Lessons Learned

Blog entry written October 4, 2011:

Lessons Learned

Right now in the intermediate English class of community health worker
and medic students, we are going through Jack Johnson's Curious George
album. The last song we did was “We're Going to Be Friends,” and now
we're working through “My Two Hands.” This class has been very
interesting to me, because they're all right on the verge of
conversational English, light years ahead of their beginning
classmates, but they have not yet grasped the rhythm of English. We
use music a lot to learn how we put together phrases. Lyrics often do
not even use complete sentences, but it's okay, because they
communicate concepts we understand in shorter phrases. I believe
students must first feel the rhythm of the shorter phrases, before
they move into full-length structured sentences. It appears this gut
instinct is right, because I am watching both their vocabulary expand
rapidly, as well as their general ability to put words into meaningful
phrases with an understandable word order. This excites me
exceedingly, because I can see that these students will truly advance
to meaningful conversations very quickly.

However, to the students, they feel what they do not know. Every song
there are so many new words, which overwhelms them. I am amazed by how
quickly they learn and grasp new words, but they are discouraged that
they do not already know them. They long to make longer utterances
comparable to their conversations in Shan, and yet they are confined
to shorter child-like phrases. These are the students who have often
been at the top of every class they've ever been in, and they likely
excelled in their English classes in school. The shock of real
language is hitting them hard. Real language is not grammar. Real
language is not even about the size of one's vocabulary. Real language
is about communication, and when we start learning a new language, we
all become like children again. We must accept what we do not know and
begin the process of decoding this other strange system set before us.
We simply do not begin by excelling; we begin by the humbling process
of pointing to something and saying “I want.”

Yet every evening the tables turn, and I become the student. Now it is
I who must discipline myself to not speak English, even if I know they
know the word in English, and do my best to use every Shan word
possible to try to communicate a concept until I am given the correct
Shan word. I use motions. I use sound effects. I become the child, and
my students of the intermediate class becoming my greatest
cheerleaders. They do not forget their own frustrations when
attempting the same thing in English. They know my challenge, and they
patiently say phrases again and again in context until suddenly I get
it and know myself how to create novel phrases of the same structure.
In this strange switch of roles, my students are slowly realizing that
what I am doing in their intermediate class is not meant to be cruel
or overwhelming. I am giving them the same opportunity that they give
me each evening, no matter how difficult or painful. I am giving them
the chance to speak English. Every student that lives at the clinic
and interacts with me in the evening feels this, knows this, and even
expresses enjoyment in the English class. I watch their excitement
when suddenly the light bulb goes off and I can tell they've just
mastered a new concept.

Sadly yesterday I received a letter from one of the students who does
not live at the clinic. He has been missing a lot of class, and I had
wondered why. He wrote in his letter of how difficult he found the
class to be and how he really wanted to learn grammar. What struck me
was how different his approach to the language is from those who have
been assisting me in my daily struggle to learn Shan. They intuit what
I am doing for them, but this poor student is still stuck on what he
has been told he should be learning in class. He is actually one of my
top students, and I know his difficulty to hear spoken English cannot
be any more acute than his classmates. What's different is his
understanding of why the struggle is worthwhile. I do teach very short
grammar lessons in context, but I am more concerned about
communication right now than grammar. This student would rather know
rules than be able to communicate. While his classmates are moving
forward quickly in their ability to strings words and phrases together
into meaningful conversation, he remains focused on what he is yet
unable to do.

Reading this poor student's words has caused me to reflect on where I
am doing the same. Linguistically I accept my limited abilities for
now and am moving forward quickly to decode this system of
communication. Yet I have found myself deeply frustrated by all the
cultural rules I do not understand. I have allowed myself to become
deeply discouraged by the cultural mistakes I have made and the people
I've accidentally offended. As hard as it is, I have to see that in
the mistakes I've made, I've learned one more cultural norm. I cannot
start off knowing the rules, just as this student cannot start off
understanding 100% of spoken English. We must take bits and pieces,
combined with our mistakes, to create a new system of understanding.
For those of us that pride ourselves on learning other things fast, it
is time to learn humility fast.

Meanwhile, I am so very proud of my students, who read through “My Two
Hands” yesterday and demonstrated, in collaboration and through
carefully asking for help in English, complete understanding of the
song and all its vocabulary. I watched their own feelings of pride
when they realized they understood the song. Even a week ago, this
song would not have worked for them. Yet yesterday they were smiling,
laughing, and expressing themselves in English. I have to face that I
too am able to do things now, not just linguistically but culturally
as well, that a week ago would have ended in frustration and breaking
cultural taboos. I smile in the midst of humiliation at this thought.