2024 Update: Fully retired from Murray (Kentucky) State University since June 2013, Jan and I completed the move from Kentucky to the New Orleans area a bit over three years ago now.  We made the move to be closer to our son David and his growing family:  four kids born the last 10 years with the youngest now four.  He’s been a teacher of religion at a local Catholic high school for six years.  His wife is a Montessori method teacher at a New Orleans school.  She’s now working on her international Montessori elementary certification.

For the past three years I’ve been teaching ESL evenings to recent immigrants, most of whom come from Central America, Haiti included.  This is online through Zoom.  I have a co-teacher whose past international experience was as a PCV in Venezuela in the 1970s.  I have never taught ESL before.  And, while participating in online Zoom classes over the years, I’ve never hosted sessions.

I volunteer under the auspices of the Catholic Charities/New Orleans, which has the contract to do resettlement and instruction for newly arrived immigrants in this region.  I’m very glad to do this.  The dedication of students, all adults with busy lives, is moving.  It is heartening to see several even pulling off to the roadside to sign into class and participate.  Most have kids.  Most work outside the home.  The experience has been a lesson for me for sure, a reminder that the comforts I take for granted are not available to all, or even most.

Lastly, I’ve thought about those years at CIE off and on, reflecting on events, fellow students, and of course faculty and staff who were there, spanning nine years, both preceding as well as later.  It was then an era when we could still find optimism in our work.  My hope in this my old age is that such eagerness, devotion, mutual respect, and openness to learning can be rekindled. [5-24]

 Email: mbasile@murraystate.edu