A Summer of Teaching, Reading, Writing and more..

I would like to start my Fall 2010 Language & Literacy blog with an overview of my summer 2010 because I believe that everything I am today is because of my past, literally.

This summer, for the month of June and July, I continued working at the Writing Center at LaGuardia Community College, where I've been working for about three years now. For the summer term, I was given a lab to instruct twice a week, one hour a day. As always, I wastutoring college-level students in writing while along with the rest of the staff and supervisors trying to figure out the new CUNY test "CAAW" that would be starting up in October 2010. This was the second time I've heard of this new test that would be getting rid of the ACT test and requiring new applicants to CUNY colleges to take the CAAW written exam where students are given 90 minutes to read a small passage and respond to it. During the summer, as a team, tutors and supervisors were trying to figure out how to develop a curriculum and pedagogy oftutoring and helping students with the test in the one-hour sessions given to them in the writing center. Little did I know, that I would be much involved with the new test in the near future.

In July, I began my internship at LaGuardia Community College, team-teaching a textualized GED course for the following 2 months (July & August). I absolutely loved my experience though I had to work a lot: observing & contributing in classes, making my 3 lesson plans andteaching, tutoring the students before class started, and keeping up with a blog every week. In addition, since this internship was basically considered as graduate work, I had to write two 15 page essays on my experiences and research along with preparing an overall portfolio of everything.

My reading journey was either the texts that were required of the students in the GED class to read like small newspaper articles and short texts that all revolved around the theme of career exploration in NYC, or my own summer "reading for pleasure". I tried to keep up with language and literacy along with my other love: literature. So I read Mike Rose's "Mind At Work", "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte, "Teacher Man" by Frank McCourt, a Farsi book called "Woman" by Ali Shariati (a philosophical/Islamic view of feminism that is), and Simone de Beauvoir's second volume of "the Second Sex". As you can see, I tried to keep a nice variety going! I did notread as much as I would have loved to, though I love that I always had something to read in hand...

Unlike last summer when I attempted to write a short novel, this time around I stuck to my own ascetic and wrote poetry whenever it came to me, wrote in my journal pages of worthy or worthless memories and thoughts, and even a piece of fiction that was one of those things thatjust had to be written... In addition, for the month of July and August, once a week, as an assignment or for my own enjoyment, I wrote on my LaGCC Internship Blog .

When it comes to language, it is important to also admit that this summer I began a freelance job of interpretation in the medical field for an institute called CP Language. I'm not sure what the CP stands for now. Each assignment they gave me took about 2 hours that paid quiet well, so I did it without asking, though I'm still waiting on a check from assignments I did back in July...

As a whole, I must say this was one of my best summers in NYC. I actually made the trip to the beach several times and discovered the most beautiful one in Far Rockaway. I also took mini vacations with my family and had my share of "summer romance"! It was a hot summer, but one that I learned so much as a student and teacher and a reader and writer! Although as soon as I finished my internship and supposedly handed in my portfolio, I had to attend classes and start another semester, at least this summer, I never got bored!