This is the best ESL moment I've had in quite some time. For tonight's tutorial, I tried out a new game called "Future Stories" which has various hypothetical situations written on cards such as "Where do you want to live in five years?" "What is your ideal fantasy job?" etc. One of the questions was, "If you could spend a day in someone else's shoes, who would it be?"
I had the students talking in pairs and was walking around monitoring the activity when I overheard two of them discussing this question. They said it was their favorite question and both chose Japanese singers. "Makes sense," I thought, and continued walking. The next time I came around they had included two more students in the conversation. They were all talking animatedly about whose shoes they would like to spend a day in. "This is great," I thought, "They are really enjoying this question."
And then I heard, "I would like to spend a day in her shoes because, I think, no smell."
Yes. For the past ten minutes they had been talking about whose shoes they would literally like to spend the day in. As in wear.
When I had finished laughing, I told them that wasn't what the question meant. They were completely shocked and couldn't stop laughing. And hey, they learned a new idiom. But I still can't believe they spent ten minutes talking about which celebrities' shoes smell.
November 18, 2014
October 28, 2014
Fun Stories
It's been a while since I've posted anything ESL-related, but tonight for tutorial we did a run-on story activity. The students were super creative and the stories are pretty fun to read.
Nao's Pizza
Nao is an actor. She is very famous all over the world. One day, she goes to America and decided to start her second life. She studied English because she wanted to become a English teacher. But, she is bad at English.
She can say "OK!" and "Say yes!" if she doesn't understand. One day, she went to pizza shop. She ordered small size. But clerk didn't hear. He asked her, ".......large?" She couldn't understand, But said "Ok!!" She was surprised. Because she wanted small one. But he gave her very very big one. She didn't know how to say. She brought back her home.
At her home, she didn't have ideas how to eat the big, big pizza. This pizza ahd a diameter of 50 cm! How big it is! So she thought let's cut this pizza because she was a doctor. She can operate very well, so she cut the pizza same size. She decided to froze it. She could eat all pizza. :)
Naho Goes to Space
Naho is a good girl dog. She lives in Covington since she was born. She wants to go outside and wants to go other countries! But she is a dog. How do she trip? She can fly, so she should go by frying. Or, she should swim in the sea because she is a dog and she could swim by "Inukaki."
One day, one man appeared her. He is pilot and he was looking for a share house. He say, "Covington is very comfortable!! I live with you." They have begun to live together immediately. The pilot took care of Naho with his big love. He was an animal lover. Naho fell in love with the pilot soon. She loves him. And her life was very happy.
One day, the pilot said to her, "I have to leave here. And I can't take you. I'm so sorry. Forgive me." Then he left.
She started cry. Naho said "How come you have to leave here?" He replied, "I have to go space. So I can't take you."
"Ok. I see. I miss you." She said. After he left the home, she started practice to go space. Two years later.... She gets the ticket for going the space. When she could go space, she met him again!! So they have lived together in space!!
The Witches
Once upon a time there were two girls named Kelsey and Hannah. Hannah was a very nice girl, but Kelsey was secretly an evil witch. Every night she would ride around on her broom and laugh evilly. So Hannah was very angry and she goes to Kelsey's home. Hannah found the magic stick there and shake lengthways. Suddenly a tornado occurred in this room and all things was broken. Actually, Hannah is also a witch!
After Hannah became a witch, she used magic everything, so, she began to mischief. She use magic Kelsey change flog. Kelsey talked with noisier voice every night and jumped high."Change to humen! Change to humen!" she said, and she robbed Hannah's magic stick. She used magic that Hannah changed flog!
This is the flog story. 2 flog was slept and they dreamed same thing. They woke up and they talked about each dream's story. They were surprised and laughing a lot. :)
Singing Everywhere, Everytime
Sora is a famous pop singer in Japan. Most people like her high voice and her cute smile, but Sora has trouble herself. She always singing everywhere. She can't stop singing a song. One day, her boss said her "Please stop singing everywhere everytime." Her boss is very scary and has a low voice. "She envys my voice!" Sora thinks. So, she advices to her boss and ask her what song she likes. Sora thinks her boss forgives me if Sora sings her favorite songs! Her boss was confused, but she said, "Hm... I like Madonna, so her song makes me happy. :)" Sora was glad to know her boss's favorite singer. Sora practices song of Madonna. Her voice is very beautiful but she can't beyond Madonna so begin learning dance.
After few month she became to good dancer. And she sang and dance Madonna for her boss. Her boss impressed by her song. And she cried! She said to Sora, "Your singing is very beautiful." And she admitted her to sing anywhere anytime.
Bitter Chocolate
Her name is Yui. She is 40 years old. She is mean witch, because she give children a bitter chocolate. She lived happily by bullying children. And she lives outside of town alone. Her friend is only her pet cat.
One day, she went to town with her cat, Amy. They found chocolate shop in town. They went into there.
She found one man. He is very handsome. She fell in love with him. She likes him very much. She wanted to talk him. When she could talke with him, she found something.
It was her mother. She asked, "Who is him?"
Yui said, "the man I love." But her mother knew she was mean to children, so she told the man, "my daughter wants to poison your chocolate." The man was very angry and banished Yui from the village forever.
Banana Avenger
Once upon a time, there is a handsome young man. His name is Ryoko. Ryoko is very gentle. But he's poor. He can talk with animals. He lives in mountain. He also can talk with food. So he is friend with banana. Banana's name is Banao. Ryoko sometimes eats him.
Ryoko ate Banao. She feels so sad. So Ryoko think that she will make costume. She used the skin of Banao. The Banao costume is very good!!
She was feeling of satisfaction. Next day, a man came to her house. She saw the man. The man said, "I know that you ate your friend. Now you must be punished. Your task is to protect all the bananas in the world." So Ryoko became the Banana Avenger.
Ryoko went to Banana World and Ryoko lives together in friendship.
Nao's Pizza
Nao is an actor. She is very famous all over the world. One day, she goes to America and decided to start her second life. She studied English because she wanted to become a English teacher. But, she is bad at English.
She can say "OK!" and "Say yes!" if she doesn't understand. One day, she went to pizza shop. She ordered small size. But clerk didn't hear. He asked her, ".......large?" She couldn't understand, But said "Ok!!" She was surprised. Because she wanted small one. But he gave her very very big one. She didn't know how to say. She brought back her home.
At her home, she didn't have ideas how to eat the big, big pizza. This pizza ahd a diameter of 50 cm! How big it is! So she thought let's cut this pizza because she was a doctor. She can operate very well, so she cut the pizza same size. She decided to froze it. She could eat all pizza. :)
Naho Goes to Space
Naho is a good girl dog. She lives in Covington since she was born. She wants to go outside and wants to go other countries! But she is a dog. How do she trip? She can fly, so she should go by frying. Or, she should swim in the sea because she is a dog and she could swim by "Inukaki."
One day, one man appeared her. He is pilot and he was looking for a share house. He say, "Covington is very comfortable!! I live with you." They have begun to live together immediately. The pilot took care of Naho with his big love. He was an animal lover. Naho fell in love with the pilot soon. She loves him. And her life was very happy.
One day, the pilot said to her, "I have to leave here. And I can't take you. I'm so sorry. Forgive me." Then he left.
She started cry. Naho said "How come you have to leave here?" He replied, "I have to go space. So I can't take you."
"Ok. I see. I miss you." She said. After he left the home, she started practice to go space. Two years later.... She gets the ticket for going the space. When she could go space, she met him again!! So they have lived together in space!!
The Witches
Once upon a time there were two girls named Kelsey and Hannah. Hannah was a very nice girl, but Kelsey was secretly an evil witch. Every night she would ride around on her broom and laugh evilly. So Hannah was very angry and she goes to Kelsey's home. Hannah found the magic stick there and shake lengthways. Suddenly a tornado occurred in this room and all things was broken. Actually, Hannah is also a witch!
After Hannah became a witch, she used magic everything, so, she began to mischief. She use magic Kelsey change flog. Kelsey talked with noisier voice every night and jumped high."Change to humen! Change to humen!" she said, and she robbed Hannah's magic stick. She used magic that Hannah changed flog!
This is the flog story. 2 flog was slept and they dreamed same thing. They woke up and they talked about each dream's story. They were surprised and laughing a lot. :)
Singing Everywhere, Everytime
Sora is a famous pop singer in Japan. Most people like her high voice and her cute smile, but Sora has trouble herself. She always singing everywhere. She can't stop singing a song. One day, her boss said her "Please stop singing everywhere everytime." Her boss is very scary and has a low voice. "She envys my voice!" Sora thinks. So, she advices to her boss and ask her what song she likes. Sora thinks her boss forgives me if Sora sings her favorite songs! Her boss was confused, but she said, "Hm... I like Madonna, so her song makes me happy. :)" Sora was glad to know her boss's favorite singer. Sora practices song of Madonna. Her voice is very beautiful but she can't beyond Madonna so begin learning dance.
After few month she became to good dancer. And she sang and dance Madonna for her boss. Her boss impressed by her song. And she cried! She said to Sora, "Your singing is very beautiful." And she admitted her to sing anywhere anytime.
Bitter Chocolate
Her name is Yui. She is 40 years old. She is mean witch, because she give children a bitter chocolate. She lived happily by bullying children. And she lives outside of town alone. Her friend is only her pet cat.
One day, she went to town with her cat, Amy. They found chocolate shop in town. They went into there.
She found one man. He is very handsome. She fell in love with him. She likes him very much. She wanted to talk him. When she could talke with him, she found something.
It was her mother. She asked, "Who is him?"
Yui said, "the man I love." But her mother knew she was mean to children, so she told the man, "my daughter wants to poison your chocolate." The man was very angry and banished Yui from the village forever.
Banana Avenger
Once upon a time, there is a handsome young man. His name is Ryoko. Ryoko is very gentle. But he's poor. He can talk with animals. He lives in mountain. He also can talk with food. So he is friend with banana. Banana's name is Banao. Ryoko sometimes eats him.
Ryoko ate Banao. She feels so sad. So Ryoko think that she will make costume. She used the skin of Banao. The Banao costume is very good!!
She was feeling of satisfaction. Next day, a man came to her house. She saw the man. The man said, "I know that you ate your friend. Now you must be punished. Your task is to protect all the bananas in the world." So Ryoko became the Banana Avenger.
Ryoko went to Banana World and Ryoko lives together in friendship.
August 31, 2014
Continuing Cultural Exchange
Learning from cultural exchange never really ends, something I need to be reminded of as it's all too easy to think that just because I am in the U.S. I no longer need to be reading culture into my interactions with my students.
Case in point was an interaction I had with my group of summer students at Muko. My summer group was positively delightful and we had a great three weeks together. At the end of it they requested we have a pizza party for their final night in the States. I was only too happy to oblige this group of active and eager students, so we ordered four different pizzas according to their preferences.
It was the way that they decided to distribute the pizzas that got onto my culture radar. After I'd laid out all the food, I expected everyone to take a a plate and choose a piece for themselves. I was surprised (and a little dismayed) when I found them taking three! There was enough pizza for everyone to have at least three pieces, but I was worried the more popular kinds would run out before everyone had a chance to try them. Feeling anxious, I almost tried to intervene and suggest that we each start with one piece when I noticed that they were loading up all the plates with three different types of pizza. Once again I felt unsure. What if someone didn't like a particular kind? But this is when I realized that maybe this was a cultural difference, and so instead of trying to lecture them on how I thought things ought to be done, I decided to sit back and observe.
They continued to load up all the plates until all of the pizza was gone. Some plates had four pieces and some had three, but each had only one of each type of pizza. They then carried the plates into the dining room and set them out at different places before anyone sat down. It occurred to me that they were trying to be as equatable as possible. I'd observed similar behavior from my groups before regarding food sharing and other things, but it wasn't until this time that I'd really analyzed it. This way ensured that everyone got to try as many different kinds of pizza as possible and prevented fast eaters and first-comers from hogging all the pizza. While I would have individualistically approached the situation with a "first come first serve" attitude, they made sure that everyone had equal access to the food. I'm not sure how they determined who got four pieces instead of three, but my hunch is that it went to the "sempai" or older members of the group. I was offered a plate with four pieces but declined because I would never be able to eat that much in one sitting.
I always think that approaches to food are an interesting indicator of cultural values. In Thailand much was done in a communal, family style sort of way. In America I'm very much used to having my own choice and clear demarcation of what is my food and what isn't. This approach didn't really fit either cultural stereotype of communal or individualistic. On the one hand, Japanese culture does seem to be pretty group-oriented, but in other ways there does seem to be an emphasis on space and separateness.
This event was a good reminder that I still need to be evaluating things through a cultural lens. The thing with cultural differences is that our gut reaction seems to be to immediately judge behavior that is different, as with my gut reaction that the way they were dishing up pizza was "wrong." When working with other cultures, it's much more productive to first step back and try to identify what is striking you as weird or wrong about the behavior, and then try and come up with explanations as to what might be the advantages or reasoning behind this other approach.
Case in point was an interaction I had with my group of summer students at Muko. My summer group was positively delightful and we had a great three weeks together. At the end of it they requested we have a pizza party for their final night in the States. I was only too happy to oblige this group of active and eager students, so we ordered four different pizzas according to their preferences.
It was the way that they decided to distribute the pizzas that got onto my culture radar. After I'd laid out all the food, I expected everyone to take a a plate and choose a piece for themselves. I was surprised (and a little dismayed) when I found them taking three! There was enough pizza for everyone to have at least three pieces, but I was worried the more popular kinds would run out before everyone had a chance to try them. Feeling anxious, I almost tried to intervene and suggest that we each start with one piece when I noticed that they were loading up all the plates with three different types of pizza. Once again I felt unsure. What if someone didn't like a particular kind? But this is when I realized that maybe this was a cultural difference, and so instead of trying to lecture them on how I thought things ought to be done, I decided to sit back and observe.
They continued to load up all the plates until all of the pizza was gone. Some plates had four pieces and some had three, but each had only one of each type of pizza. They then carried the plates into the dining room and set them out at different places before anyone sat down. It occurred to me that they were trying to be as equatable as possible. I'd observed similar behavior from my groups before regarding food sharing and other things, but it wasn't until this time that I'd really analyzed it. This way ensured that everyone got to try as many different kinds of pizza as possible and prevented fast eaters and first-comers from hogging all the pizza. While I would have individualistically approached the situation with a "first come first serve" attitude, they made sure that everyone had equal access to the food. I'm not sure how they determined who got four pieces instead of three, but my hunch is that it went to the "sempai" or older members of the group. I was offered a plate with four pieces but declined because I would never be able to eat that much in one sitting.
I always think that approaches to food are an interesting indicator of cultural values. In Thailand much was done in a communal, family style sort of way. In America I'm very much used to having my own choice and clear demarcation of what is my food and what isn't. This approach didn't really fit either cultural stereotype of communal or individualistic. On the one hand, Japanese culture does seem to be pretty group-oriented, but in other ways there does seem to be an emphasis on space and separateness.
This event was a good reminder that I still need to be evaluating things through a cultural lens. The thing with cultural differences is that our gut reaction seems to be to immediately judge behavior that is different, as with my gut reaction that the way they were dishing up pizza was "wrong." When working with other cultures, it's much more productive to first step back and try to identify what is striking you as weird or wrong about the behavior, and then try and come up with explanations as to what might be the advantages or reasoning behind this other approach.
July 26, 2014
Free to a Good Home
Towards the end of Spring Semester, my department advertised a teaching opportunity with a company based in Portland that does English language camps and exchange programs all across the northwest. I thought this sounded like a great way to 1) get some more teaching experience and 2) not work harvest again, so I applied, interviewed, and was hired. It was a pretty straightforward contract: I'd get paid for teaching kids from China for a couple of weeks as long as I also helped the company to meet its quota of host families.
I was not terribly excited about this stipulation at the time. I'm not the sort of person who enjoys convincing people to do things they would probably otherwise not do. But the interviewer was so reassuring about the whole thing that I thought I could probably swing it. (Insert ominous foreshadowing music here.)
As it turns out, hosting exchange students is not something that people generally line up for. I started early, back in May, wanting to get the unpleasantness over with as soon as possible. Our training manual recommended using your network as your first resource so, as little as I liked it, I called around to various friends to see if they might know of anyone. Being young and single, I'm not really connected with all that many families, but I got a few numbers and then forced myself to call them. I was doomed before I picked up the phone. Talking to strangers gives me anxiety in the best of circumstances. This was not the best of circumstances. And no matter how I tried to phrase it, I couldn't seem to find a graceful way to enter into the subject. "Oh hey, you know the so-and-sos? Me too. By the way, would you be interested in housing a couple of foreign kids for a few weeks?" It didn't help that I was more than ready to take no for an answer. "Oh your cat isn't feeling well? I totally understand, bye!" I always hung up the phone thinking that at least I could say I tried.
As our first camp approached it became apparent that more desperate measures were called for, so I made up some fliers and reluctantly included my contact information, hoping that I wouldn't have to spread them around too much (ha!) I made a point of visiting a handful of area churches and asked politely if I could leave my fliers with them, but I even then I was getting the sinking feeling that this was not going to work.
Indeed, it was a total waste of time. I ended up posting fliers at every church I could find within at least a five mile radius and got no response. I also tried at several private schools and similarly got nothing. I posted to facebook hoping social media would work its magic, but as I've mentioned, my network is not exactly heavy on families with stable adult lifestyles. For the first of our two camps I only managed to recruit two host families, one of which was my sister and her husband and the other a friend of a friend. That was okay as I technically wasn't even working for the first camp. Our other recruiters did their stuff and got the placements we needed. But that left the second camp, which has been an absolute nightmare.
Our first camp ran from July 2nd to 11th. Then we got a short break before the second camp which is longer, from the 17th to the August 5th. It was apparent early on that not many of our first set of host families would be willing to host for both camps. Frankly I can't fault them for that, but it did mean that by the end of the first camp all of us working to find families had already exhausted our networks. We met and pooled our resources, which included a cold calling list that we requested. I had thought that calling distant acquaintances was bad. Calling complete strangers was worse. It was, again, such a random awkward topic that I had no idea how to approach it. Plus the thought of disturbing someone's evening in that way was not one that I relished. But they don't pay you for having fun, so I buckled down to the task and actually got quite good at it after my first ten calls or so. I wrote myself a script which made it much easier to start talking and boy, did I get used to rejection. Unfortunately it was all for naught. I spent hours upon hours calling people and couldn't generate even the slightest bit of interest.
This is also about the time that my car decided to have issues. It had been making disconcerting clunking noises for a little while and I finally mentioned it to my dad and he told me it sounded like a Really Important Part could be breaking and that I should take it to a mechanic immediately. There's a Les Schwab near where I live, so I dropped it off there hoping that I'd be able to pick it up the same day. No dice. I ended up walking home and was carless on the last weekday when I could have visited some more churches to try and get announcements in their bulletins the coming Sunday (not that it would have done any good). Instead, I spent the next day accosting strangers in the park, because I was that desperate.
You see, our supervisor told us we'd have to start asking total strangers, but I had refused until this point. I mean, asking strangers on the phone is one thing, but in real life!? It also concerned me that this was the best backup strategy our higher-ups had to offer. "Talk to everyone! Have you tried your neighbors?" I didn't feel like explaining that, seeing as I live in a dormitory I technically don't have neighbors. "Talk to the people at your grocery store!" The last time I went to the grocery store, the homeless man in line next to me ate the food he had bought and put a dollar on the conveyor belt before running off. This is not exactly prime recruiting territory.
And that was one of the awkward things about the whole business. I had to start profiling people's socioeconomic status. We were desperate for families and I had no other options. I had to report what I'd done to try and find families every day and at this point we had less than a week to go. We were dangerously under quota. And so I had to scope out the park and basically judge who I thought might make a suitable host family based on appearances. I felt like a horrible person. In the end I only ended up approaching a few people and shoving some fliers at them before running away. One woman was engrossed in a textbook and explained that she couldn't host because she was studying for medical school. Why didn't I go to medical school? I thought desperately. A profession with some dignity! (Not to mention actual money.)
I gave up on the park after a few of these horribly shaming encounters and decided to try the church down the street, which I hadn't bothered yet on account of it not being in a very good neighborhood. It was Friday though and I discovered that it was among the many churches whose offices are closed on Friday. I stood in front of the locked double doors, feeling like a persecuted wretch seeking asylum. It was a Lutheran church, but I entertained myself with the thought of compassionate nuns who might take in some homeless Chinese children. This was the beginning of my imagined recruiting scenarios. I went past a group of people selling cherries on the sidewalk and wondered if a similar strategy might be employed for my situation. "Free Chinese kids with every purchase!" I thought about simply leaving them on people's doorsteps with a return address label on their shirts. "Please return to this address at 9:00 a.m. on Monday for English school."
The last Sunday before they arrived our entire team staked out a church potluck in the hope that our desperation combined with some old-fashioned Christian hospitality might get some results. I was somewhat reassured that everybody else was just as nervous and discouraged as I was.
"I feel like a Mormon missionary," our coordinator bemoaned after we'd approached the last family and gotten nothing but polite smiles. The church pastor, who had done the recruiting last year, assured us that it had been this difficult for him too. It was sort of comforting, but didn't leave me much hope. I was starting to have images of us camping out in the park and dumpster diving for food. "Come experience homelessness in America!"
That night I wrote the most desperate facebook status update of my life. All dignity and restraint was gone. I had no shame. The funny thing, though, was that it kinda worked. My friends, wanting to be supportive and help, started sharing it and the thing kind of went viral. I got over 30 shares on that one status update, some of which were from people I've never met. I was able to track its progress and it was sort of fascinating to watch it spread through the facebook world. It was also interesting to see how information quickly and easily got distorted. I had listed my Mukogawa email because it's short and easy to remember, but people started assuming that the program was through Mukogawa and were linking to the website and all kinds of crazy stuff. But I got publicity and two host families out of the deal.
Even so, we ended up being right down to the wire. The morning of the kids' arrival found us frantically calling past host families and trying to find makeshift arrangements. I got four hours of sleep and was preparing to move to a friends' house to act as host. I spent the morning sitting on the floor with my laptop open to yet another call list and frantically texting our other team members. My room was a disaster area, all of my clothes books, applications and the like were strewn around me in a disorganized mess. And in the midst of this chaos, someone kept knocking on my door. After realizing they weren't going to go away, I opened the door and was greeted by two older women. "Excuse us, we're here to measure your windows." You. Have got. To be kidding me. "My room's kind of a mess..." I apologized, glancing at a pair of underwear in the middle of the floor. I let them come in and measure my windows regardless. I was too tired and stressed to care.
So yes, it was nuts, but we did, somehow, manage to pull it off. One of our veteran host families really came through and found us some last-minute placements. And since then, the camp's been going relatively well. Teaching has been a challenge, but nothing out of the ordinary. Still I have sworn never to do host family recruiting ever again.
I was not terribly excited about this stipulation at the time. I'm not the sort of person who enjoys convincing people to do things they would probably otherwise not do. But the interviewer was so reassuring about the whole thing that I thought I could probably swing it. (Insert ominous foreshadowing music here.)
As it turns out, hosting exchange students is not something that people generally line up for. I started early, back in May, wanting to get the unpleasantness over with as soon as possible. Our training manual recommended using your network as your first resource so, as little as I liked it, I called around to various friends to see if they might know of anyone. Being young and single, I'm not really connected with all that many families, but I got a few numbers and then forced myself to call them. I was doomed before I picked up the phone. Talking to strangers gives me anxiety in the best of circumstances. This was not the best of circumstances. And no matter how I tried to phrase it, I couldn't seem to find a graceful way to enter into the subject. "Oh hey, you know the so-and-sos? Me too. By the way, would you be interested in housing a couple of foreign kids for a few weeks?" It didn't help that I was more than ready to take no for an answer. "Oh your cat isn't feeling well? I totally understand, bye!" I always hung up the phone thinking that at least I could say I tried.
As our first camp approached it became apparent that more desperate measures were called for, so I made up some fliers and reluctantly included my contact information, hoping that I wouldn't have to spread them around too much (ha!) I made a point of visiting a handful of area churches and asked politely if I could leave my fliers with them, but I even then I was getting the sinking feeling that this was not going to work.
Indeed, it was a total waste of time. I ended up posting fliers at every church I could find within at least a five mile radius and got no response. I also tried at several private schools and similarly got nothing. I posted to facebook hoping social media would work its magic, but as I've mentioned, my network is not exactly heavy on families with stable adult lifestyles. For the first of our two camps I only managed to recruit two host families, one of which was my sister and her husband and the other a friend of a friend. That was okay as I technically wasn't even working for the first camp. Our other recruiters did their stuff and got the placements we needed. But that left the second camp, which has been an absolute nightmare.
Our first camp ran from July 2nd to 11th. Then we got a short break before the second camp which is longer, from the 17th to the August 5th. It was apparent early on that not many of our first set of host families would be willing to host for both camps. Frankly I can't fault them for that, but it did mean that by the end of the first camp all of us working to find families had already exhausted our networks. We met and pooled our resources, which included a cold calling list that we requested. I had thought that calling distant acquaintances was bad. Calling complete strangers was worse. It was, again, such a random awkward topic that I had no idea how to approach it. Plus the thought of disturbing someone's evening in that way was not one that I relished. But they don't pay you for having fun, so I buckled down to the task and actually got quite good at it after my first ten calls or so. I wrote myself a script which made it much easier to start talking and boy, did I get used to rejection. Unfortunately it was all for naught. I spent hours upon hours calling people and couldn't generate even the slightest bit of interest.
This is also about the time that my car decided to have issues. It had been making disconcerting clunking noises for a little while and I finally mentioned it to my dad and he told me it sounded like a Really Important Part could be breaking and that I should take it to a mechanic immediately. There's a Les Schwab near where I live, so I dropped it off there hoping that I'd be able to pick it up the same day. No dice. I ended up walking home and was carless on the last weekday when I could have visited some more churches to try and get announcements in their bulletins the coming Sunday (not that it would have done any good). Instead, I spent the next day accosting strangers in the park, because I was that desperate.
You see, our supervisor told us we'd have to start asking total strangers, but I had refused until this point. I mean, asking strangers on the phone is one thing, but in real life!? It also concerned me that this was the best backup strategy our higher-ups had to offer. "Talk to everyone! Have you tried your neighbors?" I didn't feel like explaining that, seeing as I live in a dormitory I technically don't have neighbors. "Talk to the people at your grocery store!" The last time I went to the grocery store, the homeless man in line next to me ate the food he had bought and put a dollar on the conveyor belt before running off. This is not exactly prime recruiting territory.
And that was one of the awkward things about the whole business. I had to start profiling people's socioeconomic status. We were desperate for families and I had no other options. I had to report what I'd done to try and find families every day and at this point we had less than a week to go. We were dangerously under quota. And so I had to scope out the park and basically judge who I thought might make a suitable host family based on appearances. I felt like a horrible person. In the end I only ended up approaching a few people and shoving some fliers at them before running away. One woman was engrossed in a textbook and explained that she couldn't host because she was studying for medical school. Why didn't I go to medical school? I thought desperately. A profession with some dignity! (Not to mention actual money.)
I gave up on the park after a few of these horribly shaming encounters and decided to try the church down the street, which I hadn't bothered yet on account of it not being in a very good neighborhood. It was Friday though and I discovered that it was among the many churches whose offices are closed on Friday. I stood in front of the locked double doors, feeling like a persecuted wretch seeking asylum. It was a Lutheran church, but I entertained myself with the thought of compassionate nuns who might take in some homeless Chinese children. This was the beginning of my imagined recruiting scenarios. I went past a group of people selling cherries on the sidewalk and wondered if a similar strategy might be employed for my situation. "Free Chinese kids with every purchase!" I thought about simply leaving them on people's doorsteps with a return address label on their shirts. "Please return to this address at 9:00 a.m. on Monday for English school."
The last Sunday before they arrived our entire team staked out a church potluck in the hope that our desperation combined with some old-fashioned Christian hospitality might get some results. I was somewhat reassured that everybody else was just as nervous and discouraged as I was.
"I feel like a Mormon missionary," our coordinator bemoaned after we'd approached the last family and gotten nothing but polite smiles. The church pastor, who had done the recruiting last year, assured us that it had been this difficult for him too. It was sort of comforting, but didn't leave me much hope. I was starting to have images of us camping out in the park and dumpster diving for food. "Come experience homelessness in America!"
That night I wrote the most desperate facebook status update of my life. All dignity and restraint was gone. I had no shame. The funny thing, though, was that it kinda worked. My friends, wanting to be supportive and help, started sharing it and the thing kind of went viral. I got over 30 shares on that one status update, some of which were from people I've never met. I was able to track its progress and it was sort of fascinating to watch it spread through the facebook world. It was also interesting to see how information quickly and easily got distorted. I had listed my Mukogawa email because it's short and easy to remember, but people started assuming that the program was through Mukogawa and were linking to the website and all kinds of crazy stuff. But I got publicity and two host families out of the deal.
Even so, we ended up being right down to the wire. The morning of the kids' arrival found us frantically calling past host families and trying to find makeshift arrangements. I got four hours of sleep and was preparing to move to a friends' house to act as host. I spent the morning sitting on the floor with my laptop open to yet another call list and frantically texting our other team members. My room was a disaster area, all of my clothes books, applications and the like were strewn around me in a disorganized mess. And in the midst of this chaos, someone kept knocking on my door. After realizing they weren't going to go away, I opened the door and was greeted by two older women. "Excuse us, we're here to measure your windows." You. Have got. To be kidding me. "My room's kind of a mess..." I apologized, glancing at a pair of underwear in the middle of the floor. I let them come in and measure my windows regardless. I was too tired and stressed to care.
So yes, it was nuts, but we did, somehow, manage to pull it off. One of our veteran host families really came through and found us some last-minute placements. And since then, the camp's been going relatively well. Teaching has been a challenge, but nothing out of the ordinary. Still I have sworn never to do host family recruiting ever again.
June 8, 2014
I just finished reading "This Is Water" by David Foster Wallace. It's not a great achievement as the book/pamphlet is just a printed version of a commencement address Wallace gave in 2005. It's a valuable wake-up call though. You can read a summary of it here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/16/david-foster-wallace-keny_n_5148773.html
For me, it's amazing how Wallace can summarize so many of our human foibles. I like his perspective, and I like his emphasis on what a liberal arts education should be for.
You see, as much as I try not to, I get caught up in the "rat race" just as much as anyone else. I often feel judged for getting a liberal arts education and not being more "successful." Heck, I often am judged for this. And I feel guilty about it, because the people judging me generally have a reasonable perspective in doing so. They're trying to make ends meet. What kind of stupid person am I to throw so much money at something so materially valueless? Saying that there's a human value to a liberal arts education often sounds hollow in such a setting. And that's where I feel I have something to prove. If not how successful I am, then how smart I am. It's an easy trap. So I'm thankful to Mr. Wallace for pointing it out.
This, I submit, is the freedom of real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted: You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship... Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
If you worship money and things--if they are where you tap real meaning in life--then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level we all know this stuff already--it's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power--you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart--you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the so-called "real world" will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called "real world" of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self.
Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
That is real freedom.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/16/david-foster-wallace-keny_n_5148773.html
For me, it's amazing how Wallace can summarize so many of our human foibles. I like his perspective, and I like his emphasis on what a liberal arts education should be for.
You see, as much as I try not to, I get caught up in the "rat race" just as much as anyone else. I often feel judged for getting a liberal arts education and not being more "successful." Heck, I often am judged for this. And I feel guilty about it, because the people judging me generally have a reasonable perspective in doing so. They're trying to make ends meet. What kind of stupid person am I to throw so much money at something so materially valueless? Saying that there's a human value to a liberal arts education often sounds hollow in such a setting. And that's where I feel I have something to prove. If not how successful I am, then how smart I am. It's an easy trap. So I'm thankful to Mr. Wallace for pointing it out.
This, I submit, is the freedom of real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted: You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship... Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
If you worship money and things--if they are where you tap real meaning in life--then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level we all know this stuff already--it's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power--you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart--you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the so-called "real world" will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called "real world" of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self.
Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
That is real freedom.
April 10, 2014
Teaching Is Really Hard Work
This week I had the opportunity to substitute teach for a straight week. It was the first time I'd been completely in charge of a class since being in Thailand, and the freedom was kind of overwhelming but enjoyable.
I can now cut a little more slack to teachers who complain about how people say teaching is an "easy" job. Such a statement is, frankly, complete and utter crap. There are so many factors that go into effective teaching that doing it well is extremely challenging and requires 100% of your energy and focus.
The first day is (always) the most terrifying and stressful, simply because there are so many unknowns. It's easy to think of teaching as a checklist of items to cover. Students show up, you teach them the content, and you're done. Which is why you might think that teaching a beginning level English language class would be a walk in the park. How hard can it be to teach basic vocabulary and grammar? Bwahahaha! The truth is, of course, much more complicated. There is SO much more to English teaching than showing up with a picture of an apple and teaching some basic phonics (which, if you've even thought about English spelling for a few minutes, you will realize are not so basic).
The number one X factor of teaching is that your primary focus is (or at least should be) the people in your classroom, and these people are not blank slates. They each bring their own unique sets of experiences, personalities, expectations etc. Add to the fact that they will be interacting with each other and the issues that can arise are overwhelmingly complex. There are personality issues, ability level issues, gender issues, and cultural issues. During my practicum I had set up a nice communicative activity involving pair work and, for the sake of time and convenience, simply assigned partners based on proximity. One Muslim woman in my class had her face completely covered which, unbeknownst to me, means that she can not interact with a Muslim man she is not married to and unfortunately I had accidentally paired her with a male Muslim student. There was some awkwardness and luckily my practicum teacher was able to step in and repair the situation with little fuss, but that is just one of the many invisible factors at work in the classroom.
For me, simply monitoring the levels of engagement and mental states of all of my students is the most challenging thing about teaching and it's one you simply cannot appreciate until you have experienced it. It's like public speaking to the power of ten.
Then there's pacing. Knowing how to time activities so that they fill up the appropriate amount of class is akin to magic and almost impossible to predict. When I'm nervous, I tend to rush things out of the fear that my students are getting bored, and so I have a tendency to just fly through planned materials. On my most important observation day for my practicum I was extremely nervous because I hate being evaluated. It is very unsettling to have someone watching your every move and writing notes about you while they do. While my lesson (about religion, so, you know, that's not a sensitive topic...) went smoothly (despite the fact that I kept running into things) and the students (bless them) responded really well, I ended up finishing my lesson 30 minutes before the end of class. It was a complete nightmare.
This week the first couple of days were no different. This was the longest amount of time I'd ever taught (five hours straight) and between that and the nerves I was constantly wracking my brains for ideas of how to extend the material. Luckily I have some fun games in my repertoire now that I was able to use and by the third day I'd gotten a feel for the rhythm of the day and was feeling calmer at the head of the class, so I had no problem filling the time.
All of this kind of outlines the soft skills of teaching, which are essential to being effective. But the nuts and bolts of what content to present and how is the challenge of teaching that I find to be the most mentally stimulating. As I said above, there's more to it than just content. Especially at the lower levels it's the process that's important, so while it may not sound that challenging to teach basic vocabulary and grammar consider that learning a vocabulary word in a foreign language encompasses recognizing it when it is spoken, learning to pronounce it properly, learning to spell it, and learning how to use it in context. Regarding grammar, it's really complicated, and so my primary concern as a teacher is knowing how much grammar to include, how to limit my instruction. All of this means knowing how much my students know which is impossible to completely know...
When I'm teaching I'm constantly processing all of these different factors. I not only have to monitor the class to make sure everyone is on task and playing nice (and figure out how to appropriately intervene if something isn't working, which is really a case by case thing), but also manage time efficiently and, ultimate goal, decide how to direct the class for optimal learning. For instance, today we were reviewing vocabulary about family which was paired nicely with a worksheet about adjectives. As reinforcement and practice, the students had to write sentences describing their family which, of course, creates errors galore at this level. So do I address the grammar point that we say "I have" but "He has," or leave it for another day? Do I let the unconfident student get away with misspelling a word for the sake of encouraging him at the risk of letting him get in a bad habit? How thoroughly can I answer the advanced students' questions without completely losing class focus? These are just some of the issues I've run into in my short time of teaching and it's just going to take experience before I can iron out my approach to all of these issues.
Needless to say, I was completely exhausted at the end of each teaching day this week and felt I had thoroughly earned my paycheck.
I can now cut a little more slack to teachers who complain about how people say teaching is an "easy" job. Such a statement is, frankly, complete and utter crap. There are so many factors that go into effective teaching that doing it well is extremely challenging and requires 100% of your energy and focus.
The first day is (always) the most terrifying and stressful, simply because there are so many unknowns. It's easy to think of teaching as a checklist of items to cover. Students show up, you teach them the content, and you're done. Which is why you might think that teaching a beginning level English language class would be a walk in the park. How hard can it be to teach basic vocabulary and grammar? Bwahahaha! The truth is, of course, much more complicated. There is SO much more to English teaching than showing up with a picture of an apple and teaching some basic phonics (which, if you've even thought about English spelling for a few minutes, you will realize are not so basic).
The number one X factor of teaching is that your primary focus is (or at least should be) the people in your classroom, and these people are not blank slates. They each bring their own unique sets of experiences, personalities, expectations etc. Add to the fact that they will be interacting with each other and the issues that can arise are overwhelmingly complex. There are personality issues, ability level issues, gender issues, and cultural issues. During my practicum I had set up a nice communicative activity involving pair work and, for the sake of time and convenience, simply assigned partners based on proximity. One Muslim woman in my class had her face completely covered which, unbeknownst to me, means that she can not interact with a Muslim man she is not married to and unfortunately I had accidentally paired her with a male Muslim student. There was some awkwardness and luckily my practicum teacher was able to step in and repair the situation with little fuss, but that is just one of the many invisible factors at work in the classroom.
For me, simply monitoring the levels of engagement and mental states of all of my students is the most challenging thing about teaching and it's one you simply cannot appreciate until you have experienced it. It's like public speaking to the power of ten.
Then there's pacing. Knowing how to time activities so that they fill up the appropriate amount of class is akin to magic and almost impossible to predict. When I'm nervous, I tend to rush things out of the fear that my students are getting bored, and so I have a tendency to just fly through planned materials. On my most important observation day for my practicum I was extremely nervous because I hate being evaluated. It is very unsettling to have someone watching your every move and writing notes about you while they do. While my lesson (about religion, so, you know, that's not a sensitive topic...) went smoothly (despite the fact that I kept running into things) and the students (bless them) responded really well, I ended up finishing my lesson 30 minutes before the end of class. It was a complete nightmare.
This week the first couple of days were no different. This was the longest amount of time I'd ever taught (five hours straight) and between that and the nerves I was constantly wracking my brains for ideas of how to extend the material. Luckily I have some fun games in my repertoire now that I was able to use and by the third day I'd gotten a feel for the rhythm of the day and was feeling calmer at the head of the class, so I had no problem filling the time.
All of this kind of outlines the soft skills of teaching, which are essential to being effective. But the nuts and bolts of what content to present and how is the challenge of teaching that I find to be the most mentally stimulating. As I said above, there's more to it than just content. Especially at the lower levels it's the process that's important, so while it may not sound that challenging to teach basic vocabulary and grammar consider that learning a vocabulary word in a foreign language encompasses recognizing it when it is spoken, learning to pronounce it properly, learning to spell it, and learning how to use it in context. Regarding grammar, it's really complicated, and so my primary concern as a teacher is knowing how much grammar to include, how to limit my instruction. All of this means knowing how much my students know which is impossible to completely know...
When I'm teaching I'm constantly processing all of these different factors. I not only have to monitor the class to make sure everyone is on task and playing nice (and figure out how to appropriately intervene if something isn't working, which is really a case by case thing), but also manage time efficiently and, ultimate goal, decide how to direct the class for optimal learning. For instance, today we were reviewing vocabulary about family which was paired nicely with a worksheet about adjectives. As reinforcement and practice, the students had to write sentences describing their family which, of course, creates errors galore at this level. So do I address the grammar point that we say "I have" but "He has," or leave it for another day? Do I let the unconfident student get away with misspelling a word for the sake of encouraging him at the risk of letting him get in a bad habit? How thoroughly can I answer the advanced students' questions without completely losing class focus? These are just some of the issues I've run into in my short time of teaching and it's just going to take experience before I can iron out my approach to all of these issues.
Needless to say, I was completely exhausted at the end of each teaching day this week and felt I had thoroughly earned my paycheck.
February 24, 2014
YES!
Great article from the Atlantic! Absolutely what I have been thinking ever since I started studying linguistics.
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