This week’s blog comes a little late because I spent most of last week in Washington, DC. I was training people from the University of DC to use instructional technology. UDC is very lucky that many of their teachers and administrators are extremely passionate about their work. One of the GED teachers, in particular,  touched my heart. (He is so humble, so I am going to leave his name out of this. I don’t want to embarrass him.) But hopefully, you will also be inspired by his dedication and creativity.

Here are three inspiring things that he does:

• He continues to teach classes over break, so that students don’t get out of the groove.
• He works (informally) with companies in town to get his GED students jobs. He even hires some of them to help him with his house projects.
• He does everything he can to get students (and keep them) in class. Including picking them up at the bus stop.

I was so impressed by him. He goes above and beyond to make sure students get what they need (from jobs to rides to school). He was the same way at my training. So I guess, I just want to put this out there. Some of us are great teachers. But others of us are so much more than great teachers! After meeting him, I hold myself to a new standard of teaching and caring for students.

This Monday the music lesson will be about Lefty, a one-armed guitarist who performs on street corners near the English, baby! downtown Portland office.

This is definitely the best taking it to the streets video we’ve made so far. It’s not just a slice of life, it’s a whole story. Watch Lefty play and talk about how he thought his days as a musician were over when he lost his arm.

When I was learning Spanish, some of the hardest people to understand were older men with gravelly voices. But I think Lefty does a pretty good job of annunciating for a guy with a real whiskey voice. Hopefully our members can get some practice understanding people who sound like him from this video.

I also interviewed Lefty at length for an upcoming newspaper piece I’m going to write. We sat at his “office,” a table at the old town bar Captain Ankny’s Well, which also happens to be where we film lots of our lessons (like this one).

Every other person who walked by knew Lefty and said hello. He has a lot of fans around town. Some of them are even photographers. He let me scan in some photos people have given him over the last three years he’s been performing at the Saturday Market, an open air bazaar in Portland. The ones in this post are my favorites.