Meeting with Dolores #2

By the end of our 12 meetings, I project that Dolores will be able to read the Star Telegram without my coaching. I was about 5 minutes late to this meeting, which was again located in the downstairs of the rec center. On my way there I decided to take one of the tips that Lucia told us about so I grabbed a newspaper on my way out the dorm. Dolores was already down stairs waiting for me. She told me that on her breaks at work was when she studied what we went over, and she proceeded to show me the green notebook she had from last week. I was impressed and surprised to find she had written numerous times the various words we went over last week, such as "vending machines" and "fire extinguisher."

The first story in the Star Telegram was about a woman who had died in Tarrant County Jail because she needed antibiotics she never recieved. As Dolores began reading aloud, she asked me how to pronounce every-other word. I think she would have done fine with out me, but just needed some reassurance. Unlike me, she had to think about the words in each sentence before she knew what the sentence meant. At first she didn't realize that we were reading about someone who had died. I now know why Lucia gave us the "ESL" magazines. Sometimes, she had trouble distinguishing a name from a noun. At times, I learn some Spanish from her. I also brought a sheet I printed from the internet that had irregular English verbs. She commented that English is hard to learn because of these irregularities. I didn't feel comfortable going over these words because she would ask me what the difference between the past participle and another past tense verb is, and I wouldn't know how to explain it. I just know that it comes naturally to my head when I need to use the words. She was happy, though, about this list, and wanted to keep it. "Of course," I said.

This meeting went by before I knew it. Because I have a class beginning at 10 AM, I have to leave our meetings at 9:50 to ensure that I make it to Smith Hall on time. I would suggest that we make our meetings closer to my class, but at 11 AM, Dolores meets with Omir. I find it easy to understand the frustration Dolores encounters, because my 10AM class is French!

Meeting with Dolores #1

I am kind of reluctant to tutor the same person as Omir because he has an upper hand: we are tutoring Spanish speaking individuals and he speaks Spanish. I didn't want Dolores to say that she wished he was her only tutor because he can better explain what he's talking about in Spanish, if need be. But my fears subsided after the first meeting, which I thought was productive. Also my mom is an ESL teacher at a middle school who isn't fluent in Spanish. For 7 years, she's gotten up and gone to work. I thought, too, that she's here to speak English and not Spanish.

When I first went to the downstairs of the Rec Center, there was only one white guy there, and he didn't look like he needed help with English, let alone someone named Dolores. Up the stairs and around the corner there was a program I'm in called Student Support Services (SSS) in which I get access to the computers and printers. I decided to go up there and print of my outline for speech class, which I originally planned on doing after my meeting. I didn't really have a direction in mind as to what we would do that day. I thought that we would meet, get to know eachother, and I would ask her for future references what she wanted to learn. After I went back downstairs, I sat next to the pool tables and about 5 minutes later, a man wearing a physical plant shirt was escorting a Hispanic woman in a brown blouse. I figured this was Dolores.

First, we just introduced ourselves. I told her that this was a service learning project for my English class and we are being paired up with people from the Physical Plant in order to help them with their English. I assured her that although I am fluent in English, I am by no means an expert teacher. Then she told me that she has 4 sons at home, one of whom goes to TCU. That day, the 5, 7, and 15 year olds happened to have no school, and so they were at home without her. My meeting with her began at 9 and Omir was meeting with her the same day at 11, meaning that she would have an hour gap doing nothing. I would have gladly switched my meeting time to 10, had I not had French class then. Since I didn't have Omir's number, we went to the computers at SSS and I accessed frogcalls my.tcu.edu. We couldn't get a hold of him, so she decided that day she would just have to wait. As we were walking around, I would ask her if she knew some random words we saw, such as "Recreational Center." I had to explain that "Rec Center" was short for "Recreational Center." I didn't really know how to explain what goes on there. I said something along the lines of "a building people gather where there are alot of activities going on, which is usually has something to do with sports." She kept telling me that her son told here that she's not bad at English, but she just needs to practice more. I thought this too; she just needs more confidence. In the green spiral notebook that she brought, she would ask me to write down some words that I was saying, such as "vending machines." She couldn't quite get the "V" sound out and said "Bending machines" instead. Towards the end of the meeting, I broke up in syllables the words I had written down. That helped her to pronounce them better. The next meeting, I told her I would bring a dictionary or something of that sort, that we could go over. After I finish with this blog, I'm going to look at http://www.eslcafe.com/ to see what I can find.

The street I grew up on

The street I grew up on is perfect for walking dogs. And that's convenient because we have two dogs. It's also perfect for walking in general. If you can imagine the outdoor tracks that you used to have in high school, with the grassy field in the middle but with houses lining the exterior and backyards on the interior, then you can imagine the street I grew up on. We moved there in December of 1998 and though it was just to the other side of the "Meadowbrook area," it was supposed to be a better area for us kids to live. No "ladies of the night" walking the streets at night, no drugies living across the street from you, and no fear of being harmed when going outside unsupervised. The only harm you could be afraid to acquire is a tree branch falling on you from the large oaks that tower over the houses.

There were only old people and other kids that were our age. When I say that I've never dealt with kids it's because on my street, all of us "kids" on the street grew up together. Eventually, they all moved away and it was just my brother, sister and me. I almost forgot to mention, there is a golf course across the street. I'm not going to tell you that we've snuck in someones backyard and onto the golf course at night, because that would be admitting to trespassing, on two different properties. But I will say that we got the occasional golf ball in our front yard.

Living on my street has made me a very open minded person--first there is my parents, who have an interracial marriage. Then are some gay/lesbian couples, a hispanic couple, some black couples, white couples, old couples, a super-religious couple, singles, widows, and divorcees. Though none of us have huge mansions, I don't wish I grew up in a "richer" neighborhood. All except 2 are one story. Ours is the biggest and oldest on the street, with about two acres of St. Augustine grass and a red bricked house on top. The rest are about 1 and a half acres and multitudes of different painting styles. Some bricked, some painted, some red, some beige and some yellow. I love the community aspect of my neighborhood. I especially like the fact that when one of our naughty yellow haired mutts finds a way to runaway, someone will always bring them back to our front door, because they knew who they belonged to.