Teaching Lessons

It occurs to me now that I’ve never really talked about my student, “J” (full names are withheld to protect the innocent). But that’s really strange, because J is a really remarkable student. Firstly, J’s level of English is outstanding, probably the closest to fluency that I’ve ever found in a non-native English student. Secondly, the classes that we have together are anything but conventional - this could possibly be due to J’s level of English, which makes our one-to-one lessons together more like those I would have with native speakers, but I attribute most of this to J himself.

To tell you a bit about him, J is a fifteen-year old Granadino, born to relatively wealthy parents (both are doctors) who recently divorced, leaving J and his younger brother (also my student) to live with their father (interesting - that they live with their father). J and his brother are not typical Spaniards - they are well educated, as anyone would expect from privileged children, but instead of accepting what they have been born into with ambivalence, they genuinely appreciate what they have and seem to seize every opportunity to better themselves. One lesson I had with J a few months ago touched on the “nature versus nurture” argument, and as we discussed it, J told me a bit about his upbringing as he attempted to categorize his parents into the “nurturing” or “motivating” categories. [FYI: “nurturing” in this sense meant a parent who supports his/her child no matter what the child chooses to do, while “motivating” meant a parent who is supportive but continuously encouraging a child to try and to excel at as many different things as possible.] J told me that he luckily has one parent of each type - his mother is nurturing, while his father is motivating. As for what results this has yielded in J, he is a self-motivated, outgoing young man who is very interested in philosophy, politics and debate/classical argument, world issues, history, language, sports, music, and videogames (he is fifteen, after all!).

Anyway, J shines above almost all of my other students. He presents me with new challenges as a teacher to come up with lessons that he will find engaging, and once in a while he even catches me off-guard with the questions he asks. This is of course normal with bright students, but I guess I expect it more from native speakers than from TEFL students, which is why it surprises the crap out of me every time. J also has a knack for getting off-topic by engaging me in deep conversations about oh so many random things that, coincidentally, are very interesting topics that I could talk about for hours on end - I think J probably knows this and would rather sit and ‘chat’ for an hour and a half each week than do crummy grammar exercises that he could do in his sleep. Understandable, but still sneaky!

It’s one of these conversations that has me thinking about J tonight, as I just got back from class with him a few hours ago. We were talking about a lot of different things, but what interests me most about my talks with him is how much I learn from him. He tells me about European history, in particular that of Spain; he tells me about Plato and Descartes; and he told me tonight about sexism in the Spanish language and how difficult it is to change people’s minds on the subject, even those of the women who are most affected by it - most Spaniards hold the language as sacred and a part of tradition, like this magical thing that should never be changed or updated. He tells me how “behind the times” Spain is, how they get media (music and movies) months - sometimes years! - after the USA. He tells me how people in Spain tell him he could never be politically “left,” because he doesn’t believe in tradition (to which he vehemently stamps his foot and insists that he certainly believes in tradition, but not to the exclusion of questioning certain aspects of the traditions so that they reflect new understanding and enlightenment). After all, the traditions that we carry on through our lives are a reflection of not only who we were as a society and where we come from, but of who we are now and the image and history of ourselves that we want to portray for the future. J finds bull-fighting horrible, and he equated it tonight with the Roman tradition of putting slave men for the slaughter into a ring with tigers for the entertainment of the upper classes.

We don’t just talk about Spain, though. For every gem that J gives me about Spanish life and culture, I give him one about the English language, sometimes about the differences between American and British varieties and where they stem from - which of course must include some treatment of the respective histories, cultures, and ideologies there. We talked tonight about sexism in English, such as the current feminist arguments against the use of “woman” because it includes or is derived from “man,” and I think it surprised J to consider this for the first time. After he pondered this, he talked about how Spanish doesn’t have a neuter gender - for example, for certain professions which didn’t always include women but now do, the women who now do these jobs must still be referred to by a masculine noun.

Not to get too carried away in recounting all the details of my “lesson” with J tonight, but I just have to say what pure joy it is to have a student like him. It takes me back to my days of tutoring at UNT where I got to go to my Linguistics classes and learn these amazing new things about language and culture, and then just sit down with a student and use that information to help them in their pursuit of the ever-elusive “English.” I personally believe I changed lives in those days with what I taught students - hell, simply explaining the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammar can do that! It’s students like J, though, that remind me why I’m teaching in the first place. I get to learn just as much as I teach; I get to feel like what I have to share with other people is actually going to change the way they think and live their lives. And it’s with these rare students with whom you have a connection that you genuinely feel like it’s not just the fact that you’re the teacher and they’re the student - you are you, and how you say the things you say to your students is only possible because of who you are, not what you do. It’s completely gratifying and self-fulfilling.

I want to make a constant effort to remember this, to be thankful for every lesson I get with students like J, and to use each one to its fullest potential - for both myself and my students.