TEACHER! I can do four."
Let me hear it.
"My Mathteacher told me not to sleep. Do homework."
YES! You got it! Good job!
More and more hands flew up as kids decided they wanted to give it a shot. "I can do ALL words" was yelled from the back. I quieted the class and he marched to the front to stare at the screen. He didn't have his story yet, but he had decided he could do it.
He thought for a bit and started slowly. "My mathteacher gave me homework so I could not play. After dinner, I went to sleep."
HE USED EVERY WORD!!! YAY!!!
I put him on my shoulders and we ran around to high five everyone in class. After the celebration, I flipped to a new slide with six new words and the students actually fought over who would get to make a new sentence first. It became their new favorite game to see who could come up with the silliest story. We were soon even able to switch back to the default pictures. Look at the picture and tell me a story. And once these kids creative sides were released, they went nuts with it. We were soon able to recycle the word slides and start making new sentences.
A month later I had turned my classes into improv groups. I would bring kids up and give them scenarios on slips of paper they had to improvise. They did a mock radio show, gave out awards for silly talents in class, pretended to work in restaurants and convenience stores, and made up silly songs. The purpose was not to be funny (although that happened a lot). It was to create their own independent thoughts rather than just read a script out of a book. Although, the class auditors (officials who observed my classes) never understood what I was doing.
This is where we got to eventually, but first, it was months of just staring at students who were waiting for me to tell them what to say. I was so happy to get past that stage.
The words in blue print were the ten words created by a random word generator. I had to incorporate them all into this post. Just a little challenge I added for myself.
Today is my first day of my six week vacation. SIX WEEKS! It's time to party.
I get these unplanned (but fortunately paid) breaks quite often due to the nature of my job. I am an English teacher in Beijing, but not the same kind of teacher as the local teachers. I am the "native English-speaking oral teacher" at my school. I have over 700 students spread out across 20 different classes in third through fifth grade. I meet with each class once a week for 40 minutes.
This means that I am not their actual English teacher. They have Chinese English teachers all week and I pop in once a week to play English-speaking games. I don't do typical English lessons. I just design my classes to get my students to talk. It gives them a chance to practice the language they have been learning without getting caught up in structure, grammar, and syntax. Those things are important, but it is not the purpose of my being there. Plus, they get exposure to a native English-speaker.
This makes my job different from the regular teachers in several ways:
I don't give homework
I don't grade papers
I don't give tests
I don't have progress reports
I don't assign grades
I am not responsible for any paperwork
Because of this, I also don't go to staff meetings, teacher's workshops, field trips, extra-curricular activities, after-school programs, etc. I don't even stay at school for the entire day. I show up in time to teach the first class I have for the day and leave as soon as I finish my last class. While the other teachers are there Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., I put in just under five hours and I only work four days a week. Take all these "perks" and add in that as the "professional expert" in my field, I get paid more than them. So you can imagine how popular I am with the rest of the staff.
Me being off work right now is one of those perks. School is still in session, but my services are not needed. This week is the semi-yearly progress test for all Chinese students. Because all students are taking this test, there are no classes for me to teach. So I get to stay home.
All next week, the students are out of school, but the teachers have meetings and training all week. However, it is all in Chinese and most of it doesn't apply to what I do. So I don't have to go in for that either. After that is the start of the Chinese Spring Festival which kicks off Chinese New Year. It lasts four weeks and everyone does get off for that. I just got to leave two weeks early. It's a pretty sweet gig. If I could just find a way to not have to deal with children, it would be the perfect job.
Now that I've got all this time off, I need to figure out what to do.
This week marks 6 months since Red and I arrived here in Beijing and most of the time we still feel like we have no idea what is going on around us, but we have a little bit of an idea more often than we used to.
Red has become a children's show host, sort of. She is the face being used for interactive English lessons. The children will have textbooks, worksheets and many books to be used with these lessons. Red is the star of the DVD portion of the program. She teaches the children and their parents English phrases and reads the books with them. She even has a little puppet sidekick. She's like Captain Kangaroo, minus the funny suit and sexual tension with all the guests
For myself, last month I signed a government contract to work in a school teaching English to third, fourth and fifth graders. As horrible as that may sound to many of you, please try to keep in mind that you are absolutely correct. Children are awful enough, but adding the element of not even being able to talk to them takes it to a whole new level. Plus, my average class size is just under 40 students. I see each class once a week and with 20 classes, I see over 700 students a week. And this is just at my first job. I have two others.
I have been offered a professorship at a very prestigious technology university on the other side of the city, but I am in a contract until December. Until then, I am just thankful that these hundreds of kids don't actually know any martial arts.
Since my students have very limited English abilities, I cannot teach the same way I would teach another subject in the States. Ninety percent of anything I have to say will not be understood, so I have to use other methods. I discovered on my second day that waterboarding is not considered to be an acceptable method in Beijing schools, so I have had to research some alternatives.
Government school students start receiving English instruction in the first grade. Which means by the time I see them in the third grade, they have two years of English behind them. However, they are not ready to effectively communicate yet. They can say, "Hello" and respond to "How are you?" with "I am fine. Thank you. And you?" but that is just about it. They have about a hundred English words floating around in their little brains, but don't yet know how to piece them together to create independent sentences to express thought. This is why I am working on grammar and sentence structure.
Since I do not speak Chinese, I have to show by example. This past week, I was trying to get the kids to use sentences explaining what someone was doing. To keep their attention, I use fun little pictures on the screen.
For the above picture, I want the kids to say "He is reading" or, to really be impressive, say "He is reading a book." After looking at the screen, some of my students dig though the recesses of their brains and pull a few words. BOOK! I hear almost immediately from a few eager students.
"Yes. Book. But what is he doing?"
I get blank stares from the five kids who are actually paying attention and not cutting up erasers or throwing wet paper at each other. I pantomime reading and eventually a kid bites. READ! READ BOOK!
"Yes, but full sentence" and I start to write He on the board under the sentences I already have up there.
They are running. He is drinking. She is eating. He is falling. They are watching TV.
The eager one decides to try again. TEACHER! TEACHER! HE READ BOOK!
So, I underline the -ing in the previous sentences as I had done for each instance before.I slowly start to say "Heeee...iiiiissss..."
Proudly, one of the kids jumps to his feet. HE IS READ BOOK!
I point to the -ing again.
HE IS BOOKING!
The rest of the class is being so loud I am fairly confident none of the students can hear me crying. I write He is reading on the board with the other sentences and pray that at least one kid will catch on to the pattern with the next one. I have the class repeat He is reading several times before showing the next picture.
As soon as this picture illuminates the screen, the class erupts with laughter and several kids cover their eyes. The many students who haven't been paying attention are being tapped by their friends to look at the screen. Every kid has a huge reaction and it is not the utterance of the sentence I want to hear. They are sleeping. I find out later from a Chinese teacher that showing a picture of a man and woman in bed together to a bunch of grade school students is highly inappropriate.
OK. My bad, I guess. I'll never figure out China. Let's move onto the next picture and try to forget this one.
I was a little concerned with this one because I didn't know if they knew the word 'argue', but I knew they knew the word 'fight'. So, they could say "They are arguing" or "They are fighting". I would accept either one, but since no one had even come close to giving me a full sentence yet. It really wouldn't matter.
The picture got a few oohs and aahs while kids shook their fingers at each other and started mock fighting in Chinese, but no one attempted an English sentence. I did my best to quiet the class and asked, "What are they doing?"
A kid in the back of the class shouted in perfect English, "They are playing rock, paper, scissors!"
A couple of weeks ago, I got to fulfill a lifelong dream I didn't know I had. I got to be Simon Cowell in a televised Chinese talent competition. Well, I was probably more like Randy since I'm nicer than Simon, but whatever.
After several months of visa nightmares causing us to not have work, everything finally got worked out making it legal for us to work. However, by that time it was so close to the end of the school semester, we couldn't go back into the schools. So, our employer found ways to keep us busy. They signed me up to be a judge at an English language competition. All the information I had was "Pack a bag. You'll be there for a few days."
I have a Master's in Teaching English to non-native speakers, so it made sense that they would ask me to do this. I pictured a spelling bee-type atmosphere where kids would be quizzed on proper grammar, syntax and pronunciation. I could not have been more wrong.
First, I was picked up by a bus that had about 50 people on it already. OKAY? That threw my expectations off a bit. We then drove around Beijing picking up a few more people. Once we got on the road, it took about four hours to arrive at our destination.
Citic Guoan Grand Epoch City - Chaoyangmen Hotel
Alright! My idea of what this was took a few more hits. This doesn't look like the type of place where a common spelling bee would occur.
As soon as we got off the bus, teams of people from the hotel swarmed out and started identifying who the bus passengers were. A young Chinese man walked up to me and asked if I was Brett Minor. When I nodded my head, he immediately grabbed all my bags while a girl asked for my passport. In broken English, he asked me to follow him as the girl disappeared into the crowd.
He led me into the hotel and we walked through seemingly endless corridors until we came to my room. The door was already open and the girl who had taken my passport was standing inside. She explained that she had used my passport to check me into my room and promptly returned it along with my room key. As she left, she told me to report to the ballroom in one hour.
The hotel room was bigger than my entire apartment and I was really beginning to wonder what I had signed on for, but I was quickly learning that I would be well taken care of for the next several days.
After unpacking and relaxing for bit, I headed to the ballroom and was pleased to find other English-speaking judges were part of this also. They had judges from America, Canada, England, Ukraine, Albania, Samoa and Israel in addition to all the Chinese judges. This was no small competition.
We were all ushered into a meeting room where their expectations were explained to us. Over the course of the next few days, over 4,000 youth from all over China would be coming to compete. This event consisted of two parts. The primary purpose was to showcase their English speaking and comprehension. The second was to display a talent they had prepared. Our job was to judge them on their English ability as well as their talent.
Each judging panel consisted of seven judges.
Three English teachers from China
Two Chinese artists (actors, musicians, etc)
Two native English-speaking ESL teachers
Because of the huge numbers of contestants entered in this event, it would be showcased in five different areas simultaneously. At this rate, it would still take four days to complete.
The following day, I was taken to my room to begin judging.
WOW! This place is huge!
This is not a small competition.
Starting at 8 a.m., the contestants started showing us what they could do. We saw kids ranging from 5 to 16 years old and witnessed a variety of different kinds of acts. Some came out in groups and did short plays. Some recited poetry. I watched two eight year old kids do a scene from Hamlet. Many of them danced, but the majority of them sang. And since they knew this was an English competition, they often chose American songs.
This girl nailed the talent portion, but (as hard as it may be to believe) she could barely speak English. During the Q&A section, she had difficulty understanding the questions being asked.
As great as that performance was, for every spot like that one, there were dozens like this.
As cute as a lot of these kids were, it soon became apparent that they had limited knowledge of American songs. I heard the following songs several times:
Do Re Me (38 times)
Justin Beiber songs (17 times)
Taylor Swift (13 times)
Lemon Tree (32 times)
You Raise Me Up (33 times)
Try Everything (27 times)
When it came to plays and dramas:
23 different versions of Red Riding Hood
26 versions of Three Little Pigs
14 versions of Billy Goats Gruff
Immediately after they showed us their talent, they would be given a screen to view whose contents were determined by their age.
Older kids got something like this.
Younger kids were given pictures. And, yes, that's a kid holding dead dog.
The contestant would then have to say a few sentences or tell a short story using what was on the screen. This would showcase their ability to improvise independent speech rather than show us that they were good at memorizing words. They would then have to answer a couple of spoken questions asked by one of the judges. I was amazed at how many times a kid could get up and recite beautiful poetry with perfect pronunciation, but could then not actually be able to speak English. They were just memorized sounds.
Occasionally, a kid would just freeze or even start crying when we reached this portion of the competition. A child who was so confident a minute earlier doing their practiced routine didn't know what to do when faced with words he did not recognize. It was sometimes heartbreaking to watch.
However, my favorite part was meeting all the kids and their parents. They were brought to us in waves. About 15 competitors at a time would enter the room and I would leave my chair to meet them all and try to calm their nerves before performing and I always jumped up as soon as a wave was finished to go congratulate them all. They had worked hard and been very brave to stand up in front of all of us.
Plus, with the TV cameras everywhere and the popularity of this competition, they saw us as celebrities. Even though I'm actually no one of importance, that was not how I was looked at by these kids. Taking the time to talk to them was very exciting. It was strange signing autographs for not only them, but their parents as well.
After hours, if any of us judges were spotted in a hallway, scores of people would surround us to get a little bit of our time. Everyone wanted to take pictures with us and get our WeChat (China's equivalent to Facebook) contact info. Late one evening, several of us were sitting around singing songs when a group of families walked through the room. Our private party was no longer private.
It was a fantastic experience. I made many new friends. Made a lot of great business contacts and was asked to come back and be a part of it next year. I can't wait.
Here is a collection of some of the other videos I took if you want to look at them.
It's been about six weeks since my last post and that post was written while Red and I were in Turkey. If you been watching the news, you know that Turkey has had some turmoil recently. Several bombings over the last few months (one happened while we were there), and most recently there was a failed coup to overthrow the government. I swear I had nothing to do with it. I was back in Indiana when everything went down.
Just narrowly missing the economic and military implosion of a Middle East country has given us a renewed sense of adventure and we are ready to leave the Midwest to see what else is out there for us. After a few drinks much consideration, we have decided on our next adventure.
⇩ ⇩ ⇩ ⇩
WE ARE MOVING TO CHINA!!!
Less than a week before we left for Turkey, we accepted teaching jobs in Beijing, China and plan to leave Indiana sometime in late September. We would go sooner, but the paperwork and legalities involved with moving and working overseas are very complicated and take some time to arrange.
Almost exactly two years ago, I completed my Master's degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). Since then, I have applied for over 100 different positions all over the country and have had no luck. Every college wants someone with at least 5 years experience and every public school requires a degree in education in addition to my current degree. Therefore, unless I just get lucky and find a place that will take me, I just can't seem to find a job in my field.
When I first moved to Indianapolis almost three years ago, part of my motivation was to be in a bigger city with more language teaching opportunities. I needed to be teaching in a classroom to meet the practicum requirements for my degree and small town Mount Vernon, Illinois just didn't have that. As I was settling into my new Indianapolis apartment, I posted on Facebook about my move and need to find a place to teach in order to graduate. Within hours, I was contacted by a school and offered a job on the spot. This was more than an opportunity to get class credit. It was a real teaching job. Before I even had my degree. But it was in China.
A friend of mine from college had moved to China after graduating and eventually started an international school in Beijing. It has been quite successful and he has since expanded into more schools and has partnered with many of the local schools there. He was in the need of an English teacher and wanted me to come.
I really didn't have any reservations about moving overseas, but I didn't feel that my life was in a place where I could leave the country yet. I had just moved to Indianapolis less than a week before this offer. My daughter had one semester left before graduating high school and I had been dating Red for several months and really felt like this relationship was going somewhere. I couldn't even consider leaving the country at that point.
My friend tried to convince me, but it didn't work. I turned him down, but he did check back with me a few months later to see if I would reconsider. I denied him again. He said he would quit calling me about it.
Kirsten's graduation picture
Fast forward to this year and my life has settled in. I married Red and my kids are grown and living their adult lives. However, I still don't work in the field I went to school for and built up all the student loan debt for. In the midst of a conversation about this, Red asked me about my friend in China and if that job offer still stood. I thought about it for a couple of minutes and realized that leaving the country is a workable possibility now and I called him.
He was very excited to hear from me and offered a job immediately. After a few minutes of questions about Red, he offered a job to her as well. It was an exciting phone call.
We were leaving for Turkey in a couple of days, so I told him we would start to hammer out the details as soon as we got back into the country. Since then, we have started exchanging paperwork back and forth and selling off our furniture. It's been a whirlwind of activity and a mountain of regulations and paperwork, but this is happening.
Eighty days is how long it has been since my last blog post. That's a long time considering that shortly before that post, I vowed to post at least twice a week. Let me try to catch you up on my world a little bit. Some major changes have happened in my life since I last wrote.
I have mentioned many times that I'm working on a graduate degree for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. I am now sixty percent of the way through my degree and should graduate in August. However, there has been some concern over my graduation date for the last several months.
In addition to my classes, I am required to do 100 hours of practicum in this field. In other words, I have to find a place to start teaching English before I graduate and start doing it. I have now been in this program for a year and have yet to acquire a single hour. But this is not for lack of trying.
My problem was due to living in a small town with little cultural integration. My hometown has a small population of Spanish speakers and a Chinese restaurant whose employees who do not seem to have a decent grasp of English. There are virtually no English language classes anywhere in the area. I called the local community college to see if I could assist in their ESL (English as a Second Language) courses. They told me they only offer one ESL class every year and no one ever signs up.
Only one high school in the area had a foreign student. That one student had moved from India with his family and only spoke Kashmiri. In the entire world, less than 6 million people speak this language, so it's not easy to find translators for this language. Especially in Southern Illinois.
When I went to the high school to offer my assistance (my FREE assistance, by the way), it was met with much excitement in the counseling office. They basically had no system in place to help this kid who was months away from having to take his ACT and could not speak a word of English. My daughter said he just sat in class and nodded when anyone spoke to him. There would be some legal hoops to jump through, but they were very excited that someone from this field was offering to help. One of them even said that my walking into the office was an answer to her prayers for this kid. Since I was already certified to substitute teach in the school and had been doing so for over a year, I didn't expect it would take very long. However, after a few months, I still couldn't get into the classroom.
Not again!
I finally gave up and talked to the district office for the elementary schools in the area. They showed the same exuberance as the high school. They had a few students who really needed help and were excited to have me available. They even contacted my college advisor to properly coordinate and be sure I would get my credits. However, they never actually made it happen either. Every time I checked in, they would tell me to come back later or explain that it was taking longer than expected. Once again, I had lost several months and was running out of time.
Not long ago, I was sitting in Red's apartment in Indianapolis when someone knocked on the door. He wanted to know if there were any Spanish speakers in the apartment. They were starting an English language course at the apartment complex and wanted to make sure anyone who might be able to benefit from it was aware.
Unbelievable! I had been unsuccessfully struggling to get into one of the extremely limited courses back home and in Indianapolis the opportunities just come knocking on the door. The only thing keeping me from getting my hours was where I lived. A few weeks earlier, my advisor had jokingly made a comment suggesting the same thing. I had just become convinced that she was right.
It took some effort to pull it off, but two weeks ago, I moved to Indianapolis. Two days later, I found a place to start teaching three blocks away from my apartment. It took almost no effort and there are teaching opportunities all over this city.
Plus, I now live in the same city as my girlfriend! No more 200 miles commutes every other weekend.
For those of you who have been following our story, I guess this is our next big step. We started out 900 miles apart. Almost two years ago, it dropped to two hundred miles. And now, she is a 10 minute drive from my apartment.
Life is pretty good right now. Now, I just need a job.
In about another 15 months, I will have my Master's Degree in TESOL.
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
Sometimes it's called ESL, which stands for English as a Second Language. Basically, my job will be to teach English to people who do not speak English. Whether it is because they have moved to an English speaking country and need to learn to better communicate in their new surroundings or they are still in their home country, but need to learn for another reason, I will have the tools to help them.
English has spread throughout most of the world and continues to grow rapidly. English has become the major language of international commerce and a number of other fields. English language teacher is the second most high demand job in the entire world second only to computer technology jobs. I am not concerned with being able to find work once I graduate, but am really curious as to where I will end up.
Qualified English teachers are needed in literally every country in the world and I have no reservations about leaving the country to accept a job. In fact, I think I prefer it. I love culture and would love to settle down in some remote corner of the world. It would be better than just passing through as a tourist.
In my studies, I am learning that it is about much more than just teaching language. Since up to 80% of our message is nonverbal, I have to ensure that my students can properly communicate with more than just their words. Plus, every culture has hundreds of customs that have nothing to do with language that do not translate from one country to another.
How to eat spaghetti in Japan
In some countries, shaking the head means 'yes' while in other countries it looks almost like a shrug.In Kazakhstan, sitting on the edge of a desk or table is incredibly rude. The 'thumbs up' gesture so common here in the States is offensive in most of the rest of the world, as is the sign for A-OK. In Thailand, you should never touch a person's head or pass something over it. In many countries, people touch more than us Americans are used to. This includes holding hands. Here, that is usually reserved for couples, but in some Latin American countries men hold hands and it means nothing romantic.
I have to teach my students about eye contact, how to shake hands and even give them lessons on history, politics, cinema and literature to help them better understand the American mind. I am quickly learning that speaking a language is only the tip of the iceberg for being able to successfully navigate another culture. I'm so ready to get out there and get started.
Happily participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. For the entire month of April, 1,968 bloggers are working their way through the alphabet. One letter every day but Sundays for a total of 26 days.
Click here to visit the website and get more information to see if you might want to join in next year. It's a lot of fun, introduces you to hundreds of new blogs and gives your writing some fantastic exposure.
