![\"Blog](\"\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Blog-5-size-690-x-350-v4.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Leamington is a smallish\u00a0Canadian\u00a0town on the\u00a0north\u00a0shore of Lake Eerie, in\u00a0southwestern\u00a0Ontario. It\u2019s surrounded by some pretty lush and fertile farmland, and has been known for over 100 years as \u201cThe Tomato Capital of Canada.\u201d\u00a0In addition to the\u00a0endless\u00a0acres of gently rolling farm fields, modern day\u00a0Leamington is\u00a0also\u00a0surrounded by\u00a0massive\u00a0greenhouse\u00a0farm operations,\u00a0growing hydroponic\u00a0tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and other produce.\u00a0As such,\u00a0the\u00a0town\u2019s\u00a0contemporary\u00a0slogan\u00a0is \u201cThe Greenhouse Capital of North America.\u201d\u00a0Producing and packing all those veggies requires a huge labor force of farmworkers, and in the spring, summer and fall,\u00a0Leamington\u2019s\u00a0unofficial town slogan might\u00a0be something more like \u201cLittle Mexico of the North.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of Canada\u2019s government-sponsored migrant farmworker program, thousands of migrant\u00a0labourers from Mexico<\/a> and the Caribbean are flown into Canada each spring to work on farms such as\u00a0those surrounding Leamington. Over the years, as the numbers of migrant workers in and around\u00a0Leamington grew and grew, new businesses\u00a0sprouted\u00a0up alongside the usual\u00a0chain\u00a0grocery stores and\u00a0take-out pizza spots. Little bodegas and cantinas\u00a0\u2013\u00a0places selling imported groceries and snacks\u00a0not\u00a0available at\u00a0Canadian convenience\u00a0stores\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where the farmworkers\u00a0could buy fresh tortillas or canned\u00a0chipotle peppers to mix with their eggs for breakfast.\u00a0Little juice bars\u00a0also sprouted up, places\u00a0for farmworkers to stop in for\u00a0a cold drink and\u00a0a chat with friends\u00a0on\u00a0Sunday afternoons,\u00a0often after\u00a0bicycling from their farms into Leamington for their regular\u00a0outdoor\u00a0Sunday morning\u00a0church service. I spent two summers during\u00a0university\u00a0working with migrant farmworkers\u00a0on Canadian farms, as part of\u00a0an English outreach program run by a non-profit literacy organization. The goal of the program was to\u00a0place students on farms where they could live and work alongside farmworkers from Mexico<\/a> and the\u00a0Caribbean, and offer them volunteer English lessons in the evenings and on weekends.\u00a0The first farm I\u00a0worked at was a greenhouse near Leamington specializing in hydroponic tomatoes, and the second was\u00a0a garden nursery East of Toronto which grew everything from flowers and shrubs to evergreens.\u00a0In\u00a0addition to offering voluntary English lessons, it was hoped that being placed on these farms\u00a0would also\u00a0allow\u00a0us the opportunity to help facilitate communication between the migrant workers and our\u00a0employers and other co-workers on the farms.<\/p>\n Another stipulation of the program was that\u00a0we would be\u00a0housed\u00a0for the summer alongside\u00a0our colleagues\u00a0in\u00a0farm accommodations\u00a0set up\u00a0by\u00a0our employers\u00a0for their seasonal workers.\u00a0The housing set-up on each farm consisted of\u00a0various\u00a0trailers and outbuildings on the premises, in which small\u00a0bedrooms housed several workers each, usually in bunkbeds. Each housing facility had its\u2019\u00a0own kitchen and washroom facilities, multiple fridges,\u00a0TVs, couches and other furnishings to make things feel at least\u00a0a little homey.\u00a0Luckily for me, most of my housemates were already pretty well-versed in sharing tight\u00a0quarters, and they taught me how important mutual respect and courtesy is when sharing tight living\u00a0spaces with complete strangers. Far from drunken brawls or quarrels over the\u00a0TV, my housemates took turns cooking and cleaning, and established daily routines that worked alongside those of their\u00a0roommates. When someone was napping, off went the television\u00a0When someone was cooking,\u00a0someone else was cleaning, and when everyone was done the table and kitchen were all wiped down\u00a0and everything put back away.<\/p>\n In addition to\u00a0growing and packing tomatoes or loading and unloading flowers and shrubs\u00a0from Monday\u00a0to Saturday,\u00a0I\u00a0tried\u00a0to\u00a0teach\u00a0my colleagues some basic English through voluntary lessons in the evenings\u00a0or\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and more typically\u00a0\u2013\u00a0through\u00a0a bit of informal English\u00a0practice weaved into our days while\u00a0at work,\u00a0or while doing the cooking and cleaning at home before collapsing into our bunks.\u00a0At home\u00a0these\u00a0efforts\u00a0made me seem\u00a0even more\u00a0eccentric\u00a0than usual to my bunkmates\u00a0as I called aloud the names of\u00a0things I pulled from the fridge\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\u2018apple juice!\u2019, \u2018bananas!\u2019, etc.\u00a0\u2013\u00a0but from day one I realized that\u00a0maintaining an\u00a0air of cool aloofness while sharing bunkbeds alongside 4-8 others in a single room was\u00a0simply not going to work.\u00a0Also, though I think they mostly remained fundamentally confused as to why\u00a0exactly I was living and working with them all summer rather than\u00a0just\u00a0loafing around\u00a0with my other\u00a0college friends, they were always completely accepting of my presence and\u00a0\u2013\u00a0dare I say it\u00a0\u2013\u00a0appreciative\u00a0of and grateful for my efforts as their\u00a0erstwhile\u00a0volunteer English tutor.<\/p>\n Our\u00a0actual English\u00a0classes were usually short, and took place in the evenings when we weren\u2019t so\u00a0exhausted from the day that even cooking and doing the dishes felt like a monumental\u00a0effort.\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0usually\u00a0break out my little whiteboard, try to gather a few sleepy students, and we\u2019d\u00a0find a\u00a0quiet space on the farm to sit and\u00a0go over some basic vocabulary\u00a0\u2013-\u00a0usually related to food or objects\u00a0around the house or workplace. Sometimes they\u2019d have questions about a phrase they\u2019d heard someone use in town, or on\u00a0TV. Curse words were also, for better or worse, a frequent topic of\u00a0discussion, mostly because some common English and Spanish curse words had become a sort\u00a0of\u00a0informal\u00a0dialect used for basic communication on the farm. Gestures combined with a\u00a0couple\u00a0of\u00a0crude curse words often conveyed sufficient information about where one ought to be and what one ought to be doing.\u00a0Inevitably, some of these\u00a0Spanish\u00a0expletives\u00a0also permeated like\u00a0raindrops\u00a0through canvas\u00a0into my own Spanish vocabulary\u00a0\u2013\u00a0which at that time was still quite\u00a0limited.\u00a0Luckily, over the course of these summers immersed in Spanish, my own second language skills improved\u00a0significantly,\u00a0allowing me to transcend our limited farm dialect and move towards the first stages of\u00a0fluency. Prior to\u00a0working with the migrant farmworkers,\u00a0I had done a\u00a02-month\u00a0backpacking trip to Ecuador<\/a> and\u00a0Peru<\/a> with a couple friends from high school. I took that trip\u00a0during a gap year between first and second\u00a0year of university. We spent the first 2 weeks of that trip in\u00a0the mountain-nestled Ecuadorian capital\u00a0Quito, where we took Spanish classes every day and stayed in a homestay with a local family. That trip\u00a0took us down overland into Peru and all the way to\u00a0Macchu\u00a0Picchu, where we hiked the 4-day Inca trail\u00a0to the mythical ruins, before circling back to the coastal town of Pisco and then departing from Lima. By\u00a0the end of that\u00a0trip,\u00a0I\u2019d say our restaurant-level Spanish was more or less intact. We could order coffee,\u00a0maybe breakfast, ask the price, usually understand the price and say thanks.\u00a0The two summers I spent\u00a0on the farms were a fantastic opportunity to gain that all-important experience of language immersion, living and working daily in Spanish, and trying the patience of my housemates with my child-like observations and linguistically-challenged version of jokes and witty banter.<\/p>\n Two\u00a0of the highlights of those summers\u00a0that stand out\u00a0were the road trips we took\u00a0to downtown\u00a0Toronto and Niagara Falls. During both summers, one of our regular weekly activities was to load into a\u00a0farm vehicle \u2013 usually a large van or small bus \u2013 and drive into town for groceries on Sunday afternoon.\u00a0Once they found out I had a Canadian driver\u2019s license, our employers were happy to grant me chauffer\u00a0duties for these weekly trips, and I was happy to be of help to them and to get off the farm for a couple\u00a0hours. Once it was clear that we were able to\u00a0take\u00a0these trips\u00a0independently\u00a0and make it back in one piece, our employers graciously offered\u00a0us the use of a farm vehicle\u00a0for a\u00a0sightseeing trip, and even\u00a0threw in gas money and a couple extra days off to boot. The first road trip we set out on was to the CN\u00a0Tower in downtown Toronto, during the annual\u00a0Toronto Caribbean Carnival.\u00a0Though most of our group\u00a0preferred to save their money,\u00a0a\u00a0few\u00a0of us did fork out some of our hard-earned cash\u00a0and ascend\u00a0Toronto\u2019s iconic, skyline-defining monument. The rest opted instead to stay on terra\u00a0firma\u00a0and enjoy an\u00a0excellent-value sausage and soda from one of Toronto\u2019s ubiquitous hot dog vendors.<\/p>\n Luckily for us, the\u00a0Toronto\u00a0Caribbean\u00a0Festival\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an annual summer celebration of Caribbean food, music\u00a0and culture\u00a0\u2013\u00a0also happened to be in full swing that weekend. We wandered our way from the CN Tower\u00a0down to the Lake Ontario waterfront,\u00a0amidst the sights and sounds of one of Toronto\u2019s biggest\u00a0music\u00a0and food-infused outdoor street party. The entertainment\u00a0included\u00a0some fantastic free live music and a\u00a0lot of free people watching. We\u00a0made\u00a0our way through\u00a0the festivities and celebrations\u00a0for a few hours\u00a0before loading ourselves exhaustedly\u00a0back into our dusty farm chariot\u00a0for the trip back home. As we pulled out of downtown Toronto on that sultry summer evening, with the setting sun bathing the city in\u00a0that warm summer glow, I think we all felt a little like strangers in a strange land\u00a0\u2013\u00a0country folk who\u2019d\u00a0had our\u00a0brief\u00a0glimpse of big city life, and were now happy to be\u00a0heading\u00a0back to the peace and quiet\u00a0of\u00a0the farm.<\/p>\n With the relative success of our Toronto trip, our employers suggested we take another trip, a little\u00a0further afield, to Niagara Falls. This would require an overnight stay, as it was too far to make it there\u00a0and back in one day. Not only did they again offer us use of a farm vehicle, but this time they also gave\u00a0us funds to pay for an overnight hotel stay, and\u00a0even\u00a0some food and pocket money.\u00a0If memory serves,\u00a0on the trip to Toronto we took a large van, but on the trip to Niagara Falls we actually took a farm bus,\u00a0which was essentially a small school bus that had been converted to a farm vehicle. Riding in style, we\u00a0pulled into the hyper-touristy downtown strip of Niagara Falls, located our motel, parked, and headed\u00a0down though the kitschy haunted houses and glittering\u00a0casinos to the\u00a0cliff-top\u00a0lookout where tourists\u00a0gather to gaze down over\u00a0the edge\u00a0at\u00a0one of North America\u2019s great natural wonders.\u00a0I remember looking at\u00a0the\u00a0footbridge that crosses over the river, allowing tourists from Canada and the United\u00a0States to briefly cross to the other side of the falls\u00a0–\u00a0which runs along the border between the two\u00a0countries\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and grab a selfie from the other side. Wistfully my colleagues looked across the bridge at\u00a0America, the iconic dreamland that so many of their friends and family had traveled to or pined to travel to. We joked about doing a mad rush over the bridge, we joked about floating in a barrel across the top of the falls, we probably even joked about walking a tightrope wire over the top of the falls to the land of dreams\u00a0\u2013\u00a0America. Then we bought yet another hotdog and soda, took a couple more pictures, and\u00a0made our way back\u00a0through the faux glitz and glamour of the tourist strip\u00a0to our\u00a0clean, safe and perfectly\u00a0plain\u00a0Canadian motel rooms.<\/p>\n These two summers taught me the value of language learning in the workplace. Though I probably\u00a0learned far more Spanish from my colleagues than they learned English from me, the importance of\u00a0communication is heightened in work environments, as is the real need for trained language teachers\u00a0helping co-workers on a daily basis. Most of us think of learning a second language as a process that\u00a0occurs between a teacher and their students in a classroom, but the reality for many language learners\u00a0is that second language learning can and does occur in\u00a0any\u00a0situations where you are thrust into a foreign\u00a0language environment on a regular, daily basis. This could be at home, at school, at work or while traveling. The value of having prior language teaching knowledge is that it\u00a0both\u00a0makes you more\u00a0effective in helping those around you who might want to learn your language,\u00a0and also helps\u00a0you better\u00a0understand the process of second language learning,\u00a0which\u00a0in turn aids\u00a0your own language learning\u00a0as\u00a0well. I\u00a0ultimately\u00a0learned that the rewards of language teaching are inextricably intertwined with the\u00a0rewards of language learning, and in a work environment, the benefits of investing in second language\u00a0teacher training empower both employers and employees with greater means of communication and greater reciprocal\u00a0language\u00a0learning opportunities.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Al Leamington is a smallish\u00a0Canadian\u00a0town on the\u00a0north\u00a0shore of Lake Eerie, in\u00a0southwestern\u00a0Ontario. It\u2019s surrounded by some pretty lush and fertile farmland, and has been known for over 100 years as \u201cThe Tomato Capital of Canada.\u201d\u00a0In addition to the\u00a0endless\u00a0acres of gently rolling farm fields, modern day\u00a0Leamington is\u00a0also\u00a0surrounded by\u00a0massive\u00a0greenhouse\u00a0farm operations,\u00a0growing hydroponic\u00a0tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and other produce.\u00a0As such,\u00a0the\u00a0town\u2019s\u00a0contemporary\u00a0slogan\u00a0is \u201cThe Greenhouse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":5191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[345,344,23],"tags":[196,323,5],"class_list":["post-5190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-making-a-difference","category-teaching-esl","category-tesol-jobs","tag-adventure","tag-esl-teaching-jobs","tag-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5190"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5201,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5190\/revisions\/5201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"MicrosoftTeams-image](\"\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/MicrosoftTeams-image-1.jpg\")
\nEncountering colleagues in the workplace for whom English is a second or foreign language\u00a0has\u00a0also\u00a0been a regular feature of my\u00a0overseas\u00a0English teaching\u00a0experience.\u00a0Though generally\u00a0the\u00a0co-teachers\u00a0I worked with had\u00a0excellent English skills\u00a0(their knowledge of English grammar usually far\u00a0exceeding my own\u00a0rather dubious sense of structure),\u00a0school administrators and support staff typically\u00a0did not speak\u00a0much\u00a0English.\u00a0If seen as important opportunity for language learning,\u00a0rather than an\u00a0impediment to communication,\u00a0experience has shown me that the\u00a0work environment can\u00a0play a\u00a0crucial\u00a0role\u00a0as it provides a good opportunity for daily practice,\u00a0as well as a built-in motivation.\u00a0My\u00a0training in\u00a0teaching English as a Second\/Foreign language\u00a0has regularly\u00a0allowed me to help my colleagues\u00a0learn and\u00a0practice English with me while at work, and also helped me to better understand the process of foreign\u00a0language learning as I practiced my own second language skills\u00a0with them.\u00a0While working on these\u00a0summer farm placements,\u00a0both\u00a0my colleagues and I\u00a0had regular foreign language\u00a0immersion, which\u00a0is\u00a0deeply beneficial\u00a0for\u00a0speeding up the\u00a0language learning\u00a0process. My co-workers\u00a0were in\u00a0a\u00a0second\u00a0language environment\u00a0(English)\u00a0at work and in town, and I was in a\u00a0second\u00a0language\u00a0environment\u00a0(Spanish)\u00a0living and working alongside them.<\/p>\n![\"MicrosoftTeams-image](\"\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/MicrosoftTeams-image-5-300x300.png\")
\nThough the sleeping quarters were cramped, being out on the farm grounds\u00a0also\u00a0meant there was\u00a0always plenty of outdoors to escape into for a little alone time, and many of the migrants had bicycles\u00a0which they could bike into town on or bike across the farm on to visit friends in some of the other\u00a0housing facilities. All in all, living on these farms was a very unique experience, as at times it felt more\u00a0like living in Mexico<\/a> than in Canada, cooking Mexican food, speaking Spanish, hanging out on the porch\u00a0and enjoying the warm summer weather. Our working hours were also long, including five days a week and half a day on Saturday, or even a full\u00a0six days a week depending on the current workload. For my co-workers, more work hours were always\u00a0better than less, and indeed the only tension I ever experienced on the farms when the workload was\u00a0low and the work hours started to dip. My colleagues\u00a0were there to work hard and to make and save money to send back home to their loved ones, full stop. They almost universally wanted as many weekly\u00a0hours as they could get, despite the brutal summer heat and hard physical labour required of them.\u00a0They were so infinitely much tougher and stronger than I was that I could only marvel at their incredible\u00a0work capacity, even as I quietly clocked out early whenever it was clear there was no more work to be\u00a0done that day.<\/p>\n![\"MicrosoftTeams-image](\"\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/MicrosoftTeams-image-7.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"MicrosoftTeams-image](\"\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/MicrosoftTeams-image-10-1024x1024.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"MicrosoftTeams-image](\"\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/MicrosoftTeams-image-6-1024x1024.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"alexblogphoto\"](\"\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/alexblogphoto.jpg\")
ex Yealland has taught English to students of all ages in Poland, Panama, South Korea, Taiwan and Mexico. Alex earned\u00a0his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from the University of Guelph, Canada, where he\u00a0also completed graduate coursework in the Latin America and Caribbean Studies M.A. program. He has been teaching overseas for over 10 years, is a fluent Spanish speaker and has taught English at the university level in Mexico for 7 years. Alex is now putting his overseas work experience to good use,\u00a0helping Oxford Seminars graduates find great teaching jobs as a member of the Job Placement Service.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"