Returning to Normal

No quote tonight. I just don't want to go look one up. Summer laziness.

The year ended well. I finally got all my kids done and all my grades in. I totally rearranged my classroom. I love it. It looks, for no readily apparent reason, about four times as large.

I also had some great news. I am going to get to teach AP English next year! I was so shocked. I had wanted AP, and was planning to take the training for the course this summer, but I never expected to be able to teach it for years and years. I am proud to have been chosen, and a little nervous, too.

It's exciting to be able to teach a class at the "college" level, or as close as you can get with HS students, again. But it's also kind of nervewracking. Am I good enough to do this? I think I can. I'll do my best. Gambate, ne?

In other trivia from my world, I just broke my DELL SUCKS rule and ordered a Dell DJ from them. I needed it for the upcoming summer trip, and I think it will work better with my computer than an IPod would. I paid with my regular bank account, so no more of the every month hassle with Dell. I hope this thing is going to be as spiffy as I think it is....

On Sunday, I had a chance to use my Spanish more. A man from Guatemala came to our church, and since I"m the only one who has any Spanish, they called me at 9: 30 to come down and talk to him. He was looking for a Spanish-speaking church, and I had to tell him there's only one, and it's not in our tiny town. A larger city, the city where I teach, has a church with Spanish services. We had a good discussion. He was the neatest guy.

As I was talking to him, I kept thinking about how little effort most of this state has put into creating services for the growing Spanish-speaking population. It's almost a sullen refusal. It's like they're saying, "If we don't make it easy, they won't come," and indeed, I've often heard sentiments of this kind expressed. There's plenty of, "Why don't they learn English if they're going to come here?" around.

If these people had ever had the experience of being a minority, of not being able to ask for toilet tissue in the store, or not being able to go to a doctor by yourself, then I think they would get off their prejudicial high horses a little. I have long stated that everybody ought to have to go spend two or three months in a foreign country, and one in which they don't speak the language. I think so much of people's blase callousness to the problems immigrants are having in our area stems from the fact that they've 1) stopped seeing the basic humanity of their fellow man, and 2) never had to scratch and survive themselves.

One of the most embarrassing things I've ever had to do was explain my menstrual cycle to my boss so he could document it on a Japanese medical form. At that point, I was really sick and running a fever, almost deaf in one ear from an infection that had gone on too long, and on top of all of that was heaped the shame of illiteracy. He was embarrassed to have to ask, I was mortified to have to answer, but thank God and the Japanese sense of saving face, we were able to move past that.

I came home from Japan with a keen sense of what it's like to be helpless because of language. I was a trained, educated professional, but so often, I know the people I was encountering though me of subnormal intelligence. It's a natural reaction, maybe, to think that the person who doesn't speak the language you've been babbling in since birth is somehow odd. I was frustrated and even when I took classes to learn, my progress was slow, and technical situations like the doctor were still beyond the grasp of my basic-greeting-color-number-directions Japanese.

It's wrong for there not to be more help for people in this area. I do what I can. I offer my little ESL classes, but I still feel it's too little. I hear stories from my students sometimes that make me aware that they're facing the same problems I faced in Japan, and I wish I knew how to do more to help them. I am hoping to find some like-minded people and get some serious help made available for them. God willing, we can cut off some of the hardship before it begins. Life in a new place when you've left family behind is hard enough without little things being stumbling blocks.