My December Class!!

San Francisco

This month's class has gotten off to a strange start. It was supposed to be thirteen students and one didn't show up. The first weekend there were twelve students. Everything went very well in class. The students got along good and we had a very good first two days. One happy addition was a girl from Korea that answered a Craigslist ad I put on looking for actual ESL students my students can meet and teach. This girl's Korean name is Eunhee and uses the English name of Fey. She is a very important addition to the class and she is showing the class how ESL students learn. The students get the opportunity to try to teach new concepts to their students. Eunhee attends an ESL school in downtown San Francisco and sometimes brings others from her school to our class, but Eunhee comes every day of class and stays all day. It is a win/win situation for her and the class because she gets lessons in English she would never get in a normal situation  and the class wins because they get to learn more then they ever would just listening to how to teach ESL. In the class we have a 19 year old girl and her aunt. These two have been all over the world. They just came back from a trip to India where they did some volunteer work in the slums teaching English. They have some great stories and they show great skills when they teach. It doesn't hurt that the aunt is very very smart and very very pretty. Another girl in class just came back from a trip around the world where she has some exciting stories about her adventures. One woman in class is getting married and moving to Italy. She has a unique view on what she needs to learn and has become a close friend and confidant. The girl that lives in San Jose happened to go to Seattle Pacific University, which isn't a big deal except that is where my oldest sister went, when it was Seattle Pacific College. One man wants to learn how to teach ESL because he is going to Japan to be with his son's family. His son is in the Army and he wants to be around the grandkids as they grow up. I admire him and think that he will do fine in the classroom. One girl is very beautiful and her husband is also in the class. No one knows they are husband and wife and they won't learn unless they read my blog, which I don't think will happen. One girl is going to go teach in Egypt where she has relatives. She was mentioning yesterday that she might not want to live in the same city as her relatives because she won't have any independence. The class has a girl that is half Korean and half French. She wants to go teach in Japan or China. There is also a girl that uses a Japanese name, but doesn't speak Japanese. She is a "firecracker" and always in motion. She is great to have in class and always participates in everything. She sticks out in my mind because we did have another man in the class. He was someone I had met before in a Information Seminar I taught a few weeks ago in San Francisco. I was happy to see that he was in my class. After the second day of class I received an email from him that said he was thinking about something I had said to him about thinking about what he would do with his future. He said he decided to drop the class because of what I had said. I had no idea what he was talking about. He later said he felt uncomfortable because he felt the girls were all stalking him like they always do. He sent a few other emails that made me think he wasn't "all there". When class continued this weekend the students were talking about how he was mumbling to himself all during class and one of the guys had seen him in the bathroom just staring at the walls. I was worried he would say something to my company that would get me fired. I am still concerned about it, and we will see if anything comes of it. At the bottom of this guy's email was his blog address and I looked at the blog and the Japanese girl in the class was discussed in his blog and a movie she had made a few years ago, and had forgotten about, was on his blog. I was worried so I warned the girl and she was concerned. Lets see if that is all that happens. I look forward to the next weekend classes and I will be really sad to see this group leave! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkEbcd_LLhI&feature=g-upl  this is a video of me teaching this class!