Classrooms with a Purpose

For the past two days I have been teaching students about careers in the San Jose Central County Occupational Center (CCOC). I had never heard or known about this center before last week. 35 high schools from Santa Clara County send students to this center to learn many occupations from vet assistant, diesel mechanic, air conditioning, among many other skills including website design and animation. I have been working with some very dedicated people in the school. I expected the students to be rude and unruly. In fact they have been the most polite students in any I have been to. I expected the equipment to be old and the teaching methods to be boring. The teachers really care and seem to be up to date on teaching methods and knowledgeable about the latest technology. My experience at this school site was fantastic. I have worked with 8 classes already and will be working with 16 more. The counselor that I am working directly with has bitten off more than she was ready for. She thought she would offer this opportunity to the students and maybe 20 or 30 students would want to take advantage of this. As she let the faculty know what this offered students they signed up their classes and instead of 20 or 30 she tested over 300 students. That caused her many hours of more work, even though she had other things to do. I admire people like that. She is truly affecting lives and putting others before herself. Sometimes I think about the fact that you can give so much of yourself that you hurt yourself more than you help others. I have gotten in trouble over my life because people misunderstood my reasons for doing things. In Korea I used to live on the fifth floor with no elevator. It was the top of the stairs, and there was one other apartment at the same floor next to us. New neighbors were moving in and I was watching people take stuff off of a truck and walking it up the stairs. I realized I was just sitting and watching them and so I went downstairs and picked up something and walked it up the stairs. I dropped it off in the apartment and went down to get another box. I did that for about half an hour without saying a word since I don't speak Korean. I asked my wife to explain to them what i was doing, just being neighborly, and she yelled at me that I was stupid and being "so American". She told me that me helping strangers wasn't polite in Korea and I should stop immediately. I stopped, realizing that if I had kept helping them I would be doing the opposite of what I was attempting. Sometimes helping others can be counter productive!