My journey to the world of ESL was a circuitous route that started when I began hosting international students. Back then, we called them foreign exchange students, but I guess the term “foreign” has become politically incorrect. Nonetheless, they came from “faraway places with strange sounding names,” and the gypsy in me was intrigued: no – more than that – I was entranced.
I
also wanted to host students because I knew I was raising my children in a lily
white suburb much like the one I’d grown up in and I wanted to expand their
horizons. I knew that travel broadens a person, but I suspected having
“international” guests might be an education as well.
My very first exchange
student was from Italy – Guiseppe, although he introduced himself as Joseph. He
was shy and not at all what I’d expected. Nor was he much like the rest of his
group who were flamboyant and outgoing. Although we visited all over, from
Hollywood to TJ, he shared with me much later that his favorite time was
sitting in our den watching TV. Years later, I had the pleasure of visiting him
at his home in Turin – or Torino – where I was treated like long lost family.
He took me to Rome where a friend of his, who introduced herself as a Roman,
took us on the most amazing bicycle tour of the city where we saw all of the
tourist sights and much that wasn’t in the guidebooks.
My very first female
exchange student was from Japan – Kyoko. She was as fragile as a traditional
Japanese doll, yet she was very high-spirited and fun to be around. She too traversed
up and down the coast with us, and I also had the pleasure of visiting with her
in her home outside of Osaka. Her mother and a couple of sisters took me on a
wonderful tour of the northern mountainous region of Honshu. There’s nothing
quite like seeing a place with a native as your personal tour guide.
I have hosted many
exchange students over the years which, as I mentioned, helped open the door to
a career in teaching, but it was one student in particular who showed me the
value of drama in the classroom. And he did so directly via a non-stop,
do-not-pass-go epiphany.
He was a Japanese
student and he taught me that drama was an effective teaching tools years
before I knew anything about teaching. He was young, about 18, and his name was
Hideaki. And he was terribly, terribly shy. By then I was volunteering in the
classes, and I felt so bad for him. He never raised his hand. He almost seemed
to cower in his seat always near the back.
Even at home, he was reluctant to say much and hardly ever joined in any
of our family activities even though my son, John, was almost the same age.
After a week or two on a
hot July evening, I found myself not particularly excited about having to dress
up three teen-agers and myself and go to the summer Halloween party the school
was giving for the exchange students and their families. And I was getting
impatient. My daughter and I were ready long before the two boys who were
ensconced in the downstairs bathroom where – it turned out – John was busily
transforming Hideaki into some kind of motor cycle tattooed gangster type.
“Come on, you guys!” I said knocking on the door. And I had just turned away
from the door when it flew open and someone jumped out with a karate kind of
yell and landed in a grasshopper pose and darn near scared the daylights out of
me. Brandishing a rubber knife he lunged at me and growled menacingly.
“Hideaki?” I whispered.
When we got to the
party, Hideaki’s classmates did not recognize him – not because his make-up job
was so effective, but because he was in character. He was just not himself. No
longer the shy, introvert, he went around greeting his friends and talking with
their families. It was so crazy. Then, when the music started, he was among the
first to ask a girl to dance. Can one use the word vivacious for a boy? He was
“ON.” And his classmates were stunned. No one could believe that this was the
shy almost backward boy who’d been in class that very morning.
I was amazed. And the
most amazing thing was that the change was long lasting. The next morning at
breakfast with the make-up off and the music only a memory, he was talkative
and engaged. He spoke to everyone. He asked about making plans for the
week-end. He was changed – like the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly, he
had shed his cocoon. And though I wouldn’t realize it for some time, I was
changed, too. I had learned a lesson that would last a long time.
Several years later, a
former colleague of ours, Penny Bernal, and her friend, Lonny Burstein Hewitt,
took four classic plays and rewrote them for the ESL student. And I ran into
Penny this summer. It seems they’ve now combined the four plays into one book named
Cool Classics and she graciously gave
me a class set which I would like to share with you. They’ll be in the tutoring
center later this week. And if you’d like any help getting started, just let me
know.
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