License to Teach

Teaching is like driving. You don't really learn how to do it until you have a license. This license also gives access to an inexhaustible supply of unforeseen learning opportunities.

When I started teaching, I planned to give it five years. But during those early years of high school ESL, the job grew on me. Each semester, students opened up new worlds.

The best part was when they worked around linguistic limitations to tell me their stories. "George" and "Grace" (their Canadian names) were among my first students.

George was one of the most amazing language learners I ever met. In words of one or two syllables, he painted images of his homeland that remain with me still. For instance, he was surprised by the presence of driftwood on Canadian beaches; in his country people routinely collected and used every stick.

Grace, his quiet, gentle sister, was unaware that she looked like a model. She loved to help her brother and her parents. While they worked long hours at low wages, she took care of the house, and with her limited English, even translated for them.

Then there was "Allen", a gentle poetic soul, and his constant companion and polar opposite, the tough and cynical "Sonny." When the school had an outing at the roller rink, these two refused to let me stay on the sidelines. They personally inspected the lacing of my skates and pulled me unsteadily around, all the while politely addressing me as "Miss."

Teaching ESL in high school was frustrating because of the bureaucracy. Working at a semestered school meant that twice a year I had to lobby hard to keep my ESL learners out of regular English, Social Studies and Science classes. "They've had ESL for five months, what more do they expect?" seemed to be the attitude. Meanwhile, as the weeping students came back to me saying they were completely lost, I had to advocate for them one by one, trying to get them moved into classes where there was some hope that they could learn.

After five years, I moved to the nearby Community College, thinking that adults would have fewer life problems and would thus be more able to focus on language. Not so, unfortunately. For my night school students, arranging jobs, apartments, and schooling for children were huge challenges. Naturally, the exhaustion and worry interfered with their own language learning.

In 1986 I moved to a department that teaches ESL academic preparation and immediately recognized it as my true niche. While using a changing array of my evolving choice of content to teach high level language skills, I have the freedom to allow students to do the same. In writing and oral skills classes, they learn from one another and I learn from them. Everybody wins.

A few times over the years, I have become tired and overwhelmed by the demands of the job. It is hard to be constantly emotionally available, and to work vigilantly, while seeming not to, at making a classroom full of people from very different societies and backgrounds a safe and friendly place of learning and exchange for all.

Evolving technology has put me on my mettle too. Oddly enough, I continue to use a blackboard and chalk, but not because I have an aversion to newer technology. I love my computer and it has revolutionized my prep. But regarding the blackboard, as one dear colleague, now retired, used to say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I totally agree.

This idea of using technologies appropriately is something I need to convey to students too. No matter how lovely the PowerPoint presentation, it does not replace the interaction between speaker and listener. Too many times I have watched presenters stare admiringly at the screen, back to the audience, entranced by their own cherished PowerPoint presentations. Recently I felt vindicated to learn that the brilliant teacher Ross Laird felt the same.

There have been times when I've been forced to take a break from teaching. But I keep coming back. There's a part of me that has an irresistible desire to interact with students. Over many years I have experimented and earned the confidence that I can do the job. I continue to get great satisfaction from honing my teaching craft.

As I get older and relax into myself, I find that teacher part stepping out to do and say things that wouldn't have got past the internal censor just a few short years ago. I allow myself to tell more of my own stories too. Stories are amazing tools for learning.

What keeps me in this job? I rarely see or hear about the results of my work, which would be hard to measure or prove in any case. After the end-of-term thank you cards and flowers, the students I've got to know so well in the four months take their leave and move on.

More dramatic feedback does come, but only occasionally. When it does, it leaves an indelible check mark. "I learned such a lot from you," said one former student, throwing her arms around me enthusiastically when we met by chance years later.

"Oh," I replied, "but you were quite a good writer already when you came to my class."

"Oh no," she said. "I don't mean about writing. I mean I learned so much from you as a person."

I was deeply touched, but also puzzled. What I remembered was profusely apologizing for spilling coffee on her essay. Oh -- and then there was the time she told me I had my blouse on inside out. (The Mexican hand embroidery was so neatly finished inside that it was hard to tell.)

"Oh dear," I said. "I'd better go and remedy that." And went into the washroom to turn it right side round.

So whatever it was that helped this woman, gave her courage, made a difference, was part of the mysterious unknown.

As we used to say in the sixties at UBC, it is important to have a job with redeeming social value. And you do, fellow teachers, so enjoy it. And have faith. You are enough.