Project SHINE Field Note - Oct 21 2005

Anth 142
Field Notes @ John XXIII
9:00am – 11:00am
21 October 2005
ESL/Citizenship materials:
SHINE packet
Oxford Pocket English Dictionary
The information I wrote down from the citizenship preparation books
Citizenship materials printed out from the internet
Word by Word English Picture Dictionary
Teaching method:
I brought both ESL and citizenship preparation materials, and I would decide what to do in the session, since I was not sure which material they needed.
Description:
I was nervous going to the site. When I parked my car in the garage, I really thought to skip attending it. I just thought skipping one time and let Sarah know I am really not interested teaching anything to Chinese elderly people. I felt it would be nice to study in the library in front of the garage instead talking to Chinese people. Somehow, I decided to attend, and went to the building. It was about 9:10am when I arrived at the second floor. When I was signing my name on the SHINE sheet, Mr. Liu came and said hello. I was not sure why he came, so I said hello and made a little apologize of being late, then I continued to finish the SHINE binder stuff. Then the tall Chinese elderly man from previous session came and greeted. He said he was ready, and asked me to join him in the next room. So, I followed him and found two other people, Asian man and woman in probably 50s or 60s, sat in the same sheet. This time I knew everyone was focused on citizenship, so I tried to start the session as soon as possible. There were two more sessions were going on in the room. One was the White male who always came on Fridays and I have seen him quite awhile when I was doing my session. Hearing his teaching, I thought he was there to teach citizenship preparation only. And I noticed he had a handy (1mX1.5m size?) American flag with his belongings. It seemed he is doing a routine work – he has own 2hour session curriculum to teach. MTM: he seemed a regular volunteer teaching the same material and have a same teaching method for his teaching. This time, I brought my own material, one paper with US government information that I copied the information from the citizenship preparation book in the library on Thursday night. It was a hard day since I was in the library till 11:45pm for studying. So, we started the session with my material. We covered how congress works and some basic understandings about president, vice president, civil war, and white house. There were three people, so I asked one question to each person, and explained about that. About 11:30pm, the Chinese tall guy from the previous class said that he needed to go to see his doctor and he left. So, three of us continued to finish another 30 minutes. About noon, I was not sure what time it was since the clock on the wall was showing 4:30, I remembered to get a survey and asked the man. They asked me about the survey, and I explained them that it is for my school project and to improve the service in future. First he hesitated, but later he agreed to finish as the woman encouraged him to participate it. Then the man who asked me to check out the dictionary came to the table, I explained him that it was out of print and I could not find it anywhere in south Bay bookstore. It was true that when I looked for it on Borders Bookstore website, it said the book is out of print and I could not find one in store inventory around Silicon Valley. Instead, I showed him my “Word by Word” dictionary which is Japanese version and told him that he could find this type of dictionary easier as I knew it is a popular dictionary and easy to find in any bookstores. Then he said “Japanese, huh?” and thanked me for looking for it and left.