New Job

Sorry for not updating recently. (Does it seem like recently I start every entry this way. A year ago at this time I was apologizing for updating too much). Among other things, Internet was out over here most of the week.

I'm now a couple weeks into the new job, teaching English to Migrant workers. It's only 16 hours a week, so I'm still at the supermarket part time. All in all its still a relatively light schedule since I'm only working combined 32 hours a week. However since the supermarket job is 3rd shift, that means I'm still on an unregularly sleeping schedule just for the sake of those 2 days a week. Fortunately the migrant classes are in the evening, so it is not completely unreconciliable. I try and not go to bed as soon as the class finishes, but stay up until about 4 or so, so I will still be in good shape to work 3rd Shift on Friday and Saturday. The only problem is I have trouble making myself be productive after midnight, and I tend to spend most of those post midnight hours doing things like watching reruns of Batman on the Cartoon Network.

For my social calender it is also the worst of both worlds, since I'm working evenings Monday through Thursday, and then can't stay out late on Friday or Saturday night, and sleep most of the weekend. So my apologies if some of you have seen less of me recently. I'm not avoiding you.
As for the new job itself...
Obviously working in the migrant camps is a new experience for me, and it is fascinating to see how these people live. After only a couple weeks, I don't want to start making a lot of generalizing comments (as is usually my habit) but certainly the standard of living is a lot lower than in the suburbs of Cascade. And yet they seem to be very happy people, and extremely kind as well.

We start each day with a general meeting at the local high school, where all the teachers assemble. (I've seen a couple famalier faces from the Christian High/ Calvin College days). And then we go off in pairs to our assigned camp.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only one on this program who doesn't speak any Spanish. It is usually a requirement, but I was hired on the strength of my ESL experience in Japan. Fortunately my partner is a girl who immigrated from Mexico herself. She has no teaching experience, and so I've been doing most of the planning, but I would be at a complete loss without her. Once we actually get rolling, she does most of the talking.

In a way it's very similar to being back in Japan. Most of the time I'm in the room, especially at the beginning of class, there are long conversations conducted in which I have no clue what is being said. I do like to think I'm absorbing some of it however. I come home at night and have Spanish ringing in my ears. I can't make sense of it, but the sound of it stays with me. I feel like I've already learned more than that Spanish class I took in Japan. I would love to meet my friend Jorge again just to show him what I've learned.

(Often I have regretted taking Latin in high school and college instead of Spanish. I actually took Spanish club when I was in Junior High, and wanted to take Spanish my Freshman year of high school, but my parents wouldn't let me because they wanted me to take Freshman band instead. By the time Sophmore year came around, I had decided I wanted to take Latin because of my interest in Classical history. In fact I was really angry that I wouldn't fit 4 years of Latin in, and tried to blame it on my parents. My mother responded that if they had let me out of band, I would have been taking Spanish instead anyway.----
Which just goes to show I guess that you never really know where life is going to take you. If I had stuck with my interest in Classical history, the Latin would actually have been a lot of use. On the other hand if I had known back then that I was going to spend 5 years in Japan, I would probably have signed up for a few Japanese courses).

Lesson planning has been going okay. In the short time I've been doing this, I'd say we've had a couple great lessons and a couple awful lessons. (Something I was told in my Calvin Education classes, which I've always hung onto the past 5 years, is that no matter how long you've been teaching or how good you are, you still will have lessons that fall flat). I'm discovering that my experience in Japan is of limited carry over value. Most of the time I was either in elementary school, where we just did songs and games, or junior high, where the students didn't have a choice about attendance and worked out of a textbook. But we've been making our way along.

Since this is a government program, there is also a lot of beauracracy and paperwork and hopes to jump through. Probably unprofessional to blog about the inner workings of the school, but I do want to quote something from David L. McConnell's Importing DiversityInside Japan's JET Program: "One of the most frequent complaints by JET participants is the beauracracy of the Japanese govenment. This is partly because of the youth and inexperience of most JET participants, they tend to blame on Japanese beaucracy what in fact is true of beauracracy in general world wide."
All paraphrased here as I have no copy in front of me, but man does this ever fit me to a T. Any complaints I have made about Japanese beauracracy on this blog or in conversation I hereby take back. The US can be just as frustrating.

Because this program got its funding cut a number of years ago, among the rules we have to observe is that we only get state funding for students 16-19 not currently attending public schools. If no one in this age range attends the lessons, no matter how many other students are present the class has to be shut down.

In our camp, as it happens, no one in the target age range is there. There are about 5 or 6 guys in their early 20s who seem real keen to learn, and then a couple older people as well. However none of these count for government funding, which means probably next week we'll get transferred to another camp. (Or worst case scenario I'll be out of a job. It didn't sound like this latter was a very likely possibility when I was hired, but a comment was made today about how they're running out of camps to place teachers in.)

After spending a week building relationships, it would kind of suck to get transferred. Not to mention it would be really unfortunate for the people in the camp who currently attend the class. I'm tempted to soap box a little here about government priorities, but this is really an old, old story, isn't it? Government money being cut from social programs to fund foreign wars or pork projects is not a new phenomenon. I'm sure you could tell me stories about the underfunded programs you're working in.

Still, at the risk of repeating myself, I think Bierma really nailed this here:
Xenophobia in the U.S. Senate
Sigh. Declaring English to be the national language of the U.S. is about as necessary and meaningful as declaring Going To The Beach to be the National Summertime Activity. The myth that immigrants to the U.S. lack the incentive and the will to learn English is pervasive but silly. The problem that there aren't enough English classes for immigrants is very real, and widely ignored.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
Harley Quinn and Detective Renee Montoya are both examples of characters introduced first in the Batman animated series, and then later incorporated into the comic books.

Link of the Day
Pictures from my Brother and his family's visit are now on line. (Actually have been for a while, but I'm slow in linking). Pictures of the whole trip can be seen here on Amy's site. And if those are too much to wade through, my sister stole the ones of our family and duplicated them on her own site here, including one of yours truly.