Off to a qualified auspicious start. Monday we met another family, friends from preschool, at the Atlanta History Center for their homeschool open house day. They do these once a month, with various themes, in addition to their monthly family Saturday programs, so I ponied up for the family membership. Z loved the blacksmith and woodworking ( Read more... )

Z has been attending Turning Sun School (previously Atlanta Progressive Preschool) since he was almost three years old. It's a great place, with a student-centered, play-based curriculum that emphasizes community involvement and an appreciation of nature. And, a bonus for our family, it's completely secular. They don't even do Christmas--just a ( Read more... )

In the next chapter of my ESL textbooks, we'll be addressing vocabulary to describe people. The usual comparisons: tall/short, blond/brown/red/black hair, long/short/curly/straight hair...and thin/heavy ( Read more... )

Z likes it when I take him to work with me. After picking him up at school last Tuesday, we went back to the LAA so I could do some work on the computer in the teachers' room. Afterwards, he wanted to see my classroom and draw on the white boards.


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As Black Friday mornings go, teaching 14 Bhutani refugees about English vowel sounds and American government has it all over camping out at Target in hopes of snagging the last half-priced, multi-pronged, gold-plated nose-picking widget on the shelves.

Naturally, we also talked about the holiday, though I didn't give them that hoary old myth about ( Read more... )

Six and a half years ago, I laid it all out on the table: the pros and cons of going back to school for a masters in linguistics so I could teach adult ESL. I knew I wanted to leave the job I was in, and I knew I'd enjoy teaching English. But I was worried about all kinds of unknowns: would grad school be boring and frustrating? Would it be too ( Read more... )

I parked in front of a small, low brick building divided up into storefronts: a daycare, a bakery, a dentist office...and a door marked only #9. In the vestibule was a shelf full of shoes. Down a long hallway, I was hit by a heavy smell of incense, before emerging into a Buddhist/Hindu temple. Of half of the room was entirely taken up by an ( Read more... )

The students I'll be meeting tomorrow are from Bhutan, but the Bhutanese government wants nothing to do with them. Bhutan takes great pride in placing "Gross National Happiness" over Gross National Product, while simultaneously justifying the expulsion of over 100,000 ethnic Nepali citizens since the late 80s.

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(Warning: gun violence)

I went over to the Latin American Association today to do a volunteer gig, and walked out with a 5-week teaching contract. Woot! 20 students for level 1 English!

With only 12 3-hour classes to get through all 100 questions on the US Naturalization Exam, I have to be pretty selective about what goes into a lesson plan. The curriculum follows a similar pattern to what I observed in my own high school history classes--we spend a load of time addressing the Revolutionary and Civil War periods in great detail, ( Read more... )