Hey Jessie!
I’m just gonna say it straight: Living in another country is difficult. Yes, I’ve lived abroad before and yes I’ve been mentally preparing for this move for some time now, but there are some things in life that all the time in the world can’t prepare you for. You just have to live through it, letting yourself go through the motions knowing you’ll come out okay on the other side.
But going through the motions is difficult to find in the moment when you’re facing a class with blank stares or students making cat noises. I’m not joking. One of them the entire lesson only responded to me in meows. These are the moments I can feel stress bubble to the surface and threaten to pull me down. It all begins when I just want a class to go exactly how I planned it out in my head which of course usually leads to disappointment. I think to myself, “Why won’t they listen? Am I being a bad teacher? Am I truly helping them learn?”. Well, I mean how would you respond? Maybe that’s just the part of my brain that’s already been pre-programmed to overthink everything. But the part of my brain that responds afterwards is something that’s not programmed. I’ve actually had to work very hard to train it. To train something though, you need a teacher, and let me tell you I’ve found quite a few unexpected teachers in unexpected places!
One example lies thousands of miles away, back to when I was working over the summer on a fish and chips food truck in Ireland. It’s funny how the most simple experiences live so vividly in your memories. The one that constantly crosses my mind is sitting in the van on our lunch break, staring at the back of the food truck, in our batter-covered work vests, and heartily inhaling the best fish and chips in the world. It was so perfectly unremarkable, yet it left a deep imprint on me because of my friend Alexa. She made me feel content as we sat and cheerfully talked about all the mundane things, but also naturally transitioned to the deep philosophical things.
Stronger than the oil stains I got from that fish and chips food truck, was one of those deep philosophical topics. Okay so hear me out. When something bad happens to you, what’s your first reaction? Do you get overwhelmed, do you shut down, or simply cry? I think a lot of us under stress, especially when we feel that we’ve been doing a good job, think, “Why me?”. Alexa told me, we often wonder why things happen to us. We wonder why certain people come into our lives. Whether it’s someone who inspires us, hurts us, changes us, we often wonder what the reason was. Why is this happening to me?
However, she remarked that sometimes it’s not why someone came into our life, but why we came into theirs. In the back of her brain, she wasn’t thinking, “Why has Yoli come into my life”, but rather “Why have I come into Yoli’s life and how can I encourage her to grow?”. And I think I truly needed to hear this because my ego-centric brain tweaked a little. What? Me? I’m not the main character of the story? Nope, Yoli you’re not because she was speaking to all of us who get a little too wrapped up in our minds, in our own little worlds.
And so those memories came flooding back to me the moment I was dealing with a rowdy and unresponsive class. At the technical high school I teach at that’s similar to a trade school, I’m constantly surrounded by chattering boys, obnoxious boys, and sleep-deprived baseball training boys. At times, I get overwhelmed and that thought bubble of “Why me?” threatens to emerge. That was until I paid attention to one student. It was one of those sleep-deprived baseball boys, and I noticed he always sits and listens to me. I believe he truly listens. To be honest though, I’m not sure how much of what I say he understands because the first time I caught him sitting up straight, hands clasped on his desk, and eyes wide awake, he said, “I can’t speak English”. Yet, in a room full of chaos, he sits there, eyes attentively drawn to the board and listens. And this right here is the key, the most important part! He simply tries.
When I noticed him, my mind went racing back to what Alexa, my unexpected teacher, told me. Of course I love sharing my experiences here, and making these letters about myself. But I don’t think this letter is truly about me, I think it’s about that student who listens even when he thinks he can’t speak English. Writing this, I’m realizing that maybe he has left a bigger impact on me, but at the same time, every time I encourage him and gently coax some English conversation out of him, I also wonder what impact I may be leaving on him as I’m slowly observing him coming out of his shell. When I listen to his few words turn into short sentences, that’s when my perspective shifts, and my own sleep-deprived and overstimulated mind gradually melts away and I can truly focus on just helping one other person. Instead of thinking “Why me?”, I instead think, “Why them? What do they need?” Sometimes all someone needs is just a small nudge in the right direction, like a casually philosophical conversation on a lunch break eating fish and chips. Whether my help teaching his class once a week will actually improve his English or hopefully improve his confidence is in the end up to him. But, I will not stop trying and I will not stop thinking of what I can do for him and the others.
Lots to think about! How about you with your students or children you would work with, Jessie? Did you ever get overstimulated or inspired by them? I’d love to listen 🙂
I hope all is well. I’m sending you lots of love from across the great big pond.
All my love,
Yoli-sensei
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