The Wonderous World of an ESL Teacher

Life as an ESL teacher is weird. Fun, but weird. This past Monday I came back to work after having been gone for two days (Thurs. & Fri.) to a conference/training inservice. When I walked into my classroom at 9:00 feeling rather ehrg about coming in to work that morning, all my students burst into spontaneous applause and cheering. Now, that just blew me away. When working with people from other countries who don't get much chance to connect with Americans, you often form close bonds, and especially at beginning levels, students get very attached to their teachers. But I've never been cheered just for showing up at work before. It actually brought tears to my eyes .

And now this evening (I teach in the evening as well as the morning, and have the afternoons off) I took a couple hours off to attend a staff event at the school where I work in the morning. I had arranged a substitute to run my open computer lab hour for me, and informed my manager that I would be arriving about 15 minutes before regular classes started in the evening. So I arrive at work at 6:15 and walk into the staff room to put something in the fridge, and suddenly everyone's talking, asking me what happened, where I was, was I in a car accident, am I OK? And I'm thinking to myself, "What, can't a girl take an hour off without everyone panicking?" But it turns out that my substitute had apparently gotten the time confused and arrived half an hour late, that my manager had completely forgotten that I was planning to take the time off, and that no one had actually bothered to ask my substitute where I was... and so they were worried sick about me. When I showed up they were very relieved to know that I was not sick or hurt or mysteriously missing, but very confused about why no one was there to open the computer lab at 5:30. It's nice to have such a reputation for reliability that if I arrive an hour late for work, everyone will automatically assume the worst--rather than assume that I am just late for work--but it was a bit surreal.

I don't think I know anyone who doesn't work in this field that has such bizarre but heartwarming experiences at work. If I could explain it better, I would. But it's a strange world, and lovely.

Leaf Destroyers

Well, the damage doesn't seem to be too much worse than it was yesterday, and there were fewer bugs today. So maybe the homemade bug spray is working...? I gave them another spraying this afternoon.

Here you can see the nasty little things, and some of the damage they're doing to my radishes, though this picture doesn't show the areas with the worst damage.

I don't know what kind of insect this is, and I can't find it in any of my gardening books. If I find out, I'll post it next time.

The perils of organic gardening

A.B. and I went out to our community garden plot yesterday afternoon to do some work weeding and putting up cages and supports for plants.

And what should I find but an infestation of small, black, jumping insects eating up the leaves on my cabbages and radishes! The community garden is an organic garden, with absolutely no pesticides or herbicides allowed (because it is on the property of a elementary school) so I can't just spray them with an inseticidal soap as I would do at home. What to do?

I looked up alternatives on the community garden website, and found some options for homemade, non-toxic "pesticide" sprays. From these I concocted a spray of a 1/2 cup of rubbing alcohol and a spoonful each of Murphy's Oil Soap, lemon juice, and cooking oil in a quart of water. I shook it up in a spray bottle and headed back to the garden to douse the little buggers. It seemed to have some effect, so lets hope I can save my plants! I'm going to try to get back there this afternoon and do another spraying if I see more of them. Maybe I'll get a picture to post here later. And I'll let you know how it worked!

Iris

My Irises are blooming on the boulevard. They seem to love it there, and are thick and tall and covered with flowers. I love Iris!

The spring ESL training network conference is over. My brain is full. I had a good couple of days, but it will take me a while to process all of the conversations I've had and information I've taken in... it's all churning around in my head now, making it impossible to think straight. But I'm sure I'll integrate it all eventually.

It was fun thinking about ways to use this kind of internet technology with students. I have interesting thoughts about trying an ESL assignment blog this summer. I wonder if I will be able to bring them to fruition? More on that later.

Now I really need to go off and think about something totally unrelated. Else my head will explode. Perhaps I'll go see "The DaVinci Code" movie. That ought to get my thoughts aligned along a different path!

Good evening and good weekend!

Launch!

Hello! Hola! Gruess Dich! Bonjour! Asalam Alekum!

Welcome to my new blog everyone. This is my first ever blog experience, I hope it will be fun.

It's a brand new virtual world out here...

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-WE HAVE LIFTOFF!

Susan WB