Post #33: Volunteachers

This is a quasi work post. Today, we went to a public school in São Paulo with our Specialist to work with volunteachers. These volunteers come from all walks of life and have one thing in common: they have learned English and want to give back. On Saturdays, these professionals don blue shirts and teach classes of students from the community who want to learn English. We sponsored a training and found such energetic, awesome energy among the teachers that must be passed along tot their students. Take a look, below, and learn more, here.

Post #25: Down South

Today, I traveled waay down south to the rolling hills of Brazilian wine country for a teachers' conference in Caxias do Sul. Even from the plane, I could see the soft hills and green mountains that reminded more of the terrain of parts Europe than what one would normally associate with the tropics. No wonder this area was settled by many Italian immigrants in the late 1800's. Brazil is the size of an entire continent, so it shouldn't be surprising that it has such geographic diversity, but I am consistently struck by its size and heterogeneity.

 

Why were we so far down south? For a meeting of 1,500 teachers of English, of course, and the bi-annual BrazTESOL international conference. It was a large event hosted at the pretty campus of the University of Caxias do Sul. I was impressed with how polished the event was, including some really thought-provoking speakers, both international and local Brazilian. I sat in on conference sessions, listened to plenaries, met with alumni and potential partners, and got to know lots of teachers... all in the backdrop of this beautiful place and over a few glasses of delicious wine from local vineyards. The conversations here about the field and professionalism and a responsibility to support and reach out to public sector teachers resonated with me on many levels and I look forward to continuing conversations over the next three years.

Here are a couple of shots from the conference. I have solidly amazing colleagues in the Regional English Language Office in Brasilia and felt surrounded by the warmth of the Brazilian teaching community. This is going to be a great tour.

The all-star RELO team in front of our booth

The dinner we hosted for friends and alumni at BrazTESOL

Our English Language Specialist Dorothy Zemach interacting with participants after her plenary talk

Raffling off free materials in front of our booth

Two weeks in Kurdistan

You may have noted the absence of my garden and weather updates from Tartu... I've been far away, hanging out in SE Turkey for two weeks to work with group of teachers. I traveled (about 20 hours in all but still in the same time zone, strangely) way down south to Diyarbakir and learned an immense amount about local culture, cuisine (delectable), and education (theirs and mine!) -- and I shared a few great moments and made some new friends along the way.

The biggest cultural highlight of my visit was a visit to a mansion where Atatürk once stayed. My hosts and I spent the evening listening to music, drinking tea, singing, clapping, and dancing. Take a look for yourself!



To get a sense of my visit and of Diyarbakir, check out the following album (there are subtitles embedded explaining the who, what, why, and when).

As an English teacher you need to be practically perfect, eh?

Perfection is over-rated, even for English teachers.

Some readers of this blog really absorb each and every word that I write, hanging onto every word, analysing every sentence, noticing misusages, comma splices, and the horribly offensive typos that creep into my writing once in a while. It has been noted that occasionally (or perhaps frequently, depending on your perspective) my postings include some infelicities. I once misspelled waist as waste (!), I've been known to replace they're with their (!!), in the last posting I spelled teachers without the "r" (!!!). You can stop reading now if you've found this news difficult to swallow and are too shocked to continue. You may consider discontinuing your readership of this blog! For the brave, my confession continues...

Shame on me! ... and I call myself an English teacher! You could fault my training. You could blame me for being inattentive to language or just downright deft. You could also just call me human. I get so excited to have a free minute in which to share a thought or two that sometimes I get distracted by the message. I don't always painstakingly proofread my postings as I might for a handout or an article. My friends and family know that I sometimes write with my "hair on fire" and stream-of-conscious is a bit more natural to me in a blog than other forms of writing. After all, a blog is literally a web log or type of journal for jotting down observations and notes, right? Not that I don't care about spelling and correct usage, but everyone needs a place to let their hair down, right? (Yes, there is a pronoun agreement problem in the last sentence, but I am fairly unconcerned.) I know that my friends and family will forgive me and not let it shed bad light upon my character. We all need a little bit of grace.

Someone recently pointed out some language-related issues in my blogging. The comment was as follows:

"As an English teacher you need to be practically perfect, eh?"

I beg to differ. I know how to analyze my audience and having a typo or two probably does not interrupt the message or offend the readership of this blog ostensibly. Secondly, I never aim to present myself as a perfect language user to my students. I do like language. I do like grammar. However, my goal as a teacher is not to present myself as something that I am not. I make mistakes sometimes. All language users -- in writing and speech -- sometimes do. Almost all human beings do at some point or another. It's okay. The interesting part of being a language teacher is presenting language and everything that it is, including a few infelicities, in such a way that students can access and become more aware about how it works. It is a brilliantly challenging job. As many of you know, my work pervades my outside life and a day rarely passes that I don't tuck something away for my students or future language work. Any language is complex, even English.

It is fascinating that this antiquated notion of the flawless English grammarian continues to be a persuasive model for what language teachers do and the kind of character they have. Language is not a thing to be captured and molded; rather language is a tool molded by its users for a purpose, generally communication. Rules and regulations about right and wrong (even if they are petty typos or spelling errors) fall short of explaining the reasons of why language evolves and operates as it does.

That said, my purpose for making this posting is to invite those of you who have issues with my language use to consider whether or not you have understood the message. Make a joke about my errors (I do!). Enjoy them! Use them as an affirmation that your mistakes are a common part of the human condition. Before you seek to chastise me with comments or give me advice on editing, please remind yourself that blogging is for fun. I have taken off my professional hat in this setting. I do far too much professional and academic writing during the day to be worried about being reprimanded for a missing letter in a word that you understood correctly the first time anyway.

Thank you for listening to my diatribe; I hope that I have not steered you in the wrong linguistic direction with any errors as I have not followed the advice of carefully proofing this message. After all, I guess if I misspell one word for every thousand or so here, I consider that to be a pretty good ratio of accuracy to mistake!

**This message was approved by Jennifer Uhler, occasional bad speller despite the fact her mother made her write her mistakes in her spelling words 100 times when she was a child and even though she is now an English language teacher. The reader should be warned that I did not save this as a draft or read it slowly word-by-word to find typos and missing words.

beyond the weather

Now that I have warmed up with a short discussion of the weather, I suppose that a few updates are in order. I feel as if a million things have passed in the last weeks and I haven't had time to share. Here are some new developments (beyond the weather) in Tartu:

English teachers are cool. They really are. Perhaps teachers are cool in general, but I can't speak from that perspective as accurately. This weekend, I attended a conference for the Estonian Association of Teachers of English (EATE) and met many language teachers from the area. There were some good speakers at the conference, many of them from abroad, but the real highlight was meeting participants. I have felt a little bit professionally isolated since my arrival, especially since I am sponsored by and situated within an administrative university unit rather than a faculty. Having conversations about teaching and language was just the confirmation and energy boost I needed about my vocation. Woo-hoo!!!

I've joined a cross-country skiing training group at the ski club here in Tartu. The group is for adult beginners and meets twice a week to exercise. Last year, several members of this beginning group later participated in the Tartu Maraton in mid-February. Estonia is famous for its skiers and has had several Olympic medalists in skiing events in 2006 -- No small feat for a country of 1.3 million people! I don't have any Olympic ambitions (ha, ha, ha) but it does seem to be a great way to enjoy a country that has such a long winter and great skiing places. The Estonian winter paradise is just south of Tartu in Otepaa. My training at this point includes exercises and running, but I am waiting for a bit more snow so we can really practice! I'll keep you posted on my progress...

A couple of international students from the university came over to my apartment this last week to do some baking for an international food fair in the student dormitory. I have an oven, and one of the Americans wanted to make snickerdoodle cookies. It was fun to have the company over and filling my apartment with the lovely scents of baking. However, they also brought with them some Kefir, a sour yogurt-like milk product common here. The Lithuanian student brought it to use as a cream substitute in one of the recipes. The kefir got left behind in my refrigerator. As I don't have any real affinity for drinking milk, I thought I would never consume it. However, I have become a huge fan of this thick drink and find myself enjoying a small glass almost every day. Opening the refrigerator the other night, I even experimented with a variation of mixing kefir together with Vana Tallinn, the rum-like liquor that is made here (absolutely delicious!). I guess you never know what you might like until you try it out.

Today is the closing concert of the Tartu Organ Music Days here. Although I would have rather attended a concert in one of the churches, I have tickets to the gala concert this afternoon. Promises to be really nice... I'll keep you posted!

Weather can be lumi-nating

Living abroad makes you an expert in discussing, in detail and repeatedly, the small things in life. Striking up conversations with strangers and acquaintances can only be done with some artful small talk. I don't know that my proficiency at initiating small talk might be rated as eloquent, but I certainly get some brownie points for frequent practice.

Of course, my favorite topic (and I think that I am not alone in this!) for these chance encounters and initial meetings is the weather. I can elongate a simple comment about rain, snow, wind, sun for a good chunk of time. After all, even my family enjoys this kind of banter. My grandmother used to write me about the weather in her letters (and I refer to a lengthy paragraph or two, not a single sentence). When I talk to my father on the phone, we spend the initial minutes (or sometimes the entire conversation!) discussing temperatures, forecasts, and such.

I begin most of my classes with some sort of commentary on the weather. My students, in tune with the predisposition of English speakers to talk about the weather as a form of "meaningless" small talk, don't always understand it or willingly participate. However, I am genuinely interested in the conversation, even if I have already had the same exchange several times in the day. I find it comforting and a good way to warm up to my audience. After all, there is nothing threatening about a short weather-related exchange. The banter is predictable and patterned, but I am not patronizing my students or new acquaintances with meaningless chatter. Perhaps it is a bit strange, but I enjoy these conversations and find them genuinely interesting... And why not when the weather can be so fascinating?

Last week, I wrote you about the sunshine and fall colors. In the last seven days the world has shifted. November came and it didn't rain. Rather, I awoke to our our first skiff of snow on Thursday morning. Chilly temperatures aside, I am quite taken with the icicles and frosty feel of everything. With the darker days and time change, it just feels right. The Estonian word for snow is "lumi." An appropriate name for something that lights up its surroundings, I think. Click below to get a feeling for the changes outside my window as lumi sadab or snow falls!

Snowy November Window