I can still remember that afternoon in November 1989 when I looked up from my typewriter and said, "I don't want to do this anymore." At that time, I had been a producer in the news department of a Boston television station, one of three stations where I would spend almost nineteen years of my life. Two years before this revelation I started teaching broadcast journalism as an adjunct at two local colleges. After just one week, I was hooked. There was something about the give and take of a classroom that was intellectually stimulating and very satisfying, and it gave me something I was not getting at my current job. At one of the schools, it was also my first exposure to people who did not speak English as their first language. There were three or four in each class, and I had no idea how to teach them.

Over the next three years, I probably networked with more than 100 people to learn more about the field of ESOL/ABE. I attended workshops where I was an outsider and couldn't always follow the conversation, and I read a book on language learning theory which I did not really understand. A short time later, I became a volunteer tutor and eventually got a part-time teaching job at a dislocated workers center while continuing to work in TV. In September 1992, I became a full-time ABE teacher, and three months later landed a job at the Asian American Civic Association in Boston's Chinatown, where I have been a teacher and coordinator of an ABE transitional program that prepares immigrant adults for colleges, job training programs, alternative high school diploma programs and employment.

The results are very tangible. Earlier this year, I sent out about fifty Chinese New Year cards to former students. Their responses by cards and e-mails tell me I have made a difference. A job in an accounting firm or the office of a major hospital, a graduation from a university in June, an expected transfer to a four-year school in September, a 3.6 GPA after the first semester at a two-year college. These are the reasons I choose to stay in this field.

Richard Goldbert is a coordinator of the transitional ABE program at AACA in Chinatown. He can be reached at: rgoldberg@juno.com