Wah Htoo Say's Timeline

Wah Htoo Say is from Burma.  He lived for awhile in Thailand in a refugee camp.  When he was there, Angelina Jolie came there and gave him a kick ball.  Here in Chicago he takes care of his little brother who is an extremely good dancer.  We just had a party today, and he must be maybe 3 or 4 years old.  He was break dancing and that kid owned the dance floor the whole party.  It was adorable!  Wah Htoo Say is Thet Wah's brother.  

An interesting thing about Burmese names:  They really don't have a last name, but in their documents they have to break up their first names in order to fit the format here.  An example of how funny that is would be, say, if your name is  Catherine.  You would have to be Cather Ine.  So if you're married, you'd be Mrs. Ine.  If your husband's name is Brian, then he would be Bri An.  So he would be Mr. An.  

Ndarabitse Onesphore's Timeline

Ndarabitse has made some good progress in his English. He is a refugee from Burundi. He spent some time also in Tanzania. He speaks French, Kirundi, and Swahili. He's been in the US about a year and a half.  Ndarabitse is a great dancer, too.  It's a joy to watch him.  I'm always happy to see the students having a good time.  They seem to know the true meaning of celebrating.

Ndarabitse Dancing (in the red cap):

Ely Castillo's Timeline

Ely is one of our immigrant students. She's from Mexico. She is very considerate and generous in the class. She's always cleaning and bringing food for everybody. She adds so much to our class community. She's also smart and modest about how smart she is. She's married, with two children.

Thakor Patel's Timeline

Thakor Patel's timeline. He's a very intelligent, educated man with a very interesting history. He grew up in India and one thing he used to like to do was to jump into water from very tall trees. Now he helps out taking care of his grandchildren every day. His family is so lucky to have such a helpful grandfather! I'm sure he makes their lives a lot easier.

I've definitely got to get him to write more about his timeline, though. He's a very good writer. OK, here is a little writing from him. Here is a picture of Thakor.

James Tamba's Timeline

Here we have James Tamba's Time Line. James is from Liberia. He's the brother in law of Jomason. As you can see, he's had some happy events and some sad events in his life of about 20 years so far. Unfortunately, it looks like his mother died when he was only 2 years old. His father also died when James was just 5 months old.  I love his drawing of the refugee camp.  Most students have something about their refugee camp in their timelines.  And most have something about their schooling.  I think they're a lot more serious about school than a lot of Americans.  And they can do so much learning with so little in the way of school supplies and resources.

Thet Wah's Timeline

Here is the life of Thet Wah in a time line. She also has some writing about each picture, so that saves me some work. Thet Wah works very hard at her English. She has four children but somehow she manages to study at night after her children are in bed. She's improved a lot, too. I'm proud of her.  I like the picture for when she got married.  A lot of students have various trees and flowers included in even the most basic depictions of their life.  They don't have to think about being close to the earth.  They just are.  It reminds me of Costa Rica where pretty much all the food is organic, but it isn't advertised as being organic.  It just is.

Maria Sarinana's Timeline

Here is Maria Sarinana's picture. I still have to get some writing from her, but it looks like it's talking about when she was a baby, when she graduated, had a baby, got married, and started English class here. I like how she has the table of the English class exactly like how it really is in the classroom.

Jomason Gray's Timeline

We did some time lines when Anna and Ben visited our class last Thursday. Here is one by Jomason from Liberia. It goes through his life from when he was in Liberia up until now. I guess the pictures in this blog are too small to show his writing. But if you click on the picture, on some computers it will make it big so you can see the writing under the pictures. The sheet of paper is actually pretty good sized. About 18 x 24, I think. Jomason is a refugee who lived for awhile in Sierra Leone before coming here to the US with his wife and kids and a couple of his wife's brothers, who are also in the class.

Jan-Feb 2009 Level 3 English Class

Here is my class for February 2009.  Wah Htoo Say and San San Yu were absent on this day, so they're not pictured.  I'll have to get some picture of them later, maybe.   Maybe you can see the keyboard lying on top of the books on the table.  All the students in this class learned how to type using keyboards that did not have any computers attached to them.  And they really learned it, too.  They would watch each others' hands and see if they were typing the right letters with the right fingers.   We actually just got the keyboards after starting out learning on a picture of a keyboard printed on legal paper.  And in the past, I've taught students completely on paper if no keyboards materialized.  Right now we don't have funding for computers for the students, but it is one thing we are trying to get.