1) What Is A Home? by Marie Hassett, ABCD's LearningWorks

Vocabulary:

• Continent
• Country
• State/Province
• City, Town, Village
• Urban, Suburban, Rural

• Robert Frost, excerpt from "Death of Hired Man"

• Natalie Goldberg, "Home"

• Scott Russell Sanders

• What does it mean to "feel at home"?
• What kinds of people, places, and/or things make us "feel at home"?
• What makes the place where you live a home?
• What do you think of when you think of your home?

Describe the place that has been most homelike to you.
 
 

2) The Right Home by Victoria Natalie, Bunker Hill Community College

We began the class by reading Unit 2/Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 in the FannieMae Foundation's ESOL Curriculum, How to Buy a Home in the United States. These chapters, entitled. "Deciding what you want," and "How to find the right home," ask students to think about what kind of house they might want and help them learn about how to go about finding it.

For the next activity, I began with a brief explanation of some of the more popular housing advertisement abbreviations. And then, after our reading and discussion of the two chapters, in pairs, students read through The Boston Globe, The Chelsea Record, The Revere Journal, and various real estate listing pamphlets. Students were asked to note examples of factual reporting, exaggeration, false statements and coded, unwritten meanings. After students reported back their findings, and misleading advertising was discussed, the entire class brain stormed ways to begin viewing homes for sale and apartments for rent.

To complete the lesson, one student who was an architect in his native country, presented a visual display of various kinds of houses. Students really enjoyed this presentation, sometimes asking him architectural questions in Spanish such as: Why are there basements in the United States? What does "handicap accessible" mean? What are the different kinds of building materials used in New England and how do New England weather considerations dictate choices of which materials to use?
 
 

3) Community by M.J. Natalie, Bunker Hill Community College

Because I wanted the students to have a sense of the history of this particular town/neighborhood, which was now theirs, we participated in a tour of a local historic buildings and houses, and viewed a video recording one episode of the PBS program La Plaza. For its 20th anniversary, La Plaza, dedicated to creating a cultural and intellectual forum for Latino/a life, came to Chelsea. Among other things, La Plaza's visit to Chelsea documented how community involvement can change the real conditions of people's neighborhoods. We also discussed possible volunteer work that students could participate in as they sought paid work. We brain stormed possible venues for their volunteerism such as Little League coaching, and visits to nursing homes. The students were encouraged and inspired by these ideas of care taking and serving which led us to the next set of learning activities.

After discussing issues of home maintenance and repair, we turned our attention to the environment in which we were learning- the grounds of Revere's Jewish Community Center. So, for class, we swept and raked the grounds of the J.C.C, then planted flower seeds reflecting on how it made us feel to be "cleaning up and beautifying" our neighborhood and learning new vocabulary all the while. Students wanted to do even more. So we sought out a local community garden and students were given the extra seed packets to plant in community garden plots or in flower boxes at home.

For our final class on care taking, we explored pet care. Josephine, a friend's dachshund, came to visit and we both practiced caring for her (petting her, brushing her, feeding her, walking her) and discussed what kind of environment a house pet would need to live in. We agreed that once a person has his/her own house, they can not only have a pet of their own, but outside space, and whatever he or she dreams of.
 
 

4) Finding Affordable Housing by Nancy Coffey, Operation Bootstrap

During three lessons, we used a regular weekly real estate flyer. In the first lesson student teams were assigned a fictionalized individual or family with particular housing needs and charged with finding them a house that met their requirements and was in their price range.
 
 

5) What's in Your Neighborhood? by Ashley Dumas, Project Hope

I asked the students to pair up and interview each other about where they currently live. I provided the following ten interview questions and had the students brainstorm ten more.

MY QUESTIONS:

STUDENTS' QUESTIONS:

During their interviews, they took notes about their partners, and then shared their findings with the whole class. The students enjoyed this listening and speaking exercise a lot. I was intrigued that many of their questions had to do with safety (living in a safe neighborhood, having police patrol their streets, having a trustworthy landlord, etc.).

Then the students brain stormed what places are in a neighborhood. I started the list with a few of my own ideas (grocery stores, parks, and churches), and had them finish the list with their own ideas. When we compared ideas, the students were surprised to hear how similar their lists were. I was touched that many students included homeless shelters or Project Hope on their lists. Next, I had them write a paragraph about a neighborhood where they have lived, or about the neighborhood that they currently live in.
 
 

6) Notions of Home by Lisa Garrone, ABCD's South Side Head Start

After I explained the meanings of "Advantages and Disadvantages," the class generated a list of the pros and cons of home ownership. I was surprised that the advantages didn't outweigh the disadvantages:

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

At this point, I broadened the concept of home to include neighborhood. I emphasized the difference between neighbor and neighborhood, although some students still confuse the two. I asked the class, "What's in a neighborhood?" This is the list students generated:
 
 

people health center apartments church

houses beauty salon trees dry cleaner subway

yards convenience store library playground

school dogs and cats park funeral home fire station

market bakery Laundromat police station

gas station office building bus stop restaurant

I asked students to choose fifteen items on this list that represented the most important to have in a neighborhood (see items in bold). Of course, everyone did not agree and some interesting arguments ensued. The Haitian, Latina, and Lebanese students all felt that it's very important to have a church in the neighborhood. This met strong opposition from an Albanian student who said she doesn't care about a church because she is from a communist country. A Haitian man responded, "It's very important. Sometimes when you have a problem and you can go to church, it helps you to change your mind." We resolved this by coming to the conclusion that what's important to one person is not important to another.

Each of the chosen neighborhood elements revealed something about the person who selected it. The man who chose yards and trees had been a farmer and now it is important for him to have enough land to grow some tomatoes. The couple who chose dry cleaner both worked as pressers at a dry cleaner. When asked why it was important to have houses and not apartments in a neighborhood, a student explained that there are too many people living in apartment buildings and that would make the neighborhood crowded.

I questioned who they wanted for people (neighbors) living near them. This revealed that a few students had lived next door to or downstairs from neighbors who were constantly fighting and had police called on them nearly every night. All students agreed on the importance of good neighbors. This was quite apparent in their journals where they wrote about what they liked and disliked in their neighborhoods here and in their home countries.
 
 

7) The Neighborhood as One Criteria by Deborah Schwartz

The following lesson was designed for Mid- Advanced Level ESOL students:

Rosa and Manuel have begun their search for a house. Rosa knows that she wants to live somewhere she feels safe and that it is also important that their new neighborhood have good schools and Spanish markets. Even though Manuel is a little worried about what they can afford, he knows that he wants to live close to the train or bus so that he doesn't have to rely on a car to get to work.

What do Rosa and Manuel want in a neighborhood?

What are their neighborhood standards or criteria?
 
 

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.
 
 

________________________________________________________________________

Interview a classmate:
 
 

What’s in your neighborhood?
 
 
 
 
 
 

What isn't?
 
 
 
 
 
 

Examples:

It's quiet in my neighborhood.

I know the people in my neighborhood and can rely on them.

There is a good school and a church in my neighborhood.

________________________________________________________________________
 
 

As a pair, agree on the top three neighborhood criteria.
 
 

Try to convince the pair next to you.
 
 

Try to reach consensus as a class about the top three neighborhood criteria.

________________________________________________________________________

8) Neighborhood Criteria for Homebuying by Deborah Schwartz

The following lesson is designed for Beginning Level ESOL students

TEACHER:

Post enlarged map(s) of the neighborhood where the students live and where the school is located.

If students live in the same neighborhood as the school, pass out photocopied maps of the school-neighborhood to each student.

If students live in different neighborhoods, pass out maps that correspond to each student's neighborhood.

STUDENTS:

Find where you live on the map.

Interview the person next to you and find where they live.

Give each other directions from class to your homes and share this with whole class.

As a class, brainstorm a list of things that are in your neighborhood.

Begin with who and what is next to you, on your block, across the street, or near by.

TEACHER:

Group students together from the same neighborhood or block

Pass out three blank note cards to each pair of students.
 
 

STUDENTS:

As a team, choose three important people, places or things from your neighborhood.

Draw and label one per note card.

Post each note card on the large map of the area at the front of the class explaining why you chose this person, place or thing and where it is located.

CLASS DISCUSSION:

What's in my/our neighborhood?

What's not in my/our neighborhood?

Would we want to buy a house in this neighborhood? Why and/or why not?