The Face of English - Week 3

The market for teaching English as a second/foreign language is well-established today. English is an international language. It’s the “official” language of world’s most powerful country which has massive influence on mainstream media and culture, and in every corner of our world that influence is relatively evident. Much of what flows incessantly into our screens on-line is written in English. English is a requirement for the most prestigious universities in the world. It’s the common language of traveling and tourism. Innumerable scholarly works in myriad fields are written in English. It’s the language of Shakespeare, a university in and of himself as Edward Said once said.


I moved to the U.S in 2004 with limited English. I had been studying English on and off since 12. It wasn’t until I turned 16 when I became really determined to learn English, precisely when my family was summoned by the American embassy in Ankara, Turkey, a year after which we immigrated to San Diego. Even then, my motivation to study English had more to do with Ali Agah, my teacher, than moving to the U.S. Upon settling in America, I had to re-think my academic plans. I loved literature. Having grown up in Shiraz, one couldn’t resist falling in love with poetry. Lyricism was embedded in the city’s landscape: its purple mountains, roses, narrow water canals running through its gardens, its tall and slender variety of cypress, its lackadaisical atmosphere, its heavenly Mays have all nurtured many poets over the years. Poetry has been and continues to be the most common medium of expression of all Iranian tribes, Kurds, Turkmen, Afghans, Tajiks, Persians, Bakhtiaris, etc. I was no exception either.

Literature required a high level of language proficiency. I studied hard. I devoted my life to the learning of English. I read everything. I read bias-less-ly, from the Classics to the Romantics, from medieval works to Post-Modern works. I wrote day and night. Literature was not a major for me, a college degree with a fixed economic value. It’s my vision, how I interpret the world as a text, how I make love, how I say hello, how I express anger. It’s how I see a “tree,” how I shop at the market, how I pass by a stranger. It’s my day and its daily-ness. In 2009, I finished my elementary studies in literature. I decided to settle down for two years, read a few books, translate a few poems, and gain experience as a teacher. In May 2010, I obtained my TESOL degree (Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages). I began searching for jobs soon after. And it was then that I encountered the following criteria in many job postings: Native-Speakers Only!

That was not a requirement I could meet. It was neither a degree that I could obtain, nor an experience that I could gain. It was what it was: English is not my mother tongue. And it will never be. It was then that I was introduced to the concept of “native-ness,” and its entitlements pertaining to native speakers. I did secure a position as an English teacher, but the debate continues on my mind. On paper, my application is dismissed by many hiring directors because I am not a native-speaker. But we all know that the intent of such requirements overlook one’s capability to speak English, one’s familiarity with its nuances, one’s level of articulation and fluency, one’s ability to explain and elucidate its grammar. One can be a native speaker and be able to perform none of the above. The concept of “native-ness,” in my eyes, is intertwined with the concept of “authenticity” and its market value. Who’s the “authentic”—read more marketable—face of English? Who has the most “proper” and “authentic” accent? My roommate Rafael, who’s from New York, but is of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent? Or Claudia, my Canadian colleague who’s of Moroccan descent? Or is it my friend Carolyn, a British citizen born in Northern Ireland? I believe the more appropriate question ought to be: Should English have a “native” face? In an age where cultures engage in an artistic, literary, etc dialogue by the virtue of a “click,” some speak of “authenticity” as if they can reach for it in their pockets. An ethnically or geographically monopolized concept of authenticity is a museum object, the remnant of an archaic culture. It has no place in the contemporary culture. A teacher should NEVER be hired or judged based on his/her passport.

Good or bad, often “native-speakers” of Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Turkish and Pashto have been burdened with the task of teaching their mother tongue due to the lack of wo/men-power. The presence of a sharp, critical perspective in the teaching of less commonly taught languages compared to Spanish, French, German and English can perhaps be pardoned. But English has inherited many lovers whose roots have been nurtured in foreign soils, whose many accents only enrich its syllables, whose diverse perspectives open more avenues to the understanding of its arts & literature. English has no excuses not to equally embrace all its children. I had been long debating whether or not I should tell my advanced students about my birthplace. Where I grew up is a big part of me, relevant to my classroom. I found that the burden of holding this piece of information from them only grew heavier as we got to know one another. I had my reservations and fears. But it no longer mattered for I, too, am a face of the English language. So last Friday I joyously pointed to the city of roses and poets on the world map: That is where I was born. It is who I am.

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth,” Nathaniel Hawthorn, The Scarlet Letter.

Aria
Los Reyes

This Is What It Means To be a Teacher – Week 2

Dedicated to the memory of Mohammad Bahman-Beigi: nomadic teacher, writer, educator.

Mohammad Bahman-Beigi

Books are strewn on the floor. The night before our first day as English teachers. Everyone attempts to project what teaching will be like. Questions are floating in the air. How do you deal with real beginners? How do you discipline trouble-makers? What if students decide to speak Spanish and ignore me? I’m fine with adults, how do you entertain children? More theorizing and projecting follow. We plan our Monday minute by minute. Choose five different icebreakers for the first 7 minutes of class. We go over lesson # 1 and simultaneously attempt to predict our students’ level of English. More anxiety follows. How the heck am I supposed to teach my beginners “present perfect tense?” Do you think intermediate students can handle “frequency adjectives?” On the brighter side, our anxiety demonstrates that students are only thought of with care and thoughtfulness. The teaching day arrives.

Was it anything like we had projected? Yes. There was a classroom. There were students. But teaching was a foreign prospect, akin to a stranger who had concealed himself from us in spite of our deliberate and anxious attempts to get to know him. He’s unknowable, unpredictable, and queer. We look forward to meeting him with much anticipation. We are excited about him. At those times, he seems most aloof. Making an error or two affects our mood massively. Lack of response from students takes our entire planning into question. We get disappointed. And at those times, he gracefully comes around and gives us a sense of warmth and encouragement with his smile. A smile that only hardworking and free-spirited teachers can earn.

Today was a day filled with manic-depressive moments. Teaching is self-probation, self-annihilation, and self-reflection at the same time. It’s simultaneously five coffee-less hours, five joyful hours, five painful hours. It’s five hours smiling when you want to sob, five hours smiling meaninglessly when you want to rip a student apart, five hours standing when you want to open the door and run. Allow me to speak in the lamest terms, just standing before a group of gazing eyes who wait impatiently for you to open your mouth takes much fortitude. But until you have not opened your mouth, inspired them, been a friend to them, judged them, disciplined them, and loved them, you haven’t done the rest, which take a heart and a ruler. If you survive all this at the end, they call you a ‘teacher.’ Oh also, they tend to pay you.

Teaching five classes, five different age levels, and five different language levels is an appalling prospect, a massive task. I have my advanced group, a group of teenage girls who have been studying English for five years. They gracefully arrive late, reproach me if I let them go thirty seconds late, ask to be corrected, when corrected give me a dirty look. In their class, I try to be 'cool,' speak their 'language.' I probably come off archaic. Only if I understood those Spanish chatters… My intermediate highs are next. Also teenagers. I like them. They make awkward jokes. This girl asked me if I had a girlfriend. I nodded yes. She said, “She’s probably ugly.” I said, "why would you say that?" She said self-righteously as she was chewing her gum, “Oh I was just joking.” No matter how much I beg them to call me Aria, I still hear them say, “See you tomorrow teacher.” Next are spoiled, ten year olds. This girl, Natalia...I wish I had her confidence. Throughout college, I never volunteered to read poetry. I believed English poetry and Iranian accent do not go well together. Whenever this girl opens her mouth, she thinks she’s gracing the English language. They want to play hide and seek. They want to be in “boys” versus “girls” groups. I want to pull my hair. God forbid I leave the class for a second…they’re destructing something. My last class is with adults. They are motivated. A notebook in front, a dictionary, a sharpened pen, with their learning appetite. Before I open my mouth, they want to be corrected. Every grammatical point has to be elucidated to death. They already know more about the English grammar than most native speakers. But they cannot speak it.

Yes my dear friends, I go from talking about career change to past perfect tense, from Grandma Julie watering her flowers to this book is red in the afternoon, and from "Rose by any other name would be as sweet" to My name is Aria, nice to meet you at night. It’s a rollercoaster ride that sees me transform from a cool teacher, to a clown, from an entertaining baby sitter to a right-to-the-point lecturer. For all it’s worth, we have probed the 'true' meaning of teaching. But our queer friend, “teaching,” seems to be still in hiding.

However, today he seems to have graced us with his smile.

Me llamo Aria y tú? Still Week 1

There are things one cannot change, even by force. During a trip to Acapulco, I was ridiculed by my friends for having taken a philosophy book on a yacht, in one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. That night, my friend met two nice girls, with one of whom he really ‘clicked.’ He brought Sophia and her sister upstairs so to be ‘charitable’ and encourage me to join them on the dance floor. Sophia never left the roof top until the yacht had returned to the shores. She happened to be a literature major, enough said for those who know me. I didn’t re-tell this story to show off; I have a point to make.

Before I decided to teach English in Latin America, I read numerous blogs, mostly written by English teachers. Mostly, they had chosen Latin America for its fun and festive environment, drinking, socializing, so forth and so on. I don’t quite know my roommates yet, unaware of their tendencies and definition of ‘fun.’ All I know is that every time I came out of my room, for whatever reason, we engaged in a heavy, intellectual conversation. Discussions vary from the contemporary place of religion in the world, Post-Modern American literature, Feminist writings, etc. Last night, in the midst of one of our long discussions, it just hit me! In the middle of a charming town, at eight o’clock, after a day of work, we were discussing Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”???

I laughed, not at the moment, not at what a hopeless book lover I am. I laughed at how the world works! What are the chances that three teachers would end up, each from a different corner of this planet, in a little Mexican town to discuss books??? My Canadian roommate finally gave up. Today, she proposed that we create a book club, read throughout the week, and discuss our books on Saturdays. So the point being, sometimes it’s better to accept and embrace one’s personality rather than go against it. If I take so much joy in discussing Nima Youshij’s love letters and Cormic McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” to my roommates, then so be it. I believe once one finds peace with his/her personality, and truly see that there are as many gods in the world as there are humans, then no source of authority can stand in his/her way. No one can dictate to him what to think, how to make love, how to worship, and what to do in one’s leisure time in Mexico! In my precious time here, I plan on learning from my roommates and contribute to our ‘little’ book club. And I take pride in that.

Aria

# 20 Orquidea - Week 1

Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country -- Pablo Neruda

Here I am in Mexico! A new town, a new job, a renewed sense of life. “One must close the book, rise, walk alongside Time, gaze at the flowers, and hear ambiguity,” Sohrab’s words rang in my ears throughout the trip. I cannot tell you the exact reason why I’ve come here. I’m constantly in a state of euphoria, making instant decisions, which led my friends to take my plan to teach English in Mexico with a grain of salt. Quite frankly, I have not just come to teach English, learn Spanish, explore a different culture; I have come here to hear “ambiguity,” to grasp and appreciate confusion more profoundly, to gaze at “flowers” on this side of the world, to “walk” alongside Time. And already, though my clothes remain strewn on the floor, I have realized that here flowers are the same, and simultaneously extremely different. I find myself somewhere in the middle, at times I don’t find myself.

Los Reyes is a small town in the green state of Michoacan eight hours from Mexico City. The town is rusty and uninteresting at first, but its charm grows once one explores its waterfalls, narrow streets at nights, its small, cozy downtown, its market, and if none would do, speaking with the locals will always bring a foreigner a sense of joy and embrace. Though I have to admit the locals’ fixed gaze out of fascination can be intimidating. My Irish roommate has become quite a celebrity in no time with her fair skin and light hair. English teachers reside in # 20, Orquidea Street, and every one in neighborhood knows that. No matter where you’d want to go, locals will direct you to # 20 Orquidea Street. I’d be eating breakfast, walking down the street, chatting with someone, and locals would be gazing at me. In the U.S, your existence goes unnoticed, here I have come alive. But wait! No judging yet, in a few weeks, I will possibly be attention-smitten!

I’ve not brought much. A manual on teaching English, the anthology of Contemporary Afghan Poets to translate, a basic Persian-English dictionary, the educational memories of Mohammad Bahman-Beigi, McCullers’ The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter and The Scarlett Letter. The smiling picture of Sohrab and a picture of Shiraz decorate my simple, rusty room. The window is broken, and butterflies and mosquitoes keep me company all night. And no, I don’t wake up by the roosters’ cries, rather by the construction workers’ ruthless hammer. I visited the English school today. It’s a charming place. It reminds me of my own English school in Shiraz, which brings me to a state of nostalgia. Who would have thought…

I took a big step today. I went to the market, bought tomatoes, green peppers, apples, and quesillo (Oaxaca cheese). I’m cookin’. At the cheese store, one of the locals took a bag of tortillas and gave them to me. He felt I needed them. I liked his feelings for me. In the United States people don’t have tortilla feelings for one another. I call Mexico home by choice and with utmost pleasure, this country is wonderful! I do miss my family dearly, my lover, my grandmother! But I feel as though detachment will bring a lyrical rhythm to my life.

Eshq,
Aria