Yes We Can!

Had a student this morning who was quite motivated and wanted to read. Fortunately, I had brought an article about the election describing President-elect Barack Obama and his family. He and I and another student read through it, stopping to review vocabulary (crowd, wept, hugged) and conjugate verbs.

Before that, we went over a worksheet on the modal "can" (completely unintentional: "Yes, We Can!") and I did a dictation asking them to listen and write an address, phone number and person's name. Antonio, the higher level student, then did a mock 911 call where his job was to tell me, the emergency dispatcher, what the problem was and where he was located.

Sad News in Suffolk County

For a week, media from around the world have turned their sights on Patchogue. On Suffolk County. Once again, Suffolk County on Long Island has made news with the beating death of a young Latino day laborer by seven local high school students who decided that they wanted to go out and, according to Newsday, "beat up some Mexicans."

County Executive Steve Levy who, since he came into office has fought long and hard to demonize Latino immigrants, appearing on Lou Dobbs, attempting to deputize local authorities and introducing legislation to make English the official language of the country, declared that had the lynching occurred in neighboring Nassau County, it would have been a "one-day story" (he has since "apologized" for his comments).

We've learned a lot about Lucero, a 38-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant who entered the country on a visa and lived in Patchogue for 16 years. And about his family. On Friday, Lucero's brother let a reporter from a Spanish-language television network up into his bedroom. She reported that Lucero had a U.S. flag draped around a big television screen. And a Pink Floyd poster ("Just Another Brick in the Wall") hanging nearby.