Andy Blasky
(1981-84)
It's hard to choose a few memories out of the hundreds I hold from my three plus years (1981-84) at LIOJ. I think of cheese toast in the teachers' lounge, with the TV perpetually tuned to either Chiyonofuji or JR. Or teaching foxtrot and small talk to Community students in Big Hall to Willie Nelson's "All of Me." Taping the Uncle Andy Show for Metta's children's class ("What's the weather like today?") or recording "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" for the Drama Group. Maybe it's the variety of activities-so different from what I had expected from the intensive English program for Japanese businessmen.
In my mind's eye, every nook and cranny of the LIOJ building has its associations. Summoning courage to order a taxi from the downstairs payphone; watching the sunrise from the roof with my future wife Betsy, after wrestling all night with evaluations on that word processor of the future-the Wang. And, of course, the classes: Electric Cat and predicate markers; "Who took a bath in the morning?"; the story of Adolph Coors; And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.
I think my most poignant memory is of a B-Class student, sitting down with me at a Farewell Party, both of us pretty wasted. We both got a little teary as he told me that before he came to LIOJ, he had never spoken with a foreigner, and he could never have imagined himself having a conversation in English. The following week, he was going to London to work in a branch office. I knew that LIOJ had changed his life.
It changed mine too. Since leaving LIOJ, I have been involved in English language teaching in a variety of settings; and I am now Senior ELT Editor at Scholastic, developing materials for Asia. The influence of LIOJ-and particularly of my colleagues and mentors at LIOJ-is apparent in all my work, as influence and inspiration. I suspect that LIOJ is the kind of place where everyone who's been there feels they were there during the "Golden Age of LIOJ." I certainly feel that.
July 2003
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