In which student teaching begins

As those of you on the facebook know, it has been a really good week; I started student teaching, I received passing scores on my Spanish CSETs and I got accepted to the APLE grant, which is a loan assumption program for up to $11,000 if I agree to teach foreign language classes in California for four years.

Student teaching has been good so far. I think I'm really going to enjoy working with my master teacher because we have fairly similar attitudes and approaches to teaching. She's a really awesome teacher and I hope I can learn a lot from her. The classes I'm in are ELD (English Language Development, also known as ESL or English as a Second Language). I probably would have been student teaching for Spanish, but I didn't pass my CSETs early enough, but I did pass the English CSETs in November. It's actually pretty lucky to be teaching in ELD, something I'm actually interested in, rather than in a regular old English class. I'm pretty sure I would hate teaching regular English.

I love working with the kids in the ELD classes, but it is hard. The hardest part right now is figuring out what proportion of foreign language to English to use (legally, 100% English, but whatever). Obviously, I don't speak every language, so this really applies only to our Spanish and Arabic speakers in my case. But considering that the lowest level class is more than half native Spanish speakers, this is coming up a lot for me. It's also difficult because different kids need or want different amounts of Spanish. I had one kid tell me, "I speak English, you know." Kid, I know you speak English, but you need to respond when I speak to you in English. Also, I really like to speak Spanish, so that makes it hard as well.

It's also kind of weird student teaching at the high school that I graduated from because I'm working with a totally different class of kids. When I was in high school, I was in all AP/honors classes and I basically only interacted with the same. The ELD students are basically disenfranchised from most school things. The only AP classes any of them are allowed to take is AP Spanish or AP math classes. Technically, it's illegal to not even let ELD students try the tests, but the unfortunate part is that none of their parents are going to do anything about it since they're immigrants who don't speak much English themselves and they aren't familiar with the system. That's really depressing for me. The other thing I noticed during this week's rally is that the "big" organizations like student government and cheerleading are overwhelmingly blond. There were a couple of students from the ELD classes who performed in the rally; they were in the hip  hop dance club. Again, super depressing to see these kids not being able to/not being welcome to participate in a lot of the other aspects of school life. The good news is that the ELD students really have a tight community. My master teacher leaves her class open at lunch and there are always 30 or more kids in there everyday and they're all really nice to each other.

I'm still not sure if I will want to be an ELD teacher myself. I wouldn't be opposed to it necessarily, but rather I think it is just a huge time and emotional investment and I don't know that I could/would want to do that. Teaching Spanish or something seems a lot easier (not that I've ever taught a Spanish class). But I do think I'm really going to enjoy teaching ELD for student teaching.

The other depressing aspect of ELD teaching is that my master teacher is, in theory supposed to keep to the same scope and sequence schedule as all the regular English classes. That is insane. Luckily, the principal at the school is sympathetic to the cause, since she is familiar with ELD teaching, so we aren't really expected to do it, but the idea is to keep along as much as possible. Essentially, the state expects magic from ELD teachers.

In other things: I rode my bike to school four days this week. It doesn't even take that long: about 10 minutes including traffic lights, etc. It takes about 15 to get home since I have to ride uphill (wah womp). I've been trying to keep up on my Arabic studying (CSETs in May, ugh), but I think it's going to be difficult to maintain it what with circus and lesson planing and what I call my social life. I got a book of Nizar Qabbani poems, which is pretty awesome. They're short poems so it's basically like bite-sized pieces of Arabic that I can look at for a few minutes when I have some downtime. Whereas when I read a book or something, I need to know I have at least an hour or so to do it, otherwise I won't even get started.  Apropos of nothing, my new favorite phrase is "Japanese bondage festive." The combination of the words (and I suppose surrounding context that will remain secret) just makes me chuckle.

I think I'm going to try to blog at least once a week, in part so I can think about/share my thoughts on student teaching and because I don't think I have more time to blog than that.

In which study habits are again considered

I've been studying Arabic a lot lately because 1) it is great and 2) I am taking the CSET for Arabic in May. Making and keeping a study strategy is a constantly evolving process for me. Things that used to work don't work any more, I find a better way to do things, I get bored of other things, etc. Also, what worked for me for Spanish isn't necessarily going to be what works for me for Arabic. For example. it's a lot easier for me to pick up a book in Spanish and proclaim "We're doing this!" and get reading. Arabic intimidates me more and it's hard for me to want to read because it just makes me feel like there's so much I don't know and that it's impossible to know everything. Also, the dictionary work on Arabic is time consuming. It's easy to use something like Word Reference for Spanish, but their Arabic dictionary is not very good, so I have to do it the analog way and actually use the dictionary. Arabic dictionaries are their own kind of special, but that's a topic for another time.

The last few weeks, I'd been working on Standard Arabic: An Advanced Course. I like this book a lot, but it's hard to just plow through a textbook and anything will get boring if you do the same thing every day. The good of this book: it is mostly reading and it is arranged by topic. So one chapter was on Muslim Spain (my favorite) and they had a short introduction in English, then a series of paragraph-long readings in Arabic, then progressively longer Arabic passages, some with comprehension questions and then a long one at the end asking you to write a precis.

This week I started working on the Anthology of Arabic Literature, Culture and Thought from Pre-Islamic Times to the Present. What I really like about this book is it seems really comprehensive and it's not in chronological order. Instead of starting with the extra-difficult pre-Islamic poetry, it starts with some awesome modern poetry and then goes into modern novels. Later, it introduces older literature. I'm actually really enjoying the poetry. One of my friends suggested that I read more poetry to ease into reading more, but I complained that poetry is all figurative language and rhetorical devices, and thus difficult. However, despite being all figurative language and rhetorical devices, poems are short (mostly). So, that's really a lot more accessible. I'm really enjoying the poems of Nizar Qabbani and I ordered one of his collections of poetry.

Here's one of his love poems, with my shitty translation of it.

تعري ... فمنذ زمان طويل
على الارض لم تسقط المعجزات
تعري ... تعري
انا اخرس
و جسمك يعرف كل اللغات

Disrobe ... since it has been a long time
 Miracles did not fall to the ground
Undress ... undress
I am mute
And your body knows every language

a man a plan a canal panama

Since my last posting, I've still been on the "nothing is working out" path, both failing my most recent attempt at the Spanish interpreting test and not being able to get a new job. In light of this, I decided that I needed a new plan, since I am obviously not going to pass this stupid test anytime soon. Without further ado, new plan:

Reapply for grad school for next fall
Teach English in Egypt for about 6 months starting in january
Get accepted to grad school (one hopes)
profit.

Or something along those lines. I was reluctant to consider another try at grad school mostly because I feel like I haven't done anything to distinguish myself in the intervening time so why both again until I do something? Except that I can't seem to do anything, so I was in a bit of a failure loop. I am seriously regretting not applying to more graduate programs last year because I probably would have at least gotten into the UW arabic MA, had I applied. At the time though, I had ruled it would be stupid to stay at UW, but I have since reevaluated this position. This time I am going to apply to Berkeley (again), U of Washington and the Monterry Institute (For MA translation and interpreting). I am hoping that with some more international experience under my belt, I'll have better luck. And even if I don't get in again, by next spring I'll be able to retake the contract linguist test for the FBI, which I suppose I will pass with studying and being in Egypt, and I will probably try for medical interpreting in Arabic as well, but we'll see.

I am excited to go to Egypt. This is going to get me out of my pessimistic rut of the moment. I'll be taking a TEFL (teaching english as a foreign language) course this month and then looking for a job. I've been having fun planning out the trip and things I need to do to get ready; I like making lists and planning. I intend to be better prepared then last time I went. For one, I already have a nice camera. Also, I'm really hoping I can get something in Alexandria rather than Cairo. Cairo is cool, but I think it would be pretty sweet to be on the coast. I'm also hoping to do a little extra traveling about while I'm in that area of the world, since last time I didn't really go anywhere (no money, you see). My current, tentative plan is to fly to Spain after my teaching term is up. I was looking at some 5 day Mediterranean cruises that go out of Barcelona and that seemed like it could be pretty awesome. I was also contemplating taking the train up from Barcelona to Paris and then flying back from Paris, but the Eurorail is a little more expensive than I thought it might be. So, we'll see.

In other topics, I am really getting interested in sewing. I've made three skirts so far and they have been well received. I have fabric and such for two more projects and soon I will have a sweet skirt-based wardrobe.

In any case, I just hope some things can start working out for me now.