The Glory Days

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 03:08:33 +0000

The Glory Days Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 12/19/2018 - 20:08 Larry Ray Fisher

As I approach retirement, I’m frequently asked, “What were the glory days of the IEC?” The fog of memory has a way of glorifying the “good ole days” so now there are many, but of those some stand out even more than others. I remember my first Peace Corps teaching experience in Turkey in 1962. I taught in a small classroom with 69 students, no heat, no lights, windows with no glass that opened to the cold air, in the smelly tanning district with shepherds and their sheep saluting me through the open window with “Merhaba, Hoca!” At the time it was the worst day of my life, but now it is a “glory day!”

When I came back from the Peace Corps in 1974, I taught in a special Continuing Ed summer program for Japanese students. There was no IEC then. My youthful enthusiasm drove me to organize a group of like-minded supporters to approach the Colorado Commission on Higher Education for approval to start an IEP at the University of Colorado. We won approval, and the gears were set in motion for the first classes at the then “Intensive” English Center (IEC). Another “glory day.”

The first years of the IEC were on the third floor of the Academy Building, a wonderful old structure, built in 1892, that used to house the first Catholic girls’ college in Colorado. Since the building was near Chautauqua, students were bussed there. In spite of cigar-smoking administrators, creaky wooden floors, and noisy radiators, I loved that building. In those early days, the IEC was in its formative stage. To say we didn’t know what we were doing would not be entirely accurate. The early faculty, many young returned Peace Corps volunteers, brought the idealism and passion from teaching abroad to Boulder. Those were the “glory days.”

On a Sunday night before the start of a new IEC session, our beloved Academy building burned down. The IEC never missed a beat. Our students fanned out across campus to the last remaining, and least desirable, classrooms. I taught in the attic of Hale with the pigeons and cobwebs. More “glory days.”

The IEC had a rather nomadic existence at the university, residing at four different locations over the years. Those of us who stayed with the IEC through those early years also never knew where our administrative home was…sometimes in Continuing Ed and sometimes in Food Services. We always joked that our title was not instructor, but “temporary honorary adjunct” with no benefits and no social security, of course. After 10 years of being temporary, the university realized that something more “permanent” was appropriate. The day we could finally officially call ourselves “instructor” was another glory day.

As I look back on nearly 60 years of ESL, I find myself reassured that every method, every new magic bullet, every latest fad, and every new-fangled buzz word (i.e., The silent way, Suggestopedia, TPR) was appropriate for the time. Yet for much of the IEC’s history, the 5 classes per day were dedicated to grammar, reading, writing, speaking, and listening. For me, grammar was king, and I could teach the modals with my eyes closed. Our dedication to grammar prompted Betty Azar to ask us to pilot early drafts of Understanding English Grammar in purple ditto format. Those were the glory days.

I can’t remember exactly when the first computer arrived at the IEC, but it sat for weeks in the office unused because nobody could find a purpose for it. Eventually the value of computers for our students was recognized, and I got permission from Engineering to use their computer labs for our writing classes. Using computers for writing seemed like a novelty to the engineers. With computers came the concept of a database. I didn’t know what a database was, and my Thai lab assistant didn’t either, but we spent a year in the basement lab on Grandview working on what later became the iecadmin database, still in use today. However, for me personally, the most dramatic moment was the day when our labs were connected to the world via the Internet. Our first message on that IBM PC green screen was a BBC news article from London. We all gasped with excitement. Oh, those glory days!

Finally, remember that primitive classroom in Turkey in 1962? One day at the IEC I got a call from a prominent lawyer in Washington, DC, who asked if perhaps I was the Larry Fisher who may have taught his father back then. The father could still remember the name Larry Fisher after 50 years. The lawyer asked his father how he became so interested in English. The father smiled and replied that he was inspired to learn English from a “crazy American English teacher.” Yep, that was me. Oh, those glory days!

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