September Oxford Seminar Class in San Jose

I started a new class today. It is very different than my other classes this month for many reasons. The best thing is it is being held in Santa Clara, about 5 minutes from my house. All of the other classes this year have been in San Francisco or Berkeley which are both about an hour drive from my house. This is great for me in that it doesn't take as much gas and I can leave my house at 8:30 in the morning rather than 7:45. This class is being held in a hotel so the climate control is better. Both other locations don't have any air conditioning and the heat is questionable.

Another big difference is the size of class. Last month I had 19 students, the month before I had 15, the month before I had 17 where as this month I have 9 students. Plus the classroom is twice as big, so it seems like the number of students is a lot less. This class is also older. of the 9 students 7 of them are older than I am. My class usually have none or only one person in the class that is as old as I am. This class the students all want to teach in South America or in the USA and most classes have a large percentage of students that want to teach in Asia.

In this class we have a husband and wife that both have teaching credentials and one even has an ESL teaching credential. Between them they have over 50 years of teaching experience. I am very careful what I say around them since they can probably teach the class themselves. One is an Engineer and he wants to just work in the States and wants to know effective ways to teach ESL. One lady also recently retired and wants to teach in the States, or short term outside the US. She wants to get certified to give her more creditability with people from other countries. In the class are two men from Ethiopia.

They both are Muslim and want to teach in the Middle East. I have told them about the people I have that have or are presently taught there. To get a visa to Saudi Arabia takes 6 months. I have one student that is teaching in Egypt and I will have them contact her if that is what they want to do. There is one guy that doesn't have a Bachelors degree. He would like to teach in South America or China since those places don't require a degree. One guy and girl both just graduated from college with a BA and want to go to Costa Rica, Columbia, or Panama. One girl that was in my class before teaches in Panama so I will have them contact her.

This class will stress me much since there are people with more experience than me, all the students want to go to countries I have never taught in. This will not be an easy class to teach and I have to be ready all the time for the students to question what I am teaching them. Well, this will be an interesting month and we will see how it goes!!