I have a job.
And I love doing what I do.
That's something to celebrate, isn't it?
What's more is that my wonderful job allows me to influence nations, many nations. My students come from the Phillipines, Japan, China, Pakistan, Morocco, UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, France, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Switzerland, Ethiopia, Haiti, Guatemala, Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, Nicaragua, Mexico, and more. I truly do consider it a privilege to help them meet their academic goals, which in turn propels them toward personal or national goals.
In my attempt to revive this blog yet again, I think this very spot is a good place to record a sampling of the student stories I want to remember. Here is my first installment. As a sidenote, these are all from entirely different classes/schools.
~
When asked to describe a place from his childhood, a Pakistani man chose amazingly descriptive words to transport me to a beautiful lake -- away from the noisy, dusty city with his family to a lush respite in the mountains, where families picnicked and splashed in the water. Then, to my horror, he told me of the drowning death of his uncle on one such family outing. It's hard to imagine the coexistence of such beauty and such sorrow at once, a concept much more real in that era, in that place, than here.
"I have a story I want to tell you." But, you gave your personal speech yesterday. I want to give everyone in the class a turn and we need to keep moving through the roster today. "But I really want to tell you this story." So, we stepped outside at the end of class. There, at the bottom of the student stairwell, with the hustling and bustling of college students running to class, talking about their new shoes, and enthusiastically yelling 'hello's' across the courtyard, this gal from Turkey described her kidnapping by gypsies when she was five years old. She could tell me about the candy they offered her, the smell of the feedsack over her head, the rocking of the cart she sat in for six fearful hours until her father found her. "My father saved my life. He thought he might lose me forever, but he would not give up." Can you imagine where she might be today if that nightmare had not ended? This is not from a movie. These are the lives of people around us!
One of my favorite assignments in speech class is the "Old Bag Speech." Students bring a bag that has some type of significance and fill it with three items that represent their past, present, and future. One student started, "The item that represents my past....well....I waited a really long time for this. It represents my past because I waited ten years." I'm trying to predict in my head what it might be while she continues to build the suspense. Obviously, I think, this is very important!
I pulled out a question card, turned to the next student, and asked "What is one thing in your past you wish you could change?" Without hesitating, he answered, "I wish my boys were still alive." My eyes popped. Excuse me? I have known you, at this school, for at least eight months where you have been enrolled in no less than four of my classes. What are you talking about? "They both had the same rare disease. One died at birth and one lived for just two years." He spoke of his first son, who lived in the hospital for two years and came home for one week before his sudden death; and he spoke of the joy and fear that came with the next pregnancy, which ended before life outside the womb could even begin. I was dumbfounded that I had known this man for so long without the slightest inking as to the enormity of pain he carried in his heart. Alongside the pain, I was also able to see a tenderness for his wife that I had not seen before. Thinking of this family still breaks my heart. (I might add that my question card does sound a bit loaded, doesn't it? --maybe I should throw it out-- But I'm not really asking for deep, personal revelations. I'm asking for the correct grammar use of "wish statements", which in his defense he nailed!)
No comments:
Post a Comment