LESSON	TEACHER	FULL LESSONS
1	V. Natalie	Homebuying/ Home Care
2	S. Rieman	What We Brought
3	D. Schwartz	Lessons from the ALRI

 

1) Maintaining Property by Victoria Natalie, Bunker Hill Community College

The purpose of this lesson was to introduce the concept of home ownership and to explore the many responsibilities that are implicit in being a homeowner. During this class, I introduced the FannieMae Foundation's ESOL curriculum, How to Buy a Home in the United States. First the class read and discussed Unit 1/Chapter 1, "This apartment is too small" and Unit 4/Chapter 1, "Protecting and maintaining your home" After reading the above units, the students drew their homes that they had once lived in. They shared views about where they had come from and what they aspired toward, constantly referring back to the pictures they had drawn. Eventually the conversation turned toward the students' feelings of homesickness and how much time they had spent outdoors in their native countries- on porches, in yards, gardens and farms. I had planned to introduce the idea of caretaking and maintaining property by having students plant vegetable and flower seeds. Their reflections on the outdoors and nature were a perfect transition into that activity.

The seed packets were handed out in class. The students read the planting directions on the back of the packet while they discussed their desire to create positive and beautiful surroundings in their homes and neighborhoods. Using the Revere, Chelsea and Boston telephone books, the students looked up the phone numbers and addresses for various community gardens. Later, they called for information and orientation dates

After the planting and community garden activity, students compared the different kinds of homes in their native county and in the United States, and went on to compare the different kinds of maintenance responsibilities. For homework, students were asked to list all the repairs they were capable of doing and sources to find reliable professionals (i.e. better business bureau, the Help Wanted section of the Boston Globe, Union lists, etc.)
 
 

2) Leaving One's Country by Shelly Rieman, El Centro del Cardenal

I turned the discussion to the experience of leaving one's country to come to the United States, and the conflicting feelings that sometimes occur. We discussed which country people consider "home" and if that changes over time. Are people here purely by choice, or by economic and other necessity?

We then explored two children's books about people who fled to the U.S. because of war and repression in their native land. In the Lotus Seed (written by Sherry Garland and illustrated by Tatsuro Kiuchi. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. New York. 1993), a woman flees Vietnam and brings a lotus seed to remember her home. In How Many Days to America? (written by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Beth Peck. Houghton Mifflin. New York. 1988), a family flees an unnamed country, bringing with them only a song of hope. After reading these stories out loud, I asked students to imagine that they had to flee from their homes with just a few minutes warning. "What would you take with you," I asked. I wrote the items on the blackboard as they called them out. Their items included photo albums, food, money, credit cards, identification documents, clothes, medicine, water, blankets, pillow and pets. Then we went down the list by two's, choosing only one item. For instance, when asked to choose between photo albums and food, the students choose food. Then they were asked if they would choose food or money, and once again, food was chosen. In the end, with just one choice left, the class chose water. Earlier, I had done this activity with a group of high-school students who had a somewhat different list, but the process of elimination resulted with the same final choice- water. Following this lesson, we had a discussion about living here and missing "home."
 
 

3) Revisiting Your First Home by Deborah Schwartz, Adult Literacy Resource Institute

PART ONE

This is a pre-writing activity to be done without pen or paper. It is adapted from a writing exercise designed by teacher and poet Mark Doty.

Ask your students to close their eyes and picture walking through the first house they every lived in.

Tell them this, or something like this: "If you cannot remember the first house you ever lived in, be content to imagine the first house you do remember. Or perhaps, the house you live in now is the only house you ever lived in. What ever the circumstances, you are going to imagine slowly walking through each room and looking carefully at each detail in that room."

"First enter the front or side or back door. Do you have a key? Is the door open? Are there smells of cooking or food coming from the kitchen? The sound of a t.v. or radio? What or who greets you as you walk through the front door. And where do you end up once you've walked through the door? In a hallway? A room?"

"In the next few minutes you will walk your way through the house, trying to remember as much detail as possible? What colors are the walls? Are there pictures on them or photographs? What kind of furniture sits in each room? As you slowly walk through the house, remember as much as you can about each room. You can pan the room or scan from the bottom of the floor to the top of the ceiling. You can also look out windows, under the cushions of sofas or through magazine racks. Or you can just enter the room and see what strikes you about it- see what first comes barreling through the filter of your memory. "

"The point is to go as slowly as possible and to observe what you see as if you are actually visiting the house. You will have at least ten minutes of undisturbed time to do this exercise. You will not have to report back what you've found. You will walk through the house slowly and take as much time as you like in each room."

"OK, open your front, side or back door and enter the house."

Possible Modifications: As a class, brainstorm possible questions to help draw out details about each room. Do this before you begin the visualization.

Ask the student-writer to walk through the house at various ages and times of his/her life, for instance, as an eight year old coming home from school or on a rainy day.

Hints To the Teacher: If a student is having a hard time visualizing the house, you can work individually, asking him or her to describe the rooms in the house to you while you record. Or you can prompt their memory with questions that ask for a detailed and a specific kind of recall, i.e.: What room are you in right now? Are you standing or walking on a hardwood floor? A carpet, linoleum? What do you see when you stand in the center of the room and look straight ahead? Does the room smell a particular way? Are there windows? Are they open? What's the temperature like in the house.

You can also ask students to work in peers, taking turns recording and narrating.

PART TWO

This lesson prepares students for writing.

Ask student-writers to draw a floor plan of their remembered house. If the house is multi-level have the student chose only one floor to draw.

When students are done drawing the floor plan, ask them to place an object of significance in each of the rooms. Most likely, the memory of the objects will come from the previous visualization activity, but if not, that's fine too.

PART THREE

This is a timed, focused free-writing lesson

Ask students to choose three objects that they placed in their house. Then ask students to write about the objects spending five to seven minutes on each one.

Hint to the Teacher: much has been written about timed, or focused, free-writing. It's the kinesthetic practice of writing that treats the mind like an active body part. Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones & Wild Mind) and Peter Elbow (Writing Without Teachers) are among its' gurus. But even without guidance or prompt, you and your student can practice free writing easily: 1. Choose a topic, poem, image, feeling, phrase, shopping list or memory to write about for a short, timed period. 2. Keep your hand moving across the page, or if the case may be, punching the keyboard. Do it for the whole period of time. 3. If you can't think of what to write, write that: "I have nothing to say." But keep your hand moving no matter what. 4. Share your work afterwards without asking for feedback or judgment, keep it for posterity, or as in this case, save it for revision. 5. Practice this form of expression like one practices lifting weights adding more or different weights as one grows stronger.