Volunteering Changes Lives

It's been a long time since I posted but I want to share this news. What follows is an email I sent to several of my fellow volunteers, about half of whom were still in Africa, on September 27. Since then, I have had two classes and shifted my reading and research from South Africa to linguistics and second language acquisition. Please read on to find out what I am talking about:

September 27, 2008

Everybody keeps asking me if my volunteer experience in S. Africa was life-changing, and you know more than anyone else that the only answer is, "Yes!" But I want you to be among the first to know that I have made a big decision that really does change my life in terms of my profession. It used to be that a person in North Carolina had to get a Master's degree in ESL (English as a Second Language) to be licensed (some states call it certified) to teach that. Last year North Carolina changed the requirements. Now, a teacher who is licensed to teach a subject in NC (I'm licensed for 2 areas--library media grades K-12 and social studies grades 6-9) can add ESL licensure just by passing the PRAXIS exam (one of those Education Testing Service exams that are comprehensive, hard, and long) in teaching English as a second language. This is just about impossible still without a lot of coursework. However, there is a cohort of people in Charlotte taking a 12-week long ESL Praxis prep course on alternate Saturdays, meaning we meet 6 times, to telecope the whole master's program into these 12 weeks. If we succeed in learning everything, we can take the test in January. If we pass, we will be eligible to teach ESL next year. Anyway, over a hundred people and I applied for the cohort of 30 and I was accepted! I had my first class today, and I LOVED it. So now I have a couple of thousand pages to read and learn in a huge course notebook and 4 other oversize books, and I have to do this in time to take the exam in January.Now what does all this mean, you ask? My plan is to leave working in the library and next year I hope to teach English as a second language. Look, I don't know if this is something I want to do permanently and that I will never work as a school librarian again, but I feel like lots of experiences have all been leading me in this direction. Then, working in Blossom Street really made me reflect on what I am doing and how to keep living in the moment. And then I read about the cohort and it all fell into place. And next month I turn 57 and I plan to work until I am 65, so if I become an ESL teacher next year, I will have 7 years to do this, and I think I can make a valuable contribution in that time. And anyway I am not too old to learn something new. It is still teaching, after all.So, you were all there when this big idea started to develop and are probably just about the only people (Michelle and Pat, too, but for some reason I couldn't friend them on Facebook and maybe some of the other HB2 people) who would have a clue why I'm "suddenly" making such a big change. You can understand it leading to an epiphany, I think. Okay, what do you think?Can't wait to hear from you. I promise to get my head out of the books long enough to read your reply. :-)Glenda