November Oxford Class

Today I started a new weekend certification class for people that want to teach ESL in other countries. This is the first time in almost 2 years I have taught in Santa Cruz. The location has been changed since I taught there last. It is out off the beaten path in and area I haven't been to before in Santa Cruz. The room was nice and there was only thing I had to change when I taught there. One wall has a mirror so it was hard to do the exercise where I draw a picture on the board and one student describes it to the other.

 The students with their backs to the board could see what I drew on the board in the mirror. I just drew the picture on a piece of paper and taped that to the mirror. When I need to do something I figure a way to make it work. This class is the smallest I have had in almost 2 years. There were 9 people signed up for the class. Three of the students registered didn't show up this morning. One student that wasn't registered came to class. She went home early because she was sick and her sister contacted me tonight saying she might not be back tomorrow.

The six other students are very interesting. There are two friends that went to high school together. One wants to go to Korea and the other wants to go to Turkey or Poland. She is a little hesitant about going to Turkey since she heard that many Turkish men are not polite to women. One woman is older and wants to be able to teach English when she travels to other countries. She met her husband on his sailboat when she was in Mexico and seems to travel around the world on the sailboat a lot these days. Of the six students there is only one guy.

He has been taking care of his invalid grandmother for the past six years and wants to teach in Japan. He is burned out in helping his grandmother and his family agrees that he needs a break. Another girl in the class is half Japanese and studied Japanese language and culture. She wants to teach in Japan and wants to eventually get her Masters in a Japanese school and maybe even a PhD. She wants to teach in a Japanese college. She has heard many disappointing things about teaching in Japan and I am trying to find out the true facts for her from my old students that are there.

This is the first time I have had a student in my class that attended the same high school that I went to. It is fun to talk to her about the high school. She wants to go to Korea so she can find out more about the school system and why it is so good. She wants to know why it is one of the top school systems in the world. It will be interesting to find out what she discovers.