Hey Everyone!!!
This is officially my first blog post! Although it is late in the summer, I have been keeping a journal everywhere I go to keep track of my service experiences, so this is all fresh :) I have been doing a lot of traveling, so get ready for a lot of different stories to come!
To give you some context, my SOS consists of four different service projects: (1) ESL Teacher Assistant at DeLeon Springs Baptist Church, (2) Civil Rights Trip with Dr. Sapp, (3) Bonner High Impact Initiative in Albany, New York, (4) and the Oxfam CHANGE Initiative in Boston, Mass.
June 2, 2012
It is absolutely amazing the things you learn about a community by spending time in a classroom.
Every Monday and Wednesday evening, you'll find Miguel, an ESL teacher, and I in a classroom at DeLeon Springs Baptist Church teaching English to about twenty Mexican adults. Even after some tutoring experience under my belt, being an ESL (English as a Second Language) Teacher Assistant is a completely different world compared to tutoring at the elementary school level.
To give you an example that shows the unique nature of ESL and how awesome Miguel is, here's a short story of something that happened earlier this week: before class started, all of the students were hanging out on the front porch talking while I was inside setting up the chairs and the computer room. When I walked out to call the students in, I found them heatedly arguing over each other's different recipes on how to make tamales; one student defended that it tastes best with a certain kind of ingredient while another student argued that it's much better with her family's traditional ingredients. Naturally, they continued the conversation as they entered the classroom.
Miguel listened, amused, for a few minutes until the students quieted down. "You know," he said in both stern and amused English, "a tamale is still a tamale, no matter what kind of ingredients you put in it. Maria's tamales might taste a little different than Yolanda's tamales, but they are both tamales." The students and I smiled, thinking that Miguel was half-joking because we all know how much he loves his students' cooking. But to our surprise, he continued. "It's a lot like in here; you are all students. Some can read better, some can speak better, some are just beginning, and some are ready to advance. But in the end, you are all students and you are all here to learn." This definitely got the students' attention. Miguel had just addressed the division among students based on English fluency level, a major problem in the classroom, by relating it to something that all the Mexican students could grasp: tamales. I was so impressed by his poise and approach, I call this the tamale analogy.
Miguel’s tamale analogy is certainly one of many in-class lectures he has given to the students on social and cultural issues, including immigration, religion, and gender roles. In addition to the teaching English part of the day, ESL requires patience to work with various social and cultural contexts that the students bring to the classroom. With each class, I learn more about the students and how to work with them—there is never a dull moment in an ESL classroom J
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