Thursday, February 16, 2006

Ana Giórgia got a job!!

She was one of the first participants to arrive Friday night; sat, quietly in the back row, almost sad; she told us how she was a history teacher and had been teaching until the beginning of the year when she was laid off.

Adults are those who need our course more than anyone; they are also those who pay more attention and can give more to the class with their experience and knowledge. But also, adults are the hard because some of the activities we do seem childish. In Joinville, of the 20 or so participants, 8 or 9 were adults.

This afternoon I started making follow-up calls to the participants of the Joinville CASP; they were so happy to know we cared enough to call and see how things were going. Granted, some of the people hadn’t practiced or made any contacts looking for work, but many of them had, including Ana Giórgia.

She answered the phone sounding half asleep, which at first made me feel sorry for calling. But when she heard it was us, from the CASP course, she perked up. She began telling me how she had put her new knowledge into immediate use and this past Monday she made some phone calls and scheduled a few interviews. She said she was able to apply everything learned in the course, especially the parts about ‘filters’ and her power-statements. After her Tuesday interviews she was offered three different teaching positions! She started working right away, and has been teaching 8 classes of history at one of the schools! Ha… she was almost complaining of having too much work.

So this is her story in my words, but hopefully she will write me an email this weekend with all the details from her success story. I’m so happy for her and her family!

Hearing her success just makes everything worth it.

In the evening today, Dave and I went to the island (Florianópolis) and visited a job agency to find out about job positions in the area so we can be more educated and helpful to those who come to us looking for work.

We then went to the Institute, thinking there would be a class at 6:30 pm, but we were informed the Thursday classes wouldn’t start for a few more weeks. We took advantage of being there and played some foosball, Brazilian pool, and ping-pong. And we met some of the other nice people there.

That about sums it up.