LESSON	TEACHER	FULL LESSONS
1	D. Alexander	Navigating Homebuying
2	D. Alexander	Navigating Homebuying
3	D. Jarrat	Students Who Are Ready
4	S. Hanley	Using the Curriculum
5	D. Marquardt	Feeling at Home

1) A Critical Awareness by Dulany Alexander, Operation Bootstrap

 Once we were well into the money and financing part of the unit, the students responded to a reading/writing assignment about the myth that all Americans are wealthy. The excerpt reminds students that they learn about America through media images. The question asks students to reflect about whether or not this country is in fact as wealthy as it is portrayed and whether the student feels like he or she is "richer or poorer in the United States" than he/she was in his/her country. The assignment was taken from a textbook entitled Face to Face: Communication, Culture, and Collaboration (Sanger, Virgina Vogel, Heinle & Heinle, 1993):

Their writings contained insightful reflections on what they had come to realize about the value of money in both the United States and in their own countries. Their paragraphs also revealed so much about the role that money does, or doesn't play, in each of their personal value system.

As a class, we also looked at images of housing and wealth in the United States. This activity was inspired by the viewing of the movie El Norte and it prompted reflection and discussion about how American culture and its economy was portrayed in the mass media.

Students cut out pictures of house interiors from magazines and answered the following question: What did you think houses in the United States were like before you actually came here? Students captioned the pictures with the generalizations that might be drawn from them. The following are examples of their summaries: "It looks like all the houses are beautiful and have a big garden." "It looks like all the kitchens are big and neat." "There are fresh breads and a big refrigerator."

2) Decoding "Real Estate-ese" by Dulany Alexander, Operation Bootstrap

During this lesson, the students used a copy of the Suburban Real Estate News to familiarize themselves with listed house prices and the kinds of down payments that a given selling price would require. And for one of our final lessons, we viewed a videotape of the Lynn real estate cable channel. The students watched the video clip listening for selling features of the houses. They rewound the tape and listened, repeatedly to catch words and phrases. They helped each other interpret "real estate-ese" into English and they analyzed misleading and coded advertising.

3) Deciding How Much to Offer by Dwight Jarrat, ABCD's South Side Head Start

The final lesson in Unit 2, "Deciding how much to offer," from the FannieMae Foundation's ESOL curriculum, How to Buy A House in the United States gave students a chance to role-play negotiating an asking price. It is also raised the issue of the housing market, and how in today's market, more often than not, potential buyers did not have the luxury of offering anything much below the asking price. There was another heated discussion about the role of Realtors, and how, unless, you were working with a buyer's broker, the Realtor represented the seller. This conversation was brought on by one student's experience of being treated poorly by a Realtor who had placed her in a bidding war with another potential buyer. The asking price of the house kept rising and eventually the student walked away from the deal. The student ended up working with another Realtor but felt saddened because she had really liked and trusted the first Realtor. This story pointed to the need for caution and restraint when forming relationships with Realtors. Students who hadn't yet started their homebuying search felt lucky to have learned from this student's experience.

4) Decoding Real Estate Advertisements by Stephen Hanley, W.A.I.T.T. House

Students brought in real estate ads from newspapers and brochures and discussed abbreviated terms. Students also learned how to interpret the ads and develop a better understanding of what the seller was trying to convey, and how the seller might be portraying the property.

5) Developing Consumer Skills by Deborah Marquardt, W.A.I.T.T. House

We began to learn about consumer skills, competencies that students must be familiar with if they are to pass into the External Degree Program (EDP). Beginning with a graph of income ranges of first-time homebuying which we found on page four of the FannieMae Foundation's literacy curriculum, How to Buy Your Own Home, we reviewed the appropriate math terms and concepts. We also covered page five of the workbook which examined the steps for changing a percent to a decimal, following the book's example with board work practice using the problems from the text. Both of these math skills were new ones for the students, however they are able to follow the procedures and to correctly respond to additional problems presented. Although the math teacher covered percentages and decimals in much more detail later in the cycle, this kind of introduction to such an important math operation was very valuable because the students wanted the actual data in order to make a decision about something of significance in their lives- their housing possibilities.

Another important focus of the EDP's Consumer Awareness task is careful study of consumer contracts, such as credit card applications and rental leases. Unit Four of the FannieMae Foundation's How to Buy Your Own Home includes a section on interpreting product warranties. It served as an excellent introduction to consumer awareness. Students completed the "Comprehension Check" on page 95, and then together, we discussed the answers. Although there were some incorrect responses, the students who answered correctly took the lead in explaining why those responses were not accurate. We then moved on to preliminary work on the "Emergency Phone List" at the bottom of the same page. Students filled in the information using the phone book as a resource. Later in the cycle, when their research skills were more developed, students had another chance to revise this assignment.