Our practicum class switched so I moved from Broadway HS to the Career Development Academy (CDA) back at JMU where we work with adult English Language Learners to help their English and teach them some American History. When I taught, my topic was the California Gold Rush, so we saw how to pan gold, talked a little about natural resources, related to natural resources from their home countries, talked about the Mexican American war and how California went from being Mexican territory to American territory (stupid Texas), and then looked at pictures of miners. I had each group get a picture and talk in their group about the picture with some guiding questions and then each group presented. That gives them speaking practice in their group, writing practice on their question sheet and speaking practice in front of the whole group. It worked out a lot better than I thought it would. Wednesday MaryAlyse taught about immigrants who came to California because of the Gold Rush and I got to work with a gentleman that I will call K. K told me that he is from Kurdistan, which is in Northern Iraq, but he is not Iraqi. He is Kurdish, and was very adamant about that. When we were talking about culture and how immigrants bring their home cultures with them to their new country, K wanted to talk about the things he does here in the US, not things that he did at home and still does here. He is one of the lower English skilled students in the class so I was working with him one-on-one rather than in a group like the rest of the students, which helped, but it was still hard to get things across. However, I did learn that he had worked for the US Government in Iraq which is why he and his family had to leave and come to the US. His wife and kids live in Fairfax and he lives here for the job. One interesting thing that I learned is that he speaks Kurdish and Arabic, but only uses Arabic for translations purposes. He won't start conversations in Arabic, but will respond to if spoken in Arabic. That's fascinating to me. I'd love to learn more about his background and what his kids are like.
Today I went back to the eye doctor for another follow up appointment about contacts. I've been having trouble wearing them because they aren't that comfortable and I've noticed when wearing them that my vision isn't perfect like it is with glasses, my eyes get tired faster, are really dry and when trying to move from near vision to far vision, it takes a lot longer. I love this eye doc because he does a great job of taking the time to explain to me what exactly is going on to cause those problems. I learned that because of my astigmatism, the contacts shift 4-5º on axis when I blink and that sometimes blinking can make it better but sometimes it makes my vision worse. My prescription is about 165º but because contacts only come in ranges of 10º it's hard to find a lens that will fit perfectly. So that's challenge #1. Challenge #2 is that all of the meds that I'm on for asthma, allergies and anxiety affect the ability of my eye muscles to change focus, which means that it takes longer to move from near distance to far distance and back. So my meds are making my eyes act like a 45 year old's eyes would. That explains why a previous eye doc put me in progressives. It's not because my eyes are actually that old, it's because my meds are making my eyes act that old. We're going to try a little bit stronger lens next time to see if that helps at all, but I got reading glasses at Target after the appointment to see things close up and they are actually helping. I can shift from the computer screen with readers to looking far away taking the readers off much faster than I could before. Plus I was told to use drops for the dryness (challenge #3: caused by meds, allergies and the weather) which are helping too. I've been wearing contacts for 3 hours today which is a record! Time to take them out so that my eyes don't get pissed off, but I'm going to have to make sure to wear them a bit each day to see if I can increase the amount of time. This may actually work. ;o) But I'm still considering Lasik.
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