ITESMs Inaugural Dream Flags

This is for the Reach To Teach Teach Abroad Blog Carnival, a monthly carnival focusing on providing blogs to ESL teachers around the globe. If you'd like to contribute to next month's Blog Carnival, please contact Dean at dean@reachtoteachrecruiting.com, for more information and check out the other bloggers contributions here.

"What lesson or moment are you most proud of in the classroom?"

I don't know if I could pick one, but I can pick the most recent!

This semester I made it a priority to have my students do work which would NOT just stay in the classroom. One aspect of this was that we made dream flags!

We started the semester talking about hopes and dreams and kept that theme going throughout the short stories and assignments. 

When it got down to it we had a day or two of poetry where we made poetry videos discussing different types of poetry (Catalog, Diamante, Haiku, etc.)

 

Picking their favorite type of poem, students created their own poems about their dreams and put them on dream flags.

What are dream flags? Well, to the right is the description we posted along with our flags.

Basically, dream flags are an international art and poetry project inspired by Tibetan Prayer Flags and Langston Hughes' poetry. 

It is a chance for students to contemplate and reflect about different dreams that we have and embrace in the similarities.

Once a year in Philadelphia there is a Dream Flag ceremony where schools that are able to are invited to send their flags to be displayed along others made during this event.

How did we go about making the dream flags?

After the students wrote their poems, their teacher looked over them for spelling or grammar errors. I was sure to keep in mind that poetry, unlike an essay, doesn't have to follow traditional grammar rules. My students LOVED this as it gave them the chance to be more creative and really play with the language.

Then, each student got a piece of material (usually a cut up t-shirt) that was about the size of a piece of paper (8.5 by 10). It was a windy day so we taped it down to the table to be sure it didn't fly off.

Most students wrote their poems down in marker first, but some of them went straight to paint.

After the basic poem was written down many students went over the text in a different color, or with sparkles.

Then they used the markers, stamps, and paints to decorate the rest of their flag however they liked.

At the end we carefully took them to my office where we spread them out to dry.

While we were doing this some students from other English classes came by and had the chance to work on their own flag! The catch? They had to write and speak in English! My students could help them with their poems (and I would play the video we made), but we had to communicate in English.

In the end the students made unique flags to represent their unique dreams!

Some of them still had errors, but the meaning and hope still manages to show through!

 Once we finished, we strung them up on campus and let people see what they were.

We also uploaded them to the dream flags gallery where other schools involved in the project can see them

I am looking forward to doing this again with next semester's class. Plus, in the next semester we'll send this batch of flags (and the next semesters) to Philadelphia for the ceremony which is really exciting for my students.

For more information on the dream flag project (like how to join or its history you can check out http://dreamflags.org/

If you end up being part of the dream flag project please let me know, so I can take a look at your students' creations! You can comment here, tweet me at @eslcarissa or find me on facebook 

Worth it

I just had one of those cliché experiences where it really felt like it was worth being a teacher.

I was walking back from my 3:00pm class (where 33% of the class didn't show up today), and ran into a student from last semester.

Student: Hey! How are you? How are your new students?
Me: Good, they aren't you guys though.
Student: No.
Me: Well...except for the ones that are you guys. (I have some of her classmates again in the next level of classes.)
Student: Well, I guess.
Me: Who's your new teacher?
Student: Teacher B, he's good; he's funny.
Me: Good.
Student: He's different from you though. He just assigns essays and expects us to do them. You broke everything down, so that we just had to assemble them.
Me: Well
Student: I mean your class was a lot of work. We always did a lot of work in your class, but I feel like I actually learned the most from you.
Me: Good
Student: And, so I went home and I did it...I just wrote...and I did well! He really liked my essay and I told him, "Yeah, that's because I had Carissa as my teacher"

:-)

Later I was planning a lesson on summarizing. Usually I have them all summarize the same text, but since they are each working on a city report now I went out and found each of them a relevant article about the city they are working on to summarize. This way the summary may actually be useful to them and not just busy work. I stayed late after school finishing finding articles and I commented to a friend, "I don't know why I am doing this none of them are going to appreicate it."

The next day as I passed out the assignment one student looked up and said, "Teahcer you did research for us? Thank you that was so nice!"

So there. For those of you wondering if it is worth it to teach. No. Normally it isn't. Normally I am tired, frustrated, and underappreciated.... but sometimes... it really feels like it is worth it.

What about you? What has happened to you lately that has made you feel like your work is worth it?

Is it safe?

As a single female who travels to random countries to teach English, I often get asked is, "Is it safe?" My godfather has repeatedly told my mom, "Your daughter backpacked through Southeast Asia when she was in college, anything from then on will be considered 'safe.'" While that may be true, the real answer is that it depends greatly on who you are, where you are going and what kind of jobs you have. Here are a few super quick "safe" tips.

THE BIG FIVE: If you learn nothing else check out these quick five guidelines to staying safe while teaching abroad.

1. Be Legal! As stated in "But how do you work abroad" I am a goodie goodie. I don't believe in working illegally. First of all, it can put you in unsavory positions. Friends have been blackmailed, jailed and just threatened when they were working illegally. It doesn't happen all the time but it can happen, so just don't put yourself in that position.

2. Walk with purpose. I am not quite sure how to teach this as I have it naturally. It isn't always a good thing. Quite often in high school people approached me and asked, "Who do you want to kill?" or "Why are you so angry?" I am normally a very pleasant person, but when I walk I have a tendency to look angry. This is good for me. People are more likely to go after a skipping lollygagger, or a person who keeps looking at road signs than someone who is walking with determination.

3. Know your surroundings, and be nice to the regulars! I walk to work early, before 5am, sometimes. I take the longer route because it is better lit and has more guys selling newspapers. I am very nice to these men. I know their names. If I ever feel unsafe, or don't like the person walking behind me, I stop and talk to them for a while. In Spain there were three homeless men who lived in a church near my apartment. Sometimes my friends' host families gave lunches my friends didn't like. When that happened I would collect the lunches and give it to these guys. One night a guy followed me home and would not leave me alone. I made sure to pass by them and told them the guy wouldn't leave me alone. They stood up and ran screaming at him. He quickly left me alone. This was possible because I knew them, I knew my neighborhood and I planned on it. Another time someone was following me and I stopped into a nearby hotel my parents stayed at once. I explained someone was following me and I didn't want to keep walking home. They let me stay in their lobby until he left.

4. Don't be too polite all the time. I got to know the newspaper salesmen and homeless men in daylight. Not at 4am. Sometimes when I walk to work I have people pulling over to offer me a ride. 60% of the time it is a shady offer and I quickly refuse it. 30% of the time I think it is someone honestly concerned for me walking so early. 10% of the time it is someone asking a question. At 4am on a not so well lit street I am not polite. I don't walk over to the car to hear them better. I don't offer to show them. I curtly say I don't know, sorry, goodbye. There are times to be sweet and polite, but you need to know when those times are and when to just tell someone to go away. I happen to be a hitchhiker, but that doesn't mean that I would hop in every car that pulled over.

5. Be prepared. For all that is good and holy you should know the emergency contact number wherever you are. Before you learn "hello" in the language you should know their emergency contact number. When you walk keep your keys in one hand and your phone in the other.

Randoms:

• Watch them pour your drink or order a beer and watch them open it.
• If you do end up at knife or gun point and are asked for your wallet/purse throw it away from you and when they go for it run in the opposite direction
• Learn one really good phrase in the language of the place you are staying to get someone to leave you alone. The varies from culture to culture. In Dutch it was, "F*(# off Cancer Dick" in Arabic countries, "What if I was your sister" etc. Learn it well. Often if you are in a not so great situation them hearing something firmly in their own language will get you out of trouble.
• Don't get drunk! The vast majority of bad situations my friends have gotten into happened as they were leaving a bar (in fact both the stories above with men following me home happened out of a bar... luckily I was sober and they were not, so the odds were in my favor).
• You know how some bras have that removable padding? Take out the padding. Take a few bills (it should be enough for a taxi home if you are in your city or a bus ride home if you are in another city) and wrap them in toilet paper and put it in the padding's place. Now even if you do get pick pocketed (which I have a few times) you will have enough to get you where you need to be.
• Know your nation's rules and FOLLOW them.

I am sure there are a million more tips I could give you, but most of them boil down to, "Use your common sense and stay aware."

What about you? What tips do you use to stay safe when travelling or living abroad?

This is NOT a flippin' video

This commerical is always on TV in Mexico and I love it.

1. I love the song
2. It makes a good point about learning English
3. It is an AWESOME example of what NOT to use for a flipping video.

Why not?
1. It is too short
(there is no actual substance)
2. There is no explanation
(if a student didn't understand the repetition wouldn't assist them)
3. There are no visuals
(OK, I understand that it is a cassette, but just a friendly reminder to use visuals to stimulate your students!)
4. It isn't very dynamic
(Just explaining rules, or repeating a phrase is probably NOT the best route)

It just made me giggle and I was happy to see a relation with the new world of flipping classrooms I've just discovered.

The job

Check me out! I am all official with a door nameplate-y thing

So I am here now in Culiacan.

I am currently going through the books and materials that I have and making the syllabusses for my classes.

The boring details I teach 4 classes a week:

2 at the high school (one at 8:30-10:00 MWF, the other at 10:30-12:00 MWF)

The view from my office...the fountains look better in person

AND

2 at the college (one at 7:00-8:30 MWF, the other 3:00-4:30 MWF)

There’s a small grace period, where I take roll 5 minutes AFTER class starts and I let students out 5 minute earlier.

I need to be on campus from 8-1, and 4-6. However, I get 3 hours to play with so later I can decide to show up later Tuesdays and Thursdays, and maybe get off early on Fridays. I still need to play with the schedule, but it seems OK.

So this is University/High School teaching in Mexico...for now