Sign language class

Last week, I started taking a Buenos Aires sign language class.  I specify that it's Buenos Aires sign language because different countries have different sign languages and actually Argentina has several different sign languages within different regions.  There are about 20 to 30 people in my class.  On the first day, one of my professors (there are three in the class) asked if anyone was a parent of a deaf child.  No one raised their hand.  There are two students in the class who have a family member that is deaf (one is a sister and the other is a cousin) but there aren't any parents of someone who is deaf in the class.  The teacher said this is because a lot of parents don't want to associate their child with a disability.  

Being deaf is a physical disability not a mental disability.  I think a lot of times people associate being deaf as a mental illness when in reality they are just as capable in any task and their mind is as clear as any one of the rest of us.  I think that it is really sad to know that a lot of times deaf people are separated from other people because of their disability and others are afraid to associate themselves with deaf people.   I have learned a lot from my deaf students.  Sign language is their first language and then after that they learn Spanish, so learning English is a third language for them.  Sometimes it is really difficult for them to learn a third language, I know that for me learning a second language is tough, but they catch on to the material very quickly.  They really are very capable of learning a new language (in their case a third language).  It is very impressive to see.  I love teaching them and am actually thinking about specializing in teaching English to students with disabilities. 

I should probably talk a little bit more about my sign language class here.  We have three teachers; a professor, a deaf teacher (who shows us the signs that we are learning for the day so that we know the movements), and an interpreter.  They are all very nice.  The class is once a week on Saturday morning from 9-1.  It's a 4 hour class which is tiring but I am really enjoying it.  I would love to take the second level class but it starts in April and I am supposed to go home at the end of April.  Maybe I can stay longer in Buenos Aires?  

I am also thinking about getting my TESOL certificate while I'm here.  There is a language institute a block away from my apartment.  I could get my TESOL certificate in three months, so that I could volunteer and take sign language class at the same time.  I am very excited about my options right now and am just waiting now to see how they unfold.   

Yesterday I had my English class with my deaf students.  After the class was over, I talked with Karla, the interpreter, about the class.  I told her that the deaf students are picking things up faster than the other class.  When the class was over, some of my students were still trying to work on the worksheet that I had given them.  They wanted to continue to practice and seemed very eager to learn more.  When I talked to Karla about it, she said that when they were in school, they couldn't learn English with the other kids because of their disability.  They are also taking computer courses at ALPI and the programs that they work on in those classes are all in English so it's important for them to learn English.

Now more than ever I'm realizing how much of a difference I can really make.  Working with these students has really opened my eyes to the challenges that people with disabilities face.  I have enjoyed this experience so much and I have only been teaching them for three weeks.  I am considering specializing in teaching English to deaf students and students with other disabilities.

I'm really enjoying teaching my English classes.  Susanna (one of the education coordinators), Agustina (one of the secretaries) and myself are taking a signing class with one of the interpreters from ALPI.  Last week we had a class on Monday after my English class got out.  We were going to have signing class on Mondays and Wednesdays for half an hour after my English class but it's been changed to just Mondays for an hour.  When we met with Karla the interpreter, she told me to bring the vocabulary that I was teaching to my students.  As of now, I can say days of the week, seasons, man, woman, boy, girl, friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, the colors, some emotions/adjectives, ser (to be) signs depend on the situation, and then estar (to be) has one sign.  

Last week in class, my deaf students told me that they have a unique sign for each of their names so they don't have to sign the whole name using the alphabet.  My other class is doing very well and they are progressing very quickly.  We have done a bunch of present tense verbs such as to go, to talk, to walk, to dance, to say, to do/make (hacer).  They understand using an auxiliary verb in the negative as well. This past Thursday we looked at people's personalities and the words associated with personalities.  I gave my students a worksheet and we went through the words one by one so that they understood what they meant and then we did an activity where they had to write whether the personality trait was good or bad and put them in a chart.  After they were finished, we talked about their answers.  

 This has been really good practice for me and I look forward to the rest of the class that I have with them.  There is the possibility that we might be starting a third class on Fridays but I haven't heard a lot about that in awhile so I have to talk to Graciela about that today.

1st and 2nd lesson

So I have taught two lessons now at ALPI. At the first one, I had 16 students and 6 of them were deaf. Although it was a really good class, we had some difficulty because the class was very divided in what they already knew of English. After the class was over, I spoke with the coordinators about dividing this class into two classes. I now teach the deaf students on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5-6:30pm and I teach the other students on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5-6:30pm. The first day of class we went over:

-Numbers
-Alphabet
-Months
-Days of the week
-My name is...
-I am from...
-I am ____ years old.

Today I reviewed what we had learned last Thursday with my deaf students. We also started learning about family members. The students in this class are really working hard and are catching on quickly. I am very impressed with their progress so far and it really seems like they really want to learn English. One of the students even bought a magazine in English to practice!
There are eleven students in this class but today I only had five. The others didn´t come for different reasons.

I have asked about the possibility of me learning some sign language so that I am able to communicate better with them when they don´t understand. One of the students has an implant, so he listens, and then when another student doesn´t understand, he signs to them. I told my students that I would like for them to teach me sign language too, when we are in class. So far they have taught me:

- Muy bien (Very good)
- Algunas preguntas (Any questions?)
- Gracias (Thankyou)
- Applause
- Dudas (Doubts)
- De nada (You´re welcome)
- Hola y Ciao

The sign language that they speak is local and I found out that each country has it´s own set of sign language. Tommorow I have a different class. We have also discussed the possibility of having a conversation class. Language classes have never been offered before at ALPI so there is a lot of interest. If I end up having a conversation class as well, we are thinking Fridays, I will be teaching three classes.

Lesson Planning at ALPI

Today I went for my first lesson planning session with Dra. Graciela. Although it was rainy, and all of my materials got soaking wet, I made it to ALPI. I met Susanna again while at ALPI, she works in the education department as well, and while Dra. Graciela was tending to a problem that they were having in the center, Susanna and I talked in Spanish about what I wanted to do in teaching the ESL class. She said that my Spanish is very good and that I even have a porteño accent! Awesome!

Dra. Graciela and I talked about starting simple with the students because they have never taken English classes before, and may not have much of a background in the language. We talked about reading and writing with the students. So far, this is what I will be teaching to the students:

Verb tenses:
-Simple present
-Present progressive
-Simple past

We decided to take out future and present perfect tenses for now because the class only goes until the middle of December and it´s a lot to learn for such a short amount of time.

Vocabulary:
-Meals
-Days of the week, months, seasons
-Going shopping, buying things
-Transportation
-Question words
-Time

Structures:
-Adjectives
-Adverbs
-Nouns
-Possessive pronouns
-Articles

My class starts on Thursday and will be every Tuesday and Thursday from 5-6:30pm and I´m very excited about it!

A new project!

Crecer con Amor was really too far away for to go there 4 times a week, so I talked with Mercedes at the Help Argentina main office and she looked for a new volunteer placement for me. She got in contact with ALPI, a rehabilitation center for physically handicapped people. ALPI was started for patients dealing with polio and has now opened up to handicapped people with other physical limitations, either caused by accidents or diseases that have caused limited mobility. ALPI is located in Palermo which is where I live, and is about a 20 minute walk from my apartment.

I visited ALPI yesterday with Jon Teel, the on-site volunteer coordinator for Help Argentina. We talked with the lead coordinators of the education department at ALPI. I will be teaching English as a Second Language to some of the patients at ALPI. I will be working with Doctor Graciela Scavone to plan my lessons. No one knows about this class yet at the center, so during the weekend, they will get the word out about the class, and by Tuesday we will know how much interest there is in learning English as a Second Language at the center. Some patients also take computer classes, and other classes at the center.

Help Argentina hasn´t sent any volunteers to ALPI for awhile because when they were interested in help from volunteers, there weren´t enough volunteers to send there. Right now, I am the only volunteer from Help Argentina that is working at ALPI. I am going back to ALPI on Tuesday, to work on my lesson plans and on Thursday I will begin teaching. I am very excited about this project because I will get to teach ESL in a setting where I really think I can make a difference.

Buenos dias!

I arrived in Buenos Aires early on Wednesday morning. My cousin, his wife and their son met me there and we took a ride around the city. It was a pretty relaxed first day and at the end of it, my cousin drove me to my new apartment. I had to be at the Help Argentina office at 12:30pm the next day and I need up being 45 minutes late. I left at the right time, asked for directions several times, and had to take several subways but I finally made it to the Help Argentina office. We had a very brief orientation because I was late but then we left to go to Crecer con Amor.

Crecer con Amor is located in Lomas de Zamora which is an area just outside of the city. Mercedes works for Help Argentina and she was showing me how to get there and introduce me to the people of Crecer con Amor as part of my orientation. We took a subway, then a train, and finally a colectivo (bus) to get to Lomas de Zamora. Once there it reminded me a bit of the Dominican Republic when I was doing community service there. A lot of the ground was sand and there was a lot of trash. This is a very poor area and when I told people where I was working, they acknowledged that.

Mercedes and I arrived at Crecer con Amor and met the director Jacqueline. One can tell that she truly loves this place and loves her job. We met the other teachers and one of the other volunteers for Help Argentina, Erika. She has been working there for 5 months already and will be there for another 5-6 months. Volunteers for Help Argentina usually help the teachers with their classes. There are four classes divided by age group.

I brought some English children´s books to help with their English lessons but then I was told that they don´t have an English class there anymore because the man who taught English there does not work at Crecer con Amor anymore, although he visits often. Since I have some experience teaching ESL, I may be helping to start English classes again at Crecer con Amor, including helping to coordinate the English lesson plans for possibly the next year! I am very excited about possibly taking this on as a project for Crecer con Amor. I will be discussing it more with Jon Teel, the on-site volunteer coordinator once he gets back from the United States.

It is a two hour commute from Palermo (my neighborhood in Buenos Aires) to Lomas de Zamora which I will be taking twice everyday Monday thru Thursday and sometimes Friday depending on my energy level. I definitely think it will be worth the commute though to volunteer and help teach. A typical weekday for me will consist of Spanish class at Alem Spanish School which is about 12-15 blocks from my apartment from 9-11am, then I work at Crecer con Amor from approximately 1-5pm, but because of the commute I need to leave almost immediately from the Spanish school to Lomas de Zamora. I will get back to my apartment around 7pm.

I am very excited to begin taking a Spanish class and volunteering on Monday. Tomorrow I am going to Tigre with my cousin and his family which should be fun.

A New Year, A New Adventure

After many, many days of contemplating what I would do after I graduated from college, I have decided to go to Argentina in September for 7 months. I am going to be volunteering for a non-profit organization which sends volunteers out to smaller host organizations.  I'm going to be working for a place that has an after-school program where I will be teaching English as a Second Language, helping with homework and helping to prepare snacks for the kids.  I have always had a passion for helping people and I think that this will be a good time to help others and gain some experience in teaching ESL before I go to graduate school in the fall of 2009 to get a Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) in Teaching English to Students of Other Languages (TESOL).  Although I have traveled a good amount before, I'm still really nervous about this trip because it is the longest trip that I have taken by myself.  I am also incredibly excited and know that I will learn a lot from this experience.