ESL begins tonight!

Tonight I'm starting to teach an ESL class here at Cross Community! It will be from 5 to 7 on Thursday nights, geared toward those who work during the day or who have to watch their kids during the day. The janitor here, Yesenia, introduced the idea to me, and she had a list of 7 people who were also interested in ESL classes. Word of mouth is a remarkably effecient way to spread news about community events, and so I have a roster of 12 students now. I'm not sure how many will actually show up, or who will come that I'm not expecting, and after I see what the class size and level of English knowledge is, I'll be better able to plan for subsequent weeks.

The ESL teacher here, Harriet, has two classes that meet two times a week each, in the mornings. Harriet has been such a great help to me, giving me loads of suggestions about how to recruit students, what the general demographics of her classes have been, and so on. My favorite advice by far, however, has been the "ESL ball" that she keeps in a drawer in her room. It seems like a normal oversized ball of tape, but Harriet assured me that it is a key tool in the ESL profession, especially to practice series of information and involve the whole class. Basically, one person begins with the ball and says, for example, the letter A. The next person who catches the ball says B, then C, and so on. You can use the ball to practice numbers, days of weeks, months of the year, basically any grouping of information. Pretty fun, huh =)

I'm really hoping too that this class serves as a launching-off point, to build relationships with community members and to discern more clearly what my role can be here. I still don't feel like I have a well-defined task at the Coalition, and I still have a lot of free time. It's certainly teaching me patience, having to wait and wait and wait for people to call me back and for opportunities to materialize. I'm hoping that my schedule gets more solidified as the days go on!