Three weeks of a four-week summer school session are
history. I leave the house at 6:30, to arrive at school at 7 to get my lessons
in order. I teach ESL for five hours
straight, with only one 15-minute break to check in with the office, submit
attendance reports and usually deal with a student or two. I return home for a couple of hours of office
work, and then for a change, except for the night that Himself teaches, we have
dinner together. Five more days to go,
and then there are two weeks of vacation.
When I return to school, I will teach an early morning class, return
home for a couple of hours of office work, and then return to school to teach
at night, leaving Himself at home once again for a solitary dinner. I also have a five-hour Saturday course. This is a typical adult school schedule. There are very few students enrolled in
afternoon classes, so most instructors teach a split shift of early morning,
and then an evening class. While I’m
teaching more hours, I’m hoping that the Fall’s gap between classes will prove
less exhausting than the intense summer school program.
This summer, I have a conversation class, the first
time I’ve taught advanced students. And
as my classes are cobbled together at the last minute, they are small. I average about ten students per class, as
opposed to around fifty during the rest of the year. in the regular school year, there are always
a handful of students whose names, even after thirteen weeks of nightly
classes, I don’t know. Now, I’ve arranged
the desks in my classroom so students can sit in a little circle. I know their names. I can create little conversations on the
fly. I type a grid, with all of their
names, so they can practice conversation.
We are practicing the past tense.
They have to ask each of their fellow students, “Blanca, who bought groceries
at your house last week?” “Chang, who
made the beds?” “Ahmed, who swept the
floor?”
When the students ask me “Who bought the groceries?” or “Who
did the laundry,” it’s “I did.” “She
did,” they write down next to my name. The
exception is, “Who emptied the trash?” “My
husband did,” I state, and they dutifully record “Her husband did.” For the most part, most of the chores listed
are performed by females, the men, like Himself, relegated pretty much to
emptying trash.
An observation, that seems to fit here, is that yesterday,
Spuds treated me to a morning screening of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
at the Cinerama Dome. I have a lot to
say about the film but that will have to come later as there are lessons to
plan and food to prepare. Pertinent though,
perhaps to the consideration of the “long way we’ve come (Baby!)” is the experience
of the somewhat narrow rows at the Dome.
Spuds and I were on the aisle which required us to stand for people with
seating in the middle. There were about
five men. All stood expectantly in violation
of personal space, or muttered, “I need to get in there.” An equal number of women required access and
each of them said, “Excuse me.” And “I’m sorry.”
Should we feel guilty for expecting the fulfillment of a
necessary accommodation? Or is it just a
nicer world when any little gesture made on the behalf of another human is acknowledged? But, while the control group is a tiny one,
it certainly does seem to be a male/female thing.
The questions my students ask each other parallel the grammar
worksheets we’ve been using but I suspect that there are a few who sleep on couches
or not in a situation where there are floors to sweep or kitchens to stock. Still, most of my students can describe
something that happened in the past, even using irregular verbs. The opportunity for me to converse with each individually
on a daily basis has yielded measurable progress for each and every student.
Edvin joins the class a week late and struggles to keep us
with our grammar exercises. I notice
that he carries a biography of Neruda and print a couple of poems for him, in
Spanish, with English translations. He
shows me a notebook that he’s filled with original poems. I am able to get through one, limited by time
and my middling Spanish fluency. It is
remembrance of his family and his discomfiture at the thousands of miles that
separate them. The next day, he sheepishly
asks me after class, to borrow $2 for the bus. Perhaps, Edvin, despite his
ability to clearly state, “I made the bed at my house last week,” might not actually
sleep in a bed.
Kristy, the missionary from Korea, commandeers my advanced Conversation
class if I let her. She is proudly married into a family of third generation
evangelists and high muckety-mucks in the Korean Christian community. And is not a fan of Buddhists. Kristy explains,
apropos of what I can’t remember, that white ladies are typically unable to
determine the age of Asian ladies. “I
can always tell,” she notes. “They’re
usually old.” Kristy brings Youngsu, another Korean lady, in Jackie O
sunglasses, and of indeterminate age, to class. Kristy hovers over her, and
despite not being reliably intelligible herself, coaches Youngsu in
English. I am able to make out that
Youngsu’s husband is Korea’s top nuclear physicist and she was able to obtain a
green card within five days of arrival in the U.S. Kristy basks in her friend’s
renown. She attempts to explain to the class what a PhD means. Kristy has miffed her other morning teacher
after advising another student that she should seek out Botox treatments.
I try to set up
projects for pairs or small groups, to rein in Kristy and give everyone an opportunity
to practice. We work in pairs to
describe our lives at age six and then report about our partner’s childhood
back to the class. There is an odd number of students so Grace, half Korean/half
Chinese is stuck with me as a partner. She
grew up in rural China. He dad sold,
whatever he could get his hands on, in an open-air market. Her mom was a farmer. She draws a diagram of her one room house,
and the coal fire pit. In the winter
they’d sleep right near the fire and in the summer, behind a rice paper screen. I surprise Grace by admitting that I always
had my own bedroom, remembering the ugly white, gilt edged furniture and the ballerina
wallpaper.
When Grace was a young teen, they moved to the city. She made new friends but remembers fondly a
trip she took with her city friends to visit her friends in the country. Her mom
keeps track of her childhood friends now.
All of them are married, have kids and still live in a China, now unrecognizable
from the land of Grace’s childhood. One
of the questions on the list I’ve given them is, “What frightened you at age
six?” When it’s Grace’s turn to interrogate
me, I answer honestly, that it was mostly my parents fighting—they were
acrimoniously divorced the following year. Grace reports that her father was an
alcoholic and she was terrified of his rages.
When the interviews are finished the students select two
interesting things about their partner to report back to the class. What is most interesting about my childhood,
to Grace is that we weren’t allowed to wear pants to school until I was in
junior high and I there was a huge walnut tree in my front yard and my dad
would bring in bushels of walnuts that, with great difficulty, we’d shell.
I ask the class, “Who grew up with an outdoor toilet?” They all raise their hands. I teach them the word “outhouse.” The older
ladies talk about having to dress conservatively. I’m not the only one who was forbidden to
wear pants. The younger girls find this
extraordinary. All of them recall the
jarring transition from birthplaces to our sprawling megalopolis.
Sulma, from Ethiopia is absent for a couple of days for
asylum hearings. She is from an
untouchable caste and her life in Ethiopia, where she leaves four children and
a husband, became untenable. I do not
know how the new restrictions on asylum might play out with regard to Sulma, as
the leader of the free world doesn’t want America to offer safe harbor to imperiled
folks from Shithole countries. And if
she does prevail, will it be possible for her to reunite with her family?
Another day we talk about the pros and cons of
marriage. Maria Elena, in her late
seventies, has been a widow for nearly 30 years. She shows us a picture of a commendation her
daughter just received for twenty years of service, employed by the County of
Los Angeles. We talk about the common
phenomena of men and less frequently, but still a thing, women, who have
families back in their homelands and also partners and children here in the
U.S. One of the Latina ladies, gives a loose translation of a saying about the
U.S. “In America, the flowers have no aroma. The food has no flavor. And the men are all assholes.”
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