Thanksgiving, Christmas and Cumbias

This is the first year in a very long time (or really, since I've been back in the states) that I've actually felt like decorating and celebrating.  I'm not up to making cookies yet, but it's progress.  We went home to Ohio for Thanksgiving and got to see friends and family, which was a welcome break from Baltimore. We must have listened to at least 5 hours of cumbias during the drive there, which helped set the mood, along with a nasty snowstorm in western Maryland on the way back.  We'll soon be off to Houston for a Salvadoran Christmas. 

I'm grateful for los buenos milagros that this year has brought, after a rather rough 2011.

North Carolina or Ohio?

After two and a half months, I finally have some choices to make.  ESL in Ohio or Spanish in North Carolina?  Neither job is at the university level, which in the end I think is okay, since the uni positions don't seem to pay much, have any benefits, or be in decent places to live.  I would really like to stick with ESL, but here's the problem...

North Carolina is MUCH more organized when it comes to teaching in public schools.  In Ohio, I've spent the WHOLE time I've been back trying to figure out what I need to do to teach here.  It's a pain and $$$$, to say the least.  So if I go with the place in NC, I automatically get a lateral entry license and they lead me through the process of what classes I would need to take.  The school would pay for the first 6 semester hours, and the rest would be reduced tuition.  This is great, since NC is WAAAAAAY cheaper than Ohio anyways!  I might even be able to get some of my teaching experience to count.  And, to top it all off, the school has TEACHER HOUSING!  So, I'd get to live in a new apartment complex, only with other teachers. 

And for Ohio.  UC took way too long to tell me how to even take classes again.  Each three quarter hour course is $618, and I would need to take at least 6 of those (around $4,000 for 18 quarter hours) to get the coursework that the Ohio Dept. of Education says I need for the alternative license.  If I listen to UC, I would have to take 27 quarter hours, plus 6 more of ESL K-12 methods for the endorsement.  And, the school doesn't seem to understand what alternative licensure is.  I could be on sub pay for a long time (although I have to clear this up).  And I don't know how much I would make, and I'd have to live in the Nati again, even though I love the area and students I'd get to work with. 

At either place (although not sure this applies if I'm a sub all year) I can get my Stafford loans paid off, something like $5,000 for every year that I work, up to $17,500.  That's awesome!  But honestly, I'm not sure that I trust UC, or Ohio.  In NC, it's warmer, way close to the beach and DC, and they know what they're doing.  Sigh, decisions. 

On Applying to Teach For America and Alternative Licensure

In today's NY Times, there's an opinion article  discussing teacher education programs and the relationship between teacher pay and performance (Room for Debate: Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?, http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/education-degrees-and-teachers-pay/ ).
In my job search, I've applied to universities mostly, but I've been thinking about teaching at public schools.  When I was working on my M.Ed. in Teaching ESL, I was sure that I would never want to teach in a public school, let alone work with youth. Four years abroad working with teens and public school teachers changed my mind.  I don't know how many times I've looked at the Teach For America website, and then decided not to apply, including this year.  But according to the Ohio Department of Education, there's no path for me to alternative licensure without being hired by a school district first.  I have all the content and methods classes I need for both Spanish and ESL (and probably technology, too, even though I didn't have them look at that).  I just need to take the Praxis for both areas which I'm planning to do in September, and 12 semester hours more of classes.  I'm looking for a new challenge and new experiences, and really, for some stability. 

But, a job. I could live at home, substitute teach, and see if something works out.  However, I have no desire to live in northwest Ohio, or even in Ohio.  I could go back to UC full-time and pay out of my pocket for more than a year of classes in education, but seriously, I'll be paying for my undergraduate education for years to come and don't need to add more loans on top of that than I have to.  This is where Teach For America starts to look good.  Yes, I'm already an educator, but not a public school educator.  I would love to live in many of the regions of the country that they're in, and be closer to universities that I could (and actually want) to do my doctorate at in the future.  I've been applying to schools in North Carolina (highly recommended by various VIF program teachers who worked there and loved it) hoping to be able to find one that would accept me through lateral entry, but I think it's the wrong time of year.  I know that T.F.A. has a lot of skeptics, some of who managed to dissuade me from applying before, but in the end I think it could be a good option for me.  

 

Going back to the article, it mentions that the director of teacher education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education said that of the nation’s 1,300 graduate teacher training programs, only about 100 were doing a competent job and “the others could be shut down tomorrow.” The first year I was in El Salvador, I went to visit one of the other fellows that was in Xela, Guatemala and to present at a conference there.  She had done her Master's at Monterey Institute of International Studies, and two of her professors were also visiting for the same conference.  I'd always known that my Master's program wasn't everything that it should have been, but listening to my colleague and these professors, both well-known in the field of TESOL, talk about the good ole time at Monterey, my fears were confirmed.  That was also about the time that I decided that a doctorate was for me, but that I needed to choose carefully. 

There's so many things that I would like to do, and that I wished I had planned for, but now I know.  I had imagined another year in Colombia, but being back here has opened my eyes. I'll keep trying, and when it happens, it happens!

Summer in Ohio

Playing around with my new camera in the backyard.

2 Weeks Back

After two weeks, I've had four interviews with universities and was invited to have a second interview with one of them.  I've filled out more job applications than I can count (why, US universities, do you all use the same system, but force us humble job applicants to enter the same information over and over and over).  I even applied for a job back in Bogota, although I doubt anything will come of it.  I've spent some quality time trying to find out what I would have to do to get my teaching license in Ohio (not easy, even though I already have a Master's in TESL and the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in Spanish) and how much money I would have to spend to do this (too much).  I also figured out that there are indeed other states where I could move and get a public school teaching job fairly easily (North Carolina, for example, which I need to find out more about). I wrote countless essays for a short-term Peace Corps TEFL training position, and re-examined what I'd have to do to join the foreign service (not yet, that's more in the long-term plan for me).  I'm trying to figure out how to write a proposal for research that I think should be held at an ivy-league school (so out of my league, but it'd be a great learning experience) and how I can videotape myself teaching pronunciation now that I have no students and am semi-stuck in rural Ohio during everyone's summer vacation (teaching portfolio at http://erin.lowry.googlepages.com). 

There are so many things that I'd forgotten about, like peach cobbler, root beer floats, and watering the plants.  There's also a lot of things that you can't do without a job, like get a cell phone plan and buy a car (if you want loans). The first time I walked into Wal-mart, I literally felt sick to my stomach.  It's so easy to get and accumulate "things" here, something I want to try to avoid if possible.  I finally cleaned out the boxes that held all of my notes and papers from undergrad, which ended up being easier to part with than I thought it would.  I've spent a lot of time talking to friends back in Colombia and El Salvador, along with some here.  I think the shock of being back here might have been easier being in Cincinnati, so that at least I would have been in a city as opposed to a cornfield.  Hopefully I'll find out early this week if I'm going to get one of these uni jobs, and will have a couple of days to run down to El Salvador to see my husband and collect my cat.  Still no news on his visa, but the application should be in San Sal by now. 

More of my comments on volunteering abroad

I got an email a while back from the University of Cincinnati about alternative spring break trips they have going on this year.  I went on one of these when I was doing my Master's, to Reynosa, Mexcio.  We were helping build dorms and church roofs with a church right across the boarder from McAllen.  It was undoubtedly one of the worst travel experiences I've ever had.  I'd lived in Mexico before I went on this trip, and knew what to expect.  Most of us had little to no experience working at a construction site, and I was the only one who spoke Spanish fluently.  We ate peanut butter and jelly (note: most people I've met in Latin America have a strange aversion to peanut butter).  We brought all the food, or ate at malls.  We didn't really go out in Reynosa.  We went to Monterrey and Saltillo, but didn't spend much time there.  We went to a cave.  It was Mexico, minus Mexican culture, language, food, everything there is to love about the country and its people.  The only thing worse I've seen is Cancun, which might as well be Florida at this point. 

So, this year they're also going to El Salvador, to La Libertad.  They're paying $1,200 and staying a week.  I'm familiar with the projects they working on.  I don't disagree that there's a need, and that it's good for people to get to know El Sal.  But how far could that $1,200 go if it were just donated?  And how much of this do we do just to feel good about ourselves and to get to go to the beach? I hope they don't have matching t-shirts. I hope they learn some Spanish.  I hope some of them go back and stay, not for vacation, but to live, to work, to really get to know the place.  And please, I hope someone tells them that undercurrents and jellyfish are a real thing, and that the beach isn't necessarily safe. 

Here's a portion of the mail.  Like I said, I understand why people go on these trips, but in the long-run...

The UC student organization Serve Beyond Cincinnati is organizing three trips. Serve Beyond Cincinnati (SBC) strives to build an emerging, civic-minded generation by providing national and international service experiences for UC students. All trips depart Cincinnati on March 20 and return on March 28.


La Libertad, El Salvador – Thirteen UC students will represent SBC as they join the Fuller Center for Housing’s 100 House Village Project. The project provides secure homes for families in need. Each of the students has raised $1,200 to cover their cost of the trip.

Reynosa, Mexico – Ten student members of SBC will travel to northern Mexico to assist in construction projects ranging from building homes and school buildings to building bathrooms and cultivating gardens. The cost of the trip per student is $1,100.

Minden, La. – Nine students will assist families in Louisiana as they help build and refurbish homes and assist with other projects. The cost of the trip per student is $300.

Things I'm Thankful For

I ran across this article, Too Many Innocents Abroad, when I was reading the Times this morning.  It reminded me of why I chose to do AmeriCorps instead of Peace Corps. 

In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad’s backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma’s cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I’m pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch of hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.

When Peace Corps finally offered me a position as a volunteer in 2003, it was working with agriculture in South America.  Not only did I have no interest in this (or much knowledge), I knew that as a female in Bolivia or whever it was that they wanted to send me, I would have little to no impact.  I'd already lived in Mexico by then, and remember thinking what a waste it would be for me to do that job.

This lack of organizational introspection allows the agency to continue sending, for example, unqualified volunteers to teach English when nearly every developing country could easily find high-caliber English teachers among its own population. Even after Cameroonian teachers and education officials ranked English instruction as their lowest priority (after help with computer literacy, math and science, for example), headquarters in Washington continued to send trainees with little or no classroom experience to teach English in Cameroonian schools. One volunteer told me that the only possible reason he could think of for having been selected was that he was a native English speaker.

This is one of my arguments now.  I gave several trainings for incoming and in-service PCVs in El Salvador, many of which would end up teaching English. Because of the 2021 bilingual plan in the public schools, there was a huge need for teachers to learn more of the language, but there was no country-wide plan that I ever saw.  I did meet volunteers who did excellent jobs of working with this, but they were usually a little bit older, or in a Master's international program.  Here in Manizales, they want to bring native speakers to be in the schools, but their teachers should come first.  It may take several years to bring them all to the level of language and methodology that they need, but I've met some excellent, excellent public school teachers here.  Sometimes I feel like it's degrading to my own career...if all you have to be is a native speaker to teach English, then why did I get my Master's and why do have to be certified in the U.S. to teach (it's not like this everywhere here, I'm more reacting to what I've seen going on in Central America with Peace Corps and English language teaching).  

I could work at a newspaper, too

This is our wedding announcement that ran in the Findlay Courier today. See my comments in red, like a good little teacher. I'm highly amused, even though I know my mom just made up some of it because they wanted that information.

Lowry-Vasques Vasques is not my husband's last name, Lopez is. Vasquezzzzzzzzzz is the second last name. But hey, they got my last name right, which was more than the San Salvador alcaldia could do in a month.

Erin Kay Lowry, of Manizales, Colombia (I'm most definitely not Colombian, and even more definitely NOT paisa), and Edwin Vladimir Lopez Vasques, of San Salvador, El Salvador were married Nov. 10 (we were married November 8, and then that was the religous wedding; we were actually married civilly June 21) at Ranco (Rancho, hello, like ranch) Estero y Mar in the department of La Paz, El Pimental Beach.

The officiants were Joses David Ramirez and Gregory Hunt.

A reception followed.

The bride's maid of honor was Consuelo Rivas. Best man was Josue Arevalo.

The bride wore an off-the-shoulder satin (I was wearing satin??) dress covered with pleated organza. She carried a bouquet of tropical flowers.

The bride is the daughter of Darrell and Linda Lowry of Bluffton. A graduate of Cory-Rawson High School, she studied informational systems (capitalize please) and Spanish at the University of Cincinnati as an undergraduate and received a master's (capitalize please) degree in English as a second language(not sure when native speakers of English study their own language as a second language, but okay). She is employed at the English Language Fellowship (Fellow) Program.

The groom is the son of Blanco Angelica Vasques of San Salvador, El Salvador. He received a bachelor's (capitalize please) degree in business administration (capitalize please) from the Universidad Politecnica de El Salvador and is employed in the customs department of the government of El Salvador.

The couple traveled to Roatan, Honduras on their honeymoon. They will live in Central America. (this is quite frankly news to me!)


Note: This is also why I read the Times and watch BBC in the morning unless I want to know how the Buckeyes are doing.

Thinking back...Lower Price Hill and Sister Marie

I had the pleasure of living with Sister Marie Werdmann at 2108 Hatmaker during the year I worked as an AmeriCorps volunteer at LPHCS. Before that time in my life, I don't think I'd ever even talked to a nun, let alone dream of living with one. I've learned much from Sister Marie in the little time that I've known her.

I remember her telling me her dream of turning the front room of the house into a small cafe, a quiet place for the women in the neighborhood to come relax and find some peace in their hectic lives. She was at meetings and community events continuously, or out visiting neighbors, students, and friends to see how they were doing. I often wondered how, at twenty-four, I couldn't keep up with her!

Sister Marie helped teach me what it means to serve others. We spent a lot of time that year in the back yard, taking care of the garden and the flowers. She was never upset when the crows ate all the veggies or kids would borrow the tomatoes.

Sister, you'll be missed in Lower Price Hill, but know that your many works and love have left a permanent mark on me and others whose lives you have touched.

Up Next?

I'm back in Ohio for the time being, and what changes are up ahead! At least I think so... I got an email from the ELF program (organized through Georgetown University and the U.S. Department of State) saying that I've been offered a job in El Salvador with the Centro Cultural Salvadoreño on Tuesday. It was completely unexpected and it's been hard trying to decide what to do. I've already said that I would go back to Barranquilla for another year. So much for making plans, je je! I left a lot of my things there, bought my plane ticket back to Bogotá, made my appointment with the consulate; in short, I've prepared myself mentally to go back and am actually looking forward to it. But this job offer is one that I shouldn't turn down. There's an enormous amount of room to use my experiences in the work there, as well as abundant learning opportunities for me. They gave me a little over two days to decide whether or not I want the position. Speaking to two lovely women that work with the program today made me feel much better, as well as all of my friends and family who told me to go for it. It's just hard to have in your mind that you're going one place and then to all of the sudden be going somewhere else, somewhere that you don't know a lot about and where you know no one. I'm becoming accustomed to the idea, however, and I think that in the end, it will be a wonderful experience! I'll have to change the name of the blog, though.

I can't say that El Salvador has ever been on my list of countries to visit, even though I know it has a lot to offer, but then again, neither was Colombia. And here I am, wanting to go back. I'm not sure I'm ready to live through that complete period of culture shock again, to make friends again, to learn the ins and outs of a culture. In a year in Barranquilla I didn't come close to accomplishing any of this. But as my wise Canadian roommate said before she left in April, "you want to come back here?" Yes, I do. Why, not sure yet. I'm ready to not move every year, let alone every 5 months, which is what will happen with the ELF job. One reason that Barranquilla is sounding good. Even my month at home has been hard. I'm feeling restless, wanting to be in my own place. I've been going all over the place, though, since I've been home, which doesn't help much. Various parts of Ohio, Missouri, to Chicago in a couple of days to go back to Colombia. Will it be to stay? I have to decide by tomorrow afternoon.

Good things that happened today, as I'm not sure yet whether all of this is good or bad or what: found out that bloguear is a verb!

The BIG J in Ohio

Check out the New York Times article on Monroe, Ohio's gigantic plaster Jesus! It's not exactly what you expect to see on the side of interstate 75. I wonder, has the number of accidents gone up since Solid Rock built this? Very Ohio, very Bible belt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/national/17statue.html?hp You might need to sign up on the Times website to read the article.