ESL

Although teaching English as a Second (or Foreign) Language was my old career (from '85-'93), I have decided strategically while still here in LA to return to it briefly this summer - mainly to bring in a little needed income. (Bills don't wait till one's employment status is finalized!) Fortunately, in Los Angeles with its millions of non-English speakers (or at least non-NATIVE speakers), the market is huge.

So, for the past two weeks I have been driving around the South Bay/Long Beach areas dropping off my CV at various community colleges and two nearby California State Universities (Long Beach and Dominguez Hills). The program administrator at Long Beach turned out to be an Illinois grad (small world), so she sent me a chatty email later on and promised to forward the CV to her boss.

I tried an adult school here in Torrance the first week, but, entrenched in their government workers union protectionism, California adult schools take only ESL teachers with adult school certification (forget a PhD and 15 years of ESL experience). So, ironically I am perfectly qualified for the most demanding academic ESL that the state university system offers but not the mom-and-pop variety of neighborhood ESL that adult schools offer.

I am still waiting to hear back from most of the six institutions I applied at. It's been over a week in some cases and over two in others. Some schools are so 20th century, they don't even have email for their staff, so I've had to mail my follow-up notes! June is really the start of the summer term for most of these schools, so I need to hear back soon if I am to have any chance at getting in at the beginning. I did request my name to be put in for subbing, as well, but it won't bring in the income a solid 6-week ESL course will.

Meanwhile, the main job hunt continues. In Wisconsin a few weeks back, I ran into an old colleague from the Intensive English Institute at the U. of I. who is now teaching Farsi at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. She encouraged me to send her my CV and she'd pass it on within the institution. Which she did. So far, no word back on that either.

The Heinle publishing house in Boston I contacted back in March (I did an informational interview with one of their tech people) that tried to interview *me* about one of their editor positions while I was ostensibly interviewing *them* ended up not hiring me. Actually, I told them in the interview I wasn't quite ready to commit to applying for publishing jobs at the time, but they insisted I send my CV anyway, so I did thinking, "How could it hurt?" "Not enough publishing experience" was their Catch 22 decision. That's really the only long-term job I have actually *applied* for since being in LA. But as I wrote earlier in this blog, May is my month to finally start *applying* rather than just doing "career research", so that's what I'm in the process of doing.