One of the most exciting things about moving Chicago is being able to say that I live in Illinois!  It may only be temporary, but for someone who has spent the last 18 years of her life living in Valparaiso, IN (minus a semester in Costa Rica), spending two months in the big city is a pretty big deal.  One of my favorite parts about living in the city is listening to people speak in their many native tongues.  When I’m at the train station, I can hear a pair of students conversing in Arabic.  While I’m walking through Millennium Park, I can understand the parents talking to their children in Spanish.  When I walk down the street, I recognize one of the very few German words I know as a man talks on the phone.  During the time I spent at my internship over the last two months, I […]

I started my college career at Valparaiso University as a Spanish and Secondary Education major, but through the various experiences I’ve had over the last four years, I’ve discovered a calling to teach English to speakers of other languages. I’ve spent years in TESOL and education classes and countless hours in the classroom working with elementary and middle school English learners, so a CAPS fellowship in this field seemed like a logical next step in learning to apply what I’ve learned in the “real world”. This summer, my internship in Chicago with the English Language Training department of Heartland Alliance’s Refugee and Immigrant Community Services will give me a glimpse of another branch of what I am now exploring as my vocation.     Over the past five days, I have learned about assisting in adult English classes, filing paperwork, inputting data, testing new participants, and making coffee. Assisting with […]