Intro to this Adventure - Part II: AUW, Access Academy, and my role

Having spent the past two weeks working long days at the AUW office － meeting the provost, preparing my syllabi, and presenting my courses to the new students at orientation － I should finally be able to give a description of this university and of my role here. Admittedly, it was all a little ambiguous when I arrived. The new provost is Dr. Mary Sansalone － an accomplished academic administrator from Cornell/Harvard/Washington University. Dr. Sansalone is in charge of redesigning the university’s curriculum, which has been an encouraging process and she has proven to be a good pick for the position. The reason for the urgency in whipping up a world-class curriculum a.s.a.p. is clear: this is what the students have been promised, and for their sake, we can’t let the programs fail. I have enjoyed learning the details of the undergraduate curriculum through time spent with the diversely experienced faculty here. Details of the new curriculum can be seen on the website: http://www.asian-university.org/academicPrograms/undergraduate.htm

With an understanding of the ultimate goal of the university － the vision of whom these young women will become after several years here in Chittagong － I have a clearer idea of how I will be preparing Access Academy students in my job as a teacher of reading and writing. The Access Academy is the intensive one year academic English prep program in which students are enrolled when they first arrive. The students are from several Asian countries, including Afganistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, China, Vietnam, Nepal, Iran, and others. 

The desk below has been my home for the past couple of weeks. I am currently sharing it with a wonderful fellow teacher who has just come from teaching EFL in Prague for two years. We will eventually all have our own office space, and we have been promised our desks in time for the commencement of classes this Sunday. I look forward to that, especially since I have "office hours" scheduled for Monday.

In the meantime, our shared desks are piled high with texts and readers and notebooks as we finalize our syllabi and readings lists (or "finalize" as much as possible without knowing our students' exact skill levels). Again, I will be teaching two 2-hour courses of "Academic Reading & Writing," five days a week, Sunday through Thursday (Friday is the holy day in this Muslim context). I will be presented with quite a challenge in teaching the lowest two groups of students who need to be just as prepared as higher levels to matriculate in undergrad classes in a year. I am impatient to get into the classroom, but I'm sure that at the onslaught of lesson-planning and grading I will be missing the flexible schedule of this past week.

Apart from my duties as a teacher, I am also thrilled to have also stepped into the role of advisor to a club run by a fantastic group of 1st year undergraduate students. The group is called AUW Community Teachers - please explore the website if you have a chance: http://sites.google.com/site/buildyourschool/

The project in a nutshell is that our students from AUW are using their ever-improving English skills to empower others, by going out into slum communities to teach English to children, teens, and adults. Ashkar Digghi Uttar Par (currently the main teaching site) is a small alley that is home to dozens of families, mostly migrated from villages to find work in the city. Our connection to the community was forged through relationships with the cleaning staff at AUW. These women (whom I have now gotten to know and to practice Bangla with) asked a former AA teacher (who started AUW CT) whether anyone would be willing to teach their children, thereby giving the next generation better opportunities than their own unstable employment options. I'm impressed by the model of the club - to enter communities though relationships, rather than descend on the "slums" like self-proclaimed heroines to give out of our superiority. I know that the AA students/Community Teachers have already gained so much from their time with these eager and highly energetic students.

I visited the community at Ashkar Digghi yesterday, and absolutely loved it. I knew two things for sure, right off the bat: that the time I spend in Ashkar Digghi this year will by far be the best source for developing fluency in Bangla; and that visiting the families here will be a longed-for distraction and respite from the busy-ness and pace of academia.