School Year Ends

The school year ends for us, anyway. Freshmen still have a couple more weeks but they've finished their classes with the foreign teachers. As I write, our team has already begun to head off in different directions: one to the USA, one to Africa to visit a friend, and the other three traveling around SE Asia before heading home or to new responsibilities in Hanoi. Our plane takes off in less than eight hours.

Our summer is short, compared to those in the University Teaching Program (UTP), but it's enough to visit family for a few weeks. In July we'll be back in Hanoi to welcome a new group of teachers and begin their training. This year's training will look a lot different than last year when we trained with the China teachers. Because of the heavy Olympic traffic, teachers in China have been asked to delay their arrival till September. That's too late for the Vietnam school year, so VTF will join the UTP teachers for their training. It will mean more work and more expense for the VTFers, but they'll be a lot more confident at the beginning of their teaching year after the extensive training. And they'll get their TEFL certificate (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) from Wheaton College after successfully completing the coursework.

Part of my summer will involve getting ready for VTF's training and helping to revise some of the university's curriculum, but now it's time to start my summer vacation.