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MIDTESOL Matters
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IOWA STATE SNAPSHOTS
SUBMITTED BY MARY BARRATT, IOWA MEMBER-AT-LARGE
Our Iowa representative, Mary Barratt, is out of the country until January, but before she left, she sent information regarding ESL teachers in Iowa. After spending several hours looking up email addresses from a list of ESL teacher names, Mary reports that she was able to contact over 300 ESL teachers in Iowa. This number is impressive, and lends credence to the idea that we would love to see more educators from Iowa in MIDTESOL! Along with this news, Mary submits an article from Barbara Matthies, a retired educator from Iowa State University who shares what life is like after teaching ESL/TESOL. Her article is reprinted below.
Life After TESL, by Barbara Matthies
"Old ESL teachers never die, they just lose their class." Well maybe, but I'd rather say that, after a 30-year career in TESL, education is still a very important part of my life. The big difference now is that in retirement I'm more often a learner than a teacher. And when I do get a chance to teach, it's rarely in a formal classroom or for pay. Fortunately, those 30 years earned me an adequate pension and good health insurance to supplement Social Security and Medicare, enabling me to continue traveling the world to learn firsthand about some of the places my students came from.
During my career, I went overseas on Fulbright grants and other exchange projects. I taught at universities in Yugoslavia and Nepal, conducted teacher training in Zimbabwe, and consulted on curriculum development in Egypt. Imagine my delight, then, just a few months after retiring, to find myself teaching English on a short-term project in eastern Poland. This was just the start of the varied activities I have discovered to fill my time and give back something of my experience to the world and my community.
Upon returning home, I was asked by the ESL teacher at a local elementary school to help tutor some newly arrived pupils from Mexico and Sudan. Since my prior experience had been entirely at the university and adult level, it was an interesting challenge to work with wriggly young children with short attention spans. But we soon settled into a routine, and after a few weeks they began to show progress in their reading and speaking, to the delight of their classroom teachers.
Just as much fun was the ESL class I organized at the county jail. A small group of inmates from Mexico needed help communicating with the guards, who, like me, knew little Spanish. So I went twice a week with basic aids and handouts to be locked in a room with half a dozen male inmates for an hour. We had such a good time with the lessons that I never felt uncomfortable, and they seemed grateful for the attention and the break in their dull routine.
If all of this sounds like a lot of activity, there is still plenty of time left for travel and other interests. After all, when you're retired, every day is like Saturday!
So, if anyone asks whether a satisfying career in TESL can be followed by an interesting retirement, I'll definitely answer in the affirmative. Goodness knows I'm not wealthy from my salaried years, yet I am able to travel, take classes, teach, and meet new people by volunteering my services to the community. There is indeed a rich life after TESL!
