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In This Issue:
HOGAR STAFF
Education Services:
Lisa Ehm Waller Hope Adair Brooke Hammond Pérez Danny Quinn Bill Kelly Krupskaya Elliott
Michelle Sardone Mike Elliott
Social Services: Martha Michael
Hogar Immigrant Services |
Before the month of March comes to a close, I couldn’t resist sharing this St. Patrick’s Day trivia question direct from the folks at the Migration Policy Institute’s “Data Hub”: About 137,300 Irish immigrants resided in the United States in 2009, but who can guess how many people identified themselves as Irish in general? So, are there 120,000, 1.2 million, 12 million, or 42 million Americans of Irish descent? (Just to put the answer in perspective, the population of Ireland today is about 4.6 million, plus another 1.8 million who reside in Northern Ireland.) You were correct if you chose the final answer. That’s right… more than 42 million Americans identify themselves as “Irish” as well as “Irish-Scotch” and “Scotch-Irish” (the latter two groups combined accounted for about 5.4 million). If, like me, you count yourself among those 42 million, then-- faith and begorrah!-- consider yourself blessed. This leads to a more serious topic that has recently been in the news. According to the US Census Bureau, the Hispanic population in the US crossed the 50 million mark within the last decade and Hispanics now account for 1 in 6 Americans. The experts attribute this recent increase less to immigration than to the growing population born within the United States. So this begs the question: what does this mean to Hogar—especially when our local immigration population as well as our Hogar classrooms seem more diverse than ever? Well, thanks to MPI’s Data Hub, I have these last two factoids to share:
So we definitely intend to keep our focus on English-language instruction at all levels, as well as citizenship education. But we are also renewing our focus on preparing students for higher education beyond Hogar and for the job market – hence classes focused on computer training and workplace readiness. As always, I wish to close by acknowledging our loyal and tireless volunteers (without whom Hogar would have to shut its doors), as well as our donors and other supporters. Thank you. And best wishes to you all for a blessed Lent and a Happy Easter to come! John. P.S. To learn more about changing US demographics, just go to Data Hub's 2009 ACS/Census tool . Education Updates
Upcoming
Volunteers Needed!
. Hogar Partners with the American Immigration Lawyers Association for our Upcoming Naturalization Workshop: We are pleased to announce that we will be hosting our next Citizenship application workshop on Saturday April 30th 2011 in conjunction with the Washington, DC chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). Our partnership with AILA is a part of the associations’s Fourth Annual Citizenship Day, during which 43 naturalization clinics and workshops will be held nationwide. AILA estimates that at least 2000 prospective U.S. citizens will be served by attorneys and volunteers on April 30th. Our Citizenship Day workshop with AILA last year was one of our largest of 2010, so we are excited to again be partnering with AILA on this important event! The workshop will be held at the Arlington County Department of Human Services building at 2100 Washington Boulevard (Sequoia Plaza), Arlington, Virginia. Registration opens at 10:00 a.m. Staff attorneys and trained volunteers will be on hand to assist lawful permanent residents in completing their applications to become U.S. citizens. Interested applicants should call 703-534-9805 x 250 to pre-register and find out what they need to bring to the workshop.
Social Services Updates “What can our parish do to assist the hungry of Loudoun County?” In January, 2010, Reverend Ronald Escalante, the Parochial Vicar of St. Francis De Sales in Purcellville, Virginia posed this problem to the staff of St. Francis. Marilyn Gugiotta and Erin Bucci, who had been active in bringing food to Catholic Charities and the Interfaith Relief organizations, knew more needed to be done. With the downturn in the economy, the shelves were becoming bare at St. Francis De Sales in Purcellville Virginia. Together Father Escalante, Marilyn and Erin developed the idea of Share Sunday – one Sunday each month when the parishioners could bring food donations to the church, and then be redistributed to Catholic Charities and to Interfaith Relief. The staff quickly realized they needed additional help and turned to the St. Francis Knights of Columbus, a fraternal organization dedicated to charity (as well as fraternity, unity and patriotism.) The St. Francis Council recognized the need, and immediately embraced the effort. Beginning in February, 2010, the parishioners of St. Francis brought food donations to each Mass and donated 836 pounds for the needy. From there, the program expanded. In order to establish a more central point, the Knights purchased a trailer, outfitted with appropriate signs, and parked it on the apron in front of the church for each Share Sunday, and the amount of food collected grew each month, eventually outgrowing the initial room it was housed in. Father Escalante says; “It is a great joy to see the generous response from the parishioners supporting our SHARE SUNDAY program. And the coordinating work by the Knights of Columbus members is also greatly appreciated. In their hearts Our Lord speaks to each one of them, ‘Whatever you do for my least ones, you did for me’ (Matthew 25:40).” Catholic Charities, headed in the local office by Dawn Dumas, was happy to see the food arrive, and the program has been a great success. Now well into its first year, it has collected more than 8.5 tons of food to feed the hungry of Loudoun, or more than 1,400 lbs per month. The Knights have donated more than 200 hours in collecting food and transporting it to Leesburg. In December alone, the parishioners of St. Francis, along with the Knights, collected almost 2 tons of food, and $1,000 in donations.
Wayne Parent is just wrapping up his first semester as an Hogar ESL teacher at Holy Family Catholic Church in Dale City, VA. He’s done a great job jumping in with both feet, and his Intermediate 1 students have really benefited from his enthusiasm and dedication. He started volunteering with Hogar because he is sensitive to the plight of new immigrants and non citizens and wanted to do something to help the group. He says that his favorite part of volunteering is “the interaction with the students and the chance that it might be helping them achieve their life goals.” Although he finds it challenging to predict how much information the students can digest in 2 hours, he has been doing a great job planning lessons and incorporating real life situations into his classroom. Wayne has been a Coast Guard career officer and is currently a civilian government executive, and has a wife, three kids, one grandchild, and a dog! We know that they are all very proud of the great work that he’s doing!
Carlos fled to the United States from Nicaragua as a young teenager in 1984, afraid for his life after his brother was killed in the Sandinista Revolution. He applied for asylum soon thereafter (but like many asylum cases at that time, his application was shelved at Immigration, and was not decided upon nor referred to an Immigration Judge for review until over twenty years later, in 2007). While his asylum application was pending, he obtained a work permit and started his nearly twenty-year career in marble restoration, working up to the position he currently holds as a specialized senior foreman in marble work. He has worked with the same employer and paid taxes consistently ever since he came. His high school sweetheart (Ana) from Nicaragua fled to the U.S. several years after he did, and they married in Washington, D.C. in 1989. They have three U.S. citizen children, all of whom have been very successful in school, and two of whom are now in college (one will soon graduate and begin an internship in a major fashion design house, and the other is studying nursing). In the late 1990s, when Congress passed a law allowing Nicaraguans who had fled during the conflict to become lawful permanent residents, Carlos and Ana didn’t have enough money to pay the application fees for both of them to apply, so Carlos gave up his chance at a green card so that they could put all of their money into Ana’s application. Ana received her green card then, and later became a U.S. citizen in 2008. Carlos, however, still had not received permanent status in the United States in 2007, when his asylum application was finally referred to the Immigration Court for review. As the country conditions in Nicaragua had substantially changed since his asylum application in the 1980s, it was no longer possible for him to be granted asylum. But, with the help of Carlos’s Hogar attorneys, Ana petitioned for Carlos, and he applied for Lawful Permanent Residence before the Immigration Judge. After nearly three years in immigration court proceedings and an intense hearing, the Immigration Judge granted Carlos his Lawful Permanent Residence this month! Ana and the couple’s daughters accompanied him to the hearing, and both he and Ana testified. Finally, after nearly 26 years (and his entire adult life) in the United States and successfully raising a family and building a career here, Carlos has secured the right to stay here permanently and is on his way to applying for U.S. citizenship when he is eligible in three years. When the Immigration Judge granted his green card, Carlos and his family cried and hugged one another, overjoyed to have finally received his permanent status in the United States. . One of the most frequent things that we hear from students is that they want to spend more time talking in their classes. Sometimes, as teachers we can start thinking that in order to have a good class, we need to be delivering a substantial lesson, presenting material while at the front of the room, with students taking notes, doing corresponding exercises. Actually, for many of us that may be the only learning experience we have to draw on. However, here at Hogar, with a mission to help students find their voices in English and in the US, we can’t adhere to the teacher-centered models that most of us were subjected to throughout our own educations. Every lesson should include an activity that allows students to exercise their own voices and to have an experience in which their opinions and experiences are valued. In January we highlighted the importance of personalizing English instruction- the same idea holds true here- the more ownership and connection that students feel to their class, the more they will learn and engage with their own education. Many times students can get into the flow of their class, listening to instructions, filling in the blanks, and producing short targeted sentences, but the opportunity to engage more deeply and to think how the class relates to their own lives is scarce. So, this month we provide you with a few fun activities to get students talking, telling stories, and having authentic language experiences! Language Experience Approach (LEA) The LEA is an activity in which students provide material to be turned into text. A student or many students may tell a story in class that the teacher or another student records. Then that story can be used as the basis for a lesson or part of a lesson. The class then can then read through the text, it can be turned into a fill-in-the-blank exercise or can be the basis for comprehension and discussion questions. Experience-Text-Relationship (ETR) The ETR is a method primarily designed for use along with reading activities, however it can be easily adapted and applied for use with a unit theme. (E) Experience: First, introduce the main theme of a lesson or reading activity. Ask students to share verbally or in writing, in front of the class or with partners, prior experience and knowledge of that theme. For example, if the theme of the unit is Employment or Job-Seeking, give students the opportunity to share their own employment experiences. They could discuss the best jobs they have had, the worst, their ideal jobs, interviews they have had, etc. (T) Text: Next, students encounter the actual subject or reading. Have the class make predictions about what will happen or what they will learn. Intersperse the lesson with comprehension questions and a small discussion of why this topic is being discussed. (R) Relationship: At the end of a segment of a unit, lesson or story provide an opportunity for students to relate what they read and learn with theirn own experiences and prior knowledge. Students can share ideas brought up by text about how they would handle hypotherical situations similar to those discussed. It will deepen students' understanding if they integrate the themes and vocabulary discussed in class with their own experiences. A few other tips: For more great ideas see the following resources: Talking Shop: A Curriculum Sourcebook for Participatory Adult ESL Making Meaning, Making Change: Curriculum Development for Participatory Adult ESL Literacy
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