Nogales

I made it to Nogales and back on Tuesday. I was gone for about 6 hours on that adventure, which was longer than I thought! I met the group at 3:40 and we got back after 9. By the time I picked Mark up from school (he had a rehearsal) and got home, it was almost 10. That made for a very long day. Besides the transportation time, though, I enjoyed going down. I observed a pronunciation class taught by a recent grad from the EL/L program. Mark and I had met her when we came out for his audition, and talked to her a little bit at the beginning of the semester party, so it was nice to see her again. Also, she's basically come through the program and been able to get the kind of job I'm interested in, so it was good to talk to her about that. The class was about 20 adult students, mostly professionals who are taking the course because their jobs require it. They were advanced students, and it seemed like they were doing really well. The teacher did some very cool activities. I think it's kind of hard to teach pronunciation for 2 hours straight, but she did a great job keeping the class moving along. The other really interesting thing about the whole experience was just being in the van with all the other teachers--it was like a mobile teachers' lounge. So they discussed what they did over the weekend, new teaching materials they'd found, politics, and, of course, they gossiped about the students and other teachers at CESL. It was probably good for me to hear how the actual teachers feel about CESL instead of only hearing the official info about the program. Not that they said anything bad, but it was probably a little more realistic picture of the program, from the inside out. So, it was worth going, but I don't know if I'll do it again, because of the time. I think the program is a good idea, but it doesn't seem practical for the teachers to spend more time in the car than in the classroom!