So I had a brief orientation with the IRC center in Atlanta and my first day of teacher assisting with classes. The main refugee groups coming into Atlanta right now are from Iraq, Bhutan, and Burma. The main surprise for me was Bhutan, which I had a rather naive impression of (still do): Buddhist kingdom, Shangri-La, where the national moto is “gross national happiness”, as idealized in the awesome film Travelers and Magicians… well, not if your family are Hindu and fled Nepal, possibly generations ago – you must go elsewhere.
That’s one thing you must wrap your head around right away – many Americans think of refugee as someone who had to flee an area where there was a natural disaster, or war broke out, and tend not to think in terms of how long the waiting might go on after that. There are many multi-generational families living in camps around the world. Your father was born in the camp, same as you, and your grandfather died in his 40’s, as the camp lifestyle tends to dramatically reduce lifespan. All you have ever known are this dirt field and these tents, and waiting, stuck in a country that doesn’t accept you as it’s own, even though you were born here. You are destined to become for your host part of the “houseguest from hell” syndrome (a situation I’ve imposed on others myself, for much shorter periods) and would love to move on, if only there were somewhere else to go, and some means of doing it. A lucky few are finally picked and arrive in America, their first impressions: the east side of ATL. Now down to the business of finding a job, at an especially bad time, finally getting a chance at “doing your thing” and “making it”, as well as learning the language, which is where I come in.
Walking with a mix of tiny folks in brightly colored clothes, some with infants swaddled to their backs, with thrift store tennis shoes which worked perfectly into their ersatz fashion, from the MARTA station through the remains of a freak snow, I could almost imagine our trek was in a far more exotic location than the lamer side of sidewalkless Memorial Drive.
I met the main teacher and the “beginners” class started. He did the review from last week and presented the new vocab, going over it for a while, mostly concerning shopping. Utilitarian, functional English ASAP is the focus. “Classroom discipline” is sort of out the window, as cell phones go off with ringtones you’ve never heard but now want, people make doctors appointments in various languages, scragglers come in as much as an hour late, the enthusiastic chorus of peers recites what they can, while older possibly pre-literate folks in the mix stare blankly. When they broke up into groups and the teacher asked me who I wanted to work with, I went for some total beginners, eager to repeat anything I said, but having difficulty beyond that. By the end of 20 minutes I had them answering some questions correctly, but our little shopping skit wasn’t going so well. It didn’t help that I’d had a scattered-ass digression to try and explain the difference between a rebate and a coupon – not level appropriate. But my encouragement was eliciting more response attempts as we went, except for the one older Burmese guy, who I could only get to switch from an expression of confusion to a smile, but I was relieved when I found out this was only the first day of the two dozen vocab words they’ll run all week.
Then came a more advanced class. I guess I made a good impression, because the teacher asked if I was comfortable running the show, while he broke some of the better speakers away into another room to work on job interviews. Sure: trial by fire. The remaining class was much smaller, now mostly Latin, including a husband and wife, their son and daughter in their 20’s, and the daughter’s son, about eight I guess, from Columbia; another 20ish guy from Columbia who literally got here 4 days ago; another guy and his daughter I thought also might be part of the extended family but I later learned where Cuban; and one poor Bhutanese woman who had to remind me to not digress into my pathetic Spanish, as I was trying to soak linguistically from them as well. Jobs I’m hoping to get will most likely take me south in the near future.
We were rolling along nicely, the family dynamic hilarious, the daughter and mom chiding me not to worry about Jorge, the patriarch, “who was slow”; but he wasn’t, giving excellent effort as I attempted to explain the difference between “above” and “on”, when “under”, “bellow”, and “beneath” might be interchangeable, and when they weren’t. Then, when the other teacher came in for a moment, Jorge busts my balls by taking 3 minutes to get out what amounted to a complaint that I was too fast, not as good a teacher as he. But the main teacher backed me up instantly by turning it around on him and insisting he must tell me, working on expressing this sentiment in an intelligible English sentence. After all I had been checking frequently, or trying to, to see if they were with me, getting mostly nods and stares, as the kids came and went for snacks, I let the others explain for the late comers in Spanish, and tried to keep plodding forward, not realizing I was probably saying,
“OKisthatclear? Shouldwegooverthisagain? Oninaboveanddontforgettheoppositeisbelow, sameasbeneathe,OKOKcomprende, OKnext?”. The time flew by, and they were gracious by the end, hopefully my “mastery” of English disguising I was as green to all of this as they.
I did get an email from the volunteer coordinator saying she’d never see some one jump in the first day to that extent before. After all, someone else had done the lesson plan, I was simply handed a ditto and “go”. But I figure it’s like chess and you’ll learn the most by repeated ass-kickings, trying to understand and retain what does and doesn’t work as you go.
On the ride home, I was suddenly getting into BSG conversations with strangers, trying to help an unintelligible black chap make his way from the #12 to the K&G on industrial Chattahoochee. Generally, more – open. I’m not getting all touchy-feely/bleeding heart on you: I’m the same self-centered, decadent prick I’ve always been. I’m just saying, trying to help people feels good, whether they are fully getting it or not.
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