Every teacher's worst nightmare

OK, I phrased that title dramatically, but today I experienced a less intense version of every teacher's nightmare - a health emergency during class.

I've been teaching at the USC International Academy for five weeks now, and it's been going pretty well. I'm teaching the master's prep program, which is pretty intense (the students are all conditionally admitted to master's programs at USC, they just need to get their English skills up to snuff by taking this one semester of classes and passing it with a B average), but the students are so motivated and generally so easy to work with, it makes the job pretty enjoyable.

Today, we had a grammar quiz at the beginning of class, and one of the women (girls, really - I'd guess she's in her early 20s) didn't look so good. She took the quiz really fast and then asked if she could go to the restroom. When she came back about 5 minutes later, she literally walked in the door to the classroom and then fainted onto the floor. It was very dramatic! All the students gasped and I immediately ran outside the room to tell someone at the front desk, who then called the campus equivalent of 911. I wouldn't have been that stressed, to be honest, because it didn't seem that serious overall, except that she was pretty unresponsive to anyone talking to her while she lay on the floor. She was breathing, but not communicating at all.

So a tense 5 - 10 minutes passed (I think? It felt like forever.) while we waited on the paramedics to come. They finally arrived and asked everyone to leave the classroom so she could have some privacy, so we all walked awkwardly into an empty classroom, where I wondered if I should try to have the students do work while we waited. I ended up giving them a handout on APA citations to read and work on if they wanted to. Most of them opted to stare into space or go on their phones.

The girl seemed to be OK after a few minutes with the medics - they were able to get her to sit up and respond to questions, and I honestly suspect she just hadn't eaten in a while. So we all filed back into the room (after she had been wheeled out in a wheelchair) and I tried to continue the lesson as usual. It's such a difficult balance, trying to show concern for the student who just left in a wheelchair, and check that everyone else in the class isn't freaking out, AND try to make sure that we don't "waste" class time!

In the end, I think the whole process went OK. We did manage to continue the lesson, and I got a text from the girl's friend later in the day saying that she was doing well. Phew. Thinking it would probably be a good idea to take a CPR class though, just in case.

Good mail day

Came home from a long day of work to find: a pin I ordered online from Black Friday (in the pink envelope), makeup samples, a Xmas card with beautiful lettering from dear Hannah, and an advertisement for Fun Home (a show I hope to see in 2016). Hooray!

P.S. Tomorrow's my last day of teaching for 2015!!

That moment when...

...you sigh, because you realize (but are not surprised) that your wonderful students are evil conservative nincompoops. 

No, I don't really think that about my students. But it can sometimes be frustrating to find out their opinions when it comes to politics. 

We read an excerpt from a book by Jonathan Kozol about the de facto inequality that exists in public schools due to government funding. My students had to write a letter to Kozol saying whether they agree or disagree with his argument that schools in poor areas should receive more government funding than those in richer neighborhoods, in order to create true educational equality. Keep in mind, most of my students come from quite wealthy families; that's how they're able to afford tuition at NYU, a private university. 

Here are some troubling samples of what the majority (not all, thankfully!) of my students wrote: 

("Good" grammar, not good point of view!)

These students are intermediate level, so it's important for me to remember that their rationales are a bit crudely expressed. Still, it can be frustrating to have students write these kinds of things after I've done my best to explain how logical (from my point of view) Kozol's argument is. 

Maybe some of them will eventually change their mind a wee bit? 

Last day of summer school

Today was my last day teaching summer school! I finished at Columbia last week, and then had one more relaxed week of teaching Pace. My last class was this morning, from 10am-12pm (Pre-Graduate Academic Reading--sounds fancy, right?).

In honor of the last day, I made a special trip up to Penn Station to get KRISPY KREME donuts for my students. This was a really great class, so it was worth it to spend the money on them. Plus, I had a Groupon for $20 worth of Krispy Kreme donuts which I knew I couldn't spend completely on myself. 

I can practically smell the sugary sweetness just looking at this. 

Then, I got home and had to motivate myself to tally up final grades (students gave presentations today) and officially submit them. London (our current foster cat) was not helping.

Crazy eyes. 

The kind of exciting thing is that I will be teaching at not one, not two, but THREE schools come September! I was offered a reading/writing class at NYU. It's going to be a little stressful adapting to another work environment and taking on a brand new course, but I think it'll be worth it. 

But before that happens, I want to enjoy some vacation time. I'll mostly be staying in the city, although Ari and I have plans to visit Philly for a night next week, as a kind of mini-vacation (I have hotel points we can use!), and then we'll both be in Colorado at the end of August for Cammy's wedding (!!!!!!!!!). I can't wait. 

So begins Summer C

Summer at Columbia University is divided into three sessions: A, B, and C. Last Friday was the last day of B (four weeks long), and Monday is the start of C. I'll be working more hours than I ever have as an adjunct: 21 hour per week. (12 hours at Columbia and 9 hours at Pace, which is divided into Summer I and II.) My maximum was 19 before; some adjuncts work more than 25 but I have no idea how they do it!

Anyway, I am preparing as best I can for a very busy Summer C. Thankfully it's only four weeks long (as opposed to the 12 weeks of fall and spring semester), so it will only be crazy for a short period of time before I get a couple weeks off for my actual summer break. Then it's back to school on August 31st for fall semester!

In Memoriam: Frau Campbell

Yesterday I found out that my German teacher from high school, Frau Campbell, had passed away on Saturday. This news was not a great surprise, as she had been teaching at Monrovia High School for fifty years before my class had her. My class was actually her last official class before she retired; we were the last ones to have her for all four years.

What I remember most about Frau (we just called her Frau) was her energy. On the first day of class freshman year, she went up to each person's desk and shook their hand, saying "Guten Tag." We hadn't officially been taught any German yet, but we all struggled to respond "Guten Tag" back to her. I remember already feeling like this was a teacher who was personally involved with teaching each student. By the time we had her, she had developed a system for teaching every aspect of the language: how to pronounce the "ch" sound, how to remember the 16 ways to say "the," and how to recognize dative versus accusative case. Her methods were fairly traditional, but I loved the structure. Plus, we often got to sing German pop songs (from the 80s or earlier) or folk songs on Fridays. It all totally worked for me; what started out as a mostly random choice to study this language became one of my favorite classes in high school. I was secretary of the German Club in my senior year, and I went on to major in German in college and study abroad for my junior year in Goettingen.

Frau also had a very dynamic personality. As I told my friend (and our President of German Club) Vivian, I think Frau was one of the only teachers who ever yelled at me. She literally yelled at everyone at one point or another; a lot of things could set her off. I think she yelled at me because I was reading a book or distracted by something during another student's presentation. On the other hand, Frau was moved to tears about other topics, such as when we talked about the reunification of Germany. She had actually lived in Germany during WWII, because I still remember her making a joke (?) about dodging bombs in Berlin during her childhood. She was passionate about every aspect of teaching, and many of us responded to that passion by doing the best we could in her class.

Now, as a language teacher myself, I find myself thinking of Frau, reflecting on how she, for example, got a class of moody teenagers to sing German hiking songs at full volume. I'm still not sure how she did it. Nevertheless, I continue to respect and be inspired by her.

Playing Catch Up

One of the main reasons I haven't posted on this blog in quite a while is that I recently--well, six weeks ago--started working at another ESL school, and while I'm grateful to have more hours, I am still figuring out the balance of work. Add some snow days with mandatory make-up classes, and the week feels pretty long, with not enough time to grade stuff on the weekend before the next week hits.

So I've been feeling overly stressed the last couple of weeks, which is annoying. But today, in the middle of lesson planning, it just occurred to me how one of my favorite things about teaching is the fact that I am constantly trying to improve myself as a teacher. I never feel bored of teaching, because if it's starting to feel boring, I can change the lesson plan by taking the students to museum, or watching a movie with them, or playing a game that gets them moving around the room.

Because I'm constantly trying to improve myself (and trying not to compare myself too harshly with my co-teachers at Columbia who has taught ESL for 30+ years), I sometimes feel inadequate or like I'm not up to the task. But I try to remind myself that I'm doing the best I can, and it takes years to become the kind of assured teacher that I look up to--people like my mother, who has written her own pronunciation book, and my co-teacher Frances, who was the editor of the NorthStar book series (only ESL teachers know what that is!).

So I guess I wrote this post to say 1. I'm still keeping a blog! and 2. I'm still figuring out this whole teaching thing, but I think I like it!

Also, on a completely different topic, I secretly wrote this whole post so that I could add a note at the bottom about how THE OSCARS are on tonight. While I realize the Oscars are pretty dumb and out of touch and waaay too long, they are still FUN for me to watch. AND I saw six of the 9 nominees (Her, Dallas Buyers Club, Wolf of Wall Street, Gravity, American Hustle, and 12 Years a Slave), and I think they were all good, so I'm glad some good movies are getting some recognition. Just too bad that Llewyn Davis didn't get nominated for Best Picture, and that Her will pretty much definitely not win. (It's my fave.) 

Irony

It just occurred to me that I am teaching my ESL students about the wonderful American constitution and government this week--coincidentally the same week that our government has SHUT DOWN.

End-of-Year Conference

On May 16 - 19, the English Language Fellows got to gather all together one last time for an end-of-year conference in Makassar (South Sulawesi Island--the same city I visited before the Tana Toraja trip).

On the first day, we had to do outreach (ie teacher training workshops at different sites). But before we headed off in our different groups, we managed to take a group photo with (almost) everyone in it. IRIS! Why were you late for breakfast???

I love this picture because most of us look genuinely happy. This is because were amused by the photographer, who apparently had no idea how to use a camera.

For the outreach, I was in Jackie and Josh's group. The Dream Team! No really, those two guys are pretty impressive cohorts. Anyway, we ended up being taken on a two-hour drive (slightly longer than we were expecting due to a local carnival blocking the streets), to a smaller town outside of Makassar, called Gowah. We presented ideas for teaching "Beyond the Textbook" (catchy, eh?) for a middle school English teachers association. When we arrived at the school, the students were done with their lessons for the day, but they all stayed at school, to crowd around us when we arrived. They didn't want to talk to us! But they did want to see the bules.

Jackie and some of the students. 

The students also crowded in the doorway to watch some of our presentation.

Josh presents to the teachers...and the students. 

We weren't really sure how much of what we said was really absorbed by the teachers, but we did our best. And then when we got back to the hotel, we jumped in the pool!

Jackie looking like Miami Vice. 

Deirdre having a blast. 

My hotel room had a pretty great view of the ocean (bay?) and the "floating mosque" of Makassar.

Watching the sunset. 

During day one of our actual conference, we had to brainstorm and write down all of what we'd accomplished over the past nine months. It was pretty impressive once we'd put together everyone's activities and outreach.

Autumn and Tabitha add their activities to the lists. 

We put post-it notes over all the places we'd visited in Indonesia--color coded for our site, travel for work, and travel for pleasure. 

At the end of the day on Friday, Deirdre and I formally presented gifts that we'd bought (and everyone had paid for) to our wonderful boss Eran (he got a fancy pen and an Amazon gift card) and his awesome assistants Dian and Ayunda (they each got fancy leather purses). Then Eran brought out a fancy bottle of Scotch (courtesy of the Embassy) and we had a happy hour hangout time.

On Saturday, day two of the conference, we talked about our plans for the future (blaahhhh who wants to talk about that???). Thankfully we finished early, by 1:30, so Ron (who lives in Makassar) chartered a boat for all of us to go out to a tiny island and snorkel. 

Fellows on the boat. 

Jess and me on the boat. 

It was actually some surprisingly good snorkeling. Pretty coral, bright yellow and blue fish. I even saw an eel! (My first eel seen in the wild!)

Esteban, Jon, Holly, Iris, Autumn, Christy, Jess, Jackie, me 

We also saw the mangiest, saddest-looking cat I have ever seen. This scrawny little thing followed us around and just wanted to be pet. We named it Struggles and gave it some water (it was super thirsty) and thought about taking it back to the mainland with us on the boat. Ultimately, we decided to leave Struggles on the island, since there were other cats there, and we didn't want to stress it out too much. Poor thing.

I let him sleep on my (hotel) towel. 

After we took the boat to the mainland, we had trouble getting a taxi to pick us up. There were about 25 of us, so Jess and I got impatient and decided to take a becak (pedicab) back to the hotel. It was a bit of a trek (about 40 mins?And the driver had to pedal two 6' tall bules!) but really refreshing and fun to take that way back. 

Me and Jess on the becak. We could barely fit both of us on the seat. 

For dinner on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night, we had all gone out to eat together as a group. But on Saturday night, some people wanted Italian food, some people wanted to eat local traditional seafood dishes, and some people wanted to go clubbing (namely, the boys). So we split up for dinner and met up later for dessert.

I was in the group that wanted to eat the local seafood dishes. We went to this great restaurant called Lae Lae, where you choose the fish you want out of these coolers, and they fry it up right there for you.

I think we just asked one of the restaurant people to choose for us. Too difficult!

DELICIOUS fish and some tasty side dishes too. All of this added up to $5 per person. 

Jess (we hung out a lot on this trip!) and me about to dig in. 

After the fish, we met up at a local gelato place, and I had a mint and chocolate gelato dessert.

On Sunday morning, we all had breakfast together to say our goodbyes. It actually wasn't goodbye for most people, since we made plans to meet up in Bali in June before everyone leaves. But Autumn wasn't going to Bali, so we all gave her a group hug. 

Autumn in the middle. Jackie, Holly, me, Deirdre, and Jess on the outside. 

This wasn't really a sad time yet, because I didn't feel like it was done yet. I still had 3 more weeks to teach, and I was going to see most of the people in Bali again. But this weekend was basically the beginning of the realization that this Fellowship is almost over. How do I feel about that? Um, how about I talk about that in another post, okay? 

Teacher Post

Here is a short story that provides a recent example of why I love my students here at IAIN.

Yesterday, during my Cross-Cultural Understanding class, I passed around the attendance sheet that every student signs. They sign once, for that meeting, and if they're absent, well, of course, they don't sign it. This allows me to monitor who's coming to class and who's not.

I got back after class and noticed that everyone had signed twice, for two meetings, which was weird. Also, students who I knew to be absent had also had their names signed. This kind of annoyed me, since the students KNOW they can't sign for their friends. So, I left a slightly angry post on the class Facebook page, basically saying, "Why did you do this? Explain yourselves."

The next day, a group of six students from that class showed up outside my office, and waited half an hour, until I'd finished teaching, to explain. They'd been confused about how many days to sign, because of the midterm last week. They also admitted to signing their absent friends' names, because they didn't want their friends' grades to go down. I reminded them that they weren't allowed to do this, and they all said they were sorry and wouldn't do it again.

I suppose this story doesn't sound so impressive to the casual observer, but I found the students' honesty  surprising and refreshing. Even though they'd broken the rules by signing for their friends, they didn't lie about it. And they came to me directly, rather than trying to answer on Facebook.

This is one of the ways that teaching in Indonesia has been really gratifying. I am really going to miss these students.

Inspiring Teacher Movie of the Day

*Other than proving to me yet again what a great actor Sidney Poitier is, this film also made me realize that all those hipster kids you see dancing in bars in L.A. are just replicating the mod dances of the 60's.  I suppose it's obvious, but I'd never made the connection before!