The Voice of English

Ever since I have taken the path towards being an educator, the oath of writing an essay a day and the willingness to teach English, I have been criticised. People question my motives. People wonder why I sacrifice so much time. Some people wonder why I even bother, especially considering that it is English that I adore.

Today, I have answered all of those questions in one simple gesture: the act of kindness and understanding. Today, I have liberated myself from self-labelling as a 'future educator'. Today, despite needing one more year of essay writing and group work, I have granted myself the label 'educator'. 

Today, I witnessed yet another student who has fallen into the cracks of our education system, and that student is one of a Chinese descent. Chan* has been in Australia for around two months now. She is not at all fluent in English, and she had always been sitting around doing nothing when I taught her class. Two lessons ago, I found out about her origins and took her onto my wing. Ever since I found out, I have been describing instructions to her in a simplistic manner so as to ensure her understanding.

There was something special about today, though. Having set homework tasks based on Romeo and Juliet in the last class, I had not expected Fiona to even comprehend any of the task choices. I was proven wrong. Upon asking the students as a whole in today's class if anyone had completed their homework, not one person had responded. They all either looked down, looked up or looked sideways. "Well," I said, "that's very interesting because Chan, who knows hardly any words in English, managed to write an alternate ending for Romeo and Juliet with the help of a translator." the entire class was dumbfounded.

Having volunteered to help Chan fix up her internet account in the IT department, whilst waiting for the IT people to return to their workstations, I stood with Chan in the hallway and spoke to her about her life in China compared to life in Australia. "I have so many options here," she told me. "In China we have boring subjects. We don't have cooking classes even." It occurred to me that we take our education system for granted here. We indeed do have many options. After that brief discussion, Chan said, "homework?" and proceeded to open up her English folder. She pulled out a tidy sheet with handwriting on it, which was the alternate ending to Romeo and Juliet. 

I asked if she could read it to me just so that I could check whether or not she had written it, at least f she could read it out she would have some sort of understanding of it. And she did. She even laughed at all of the funny parts, marvelling at how humorous her writing was. She was glowing. I asked her if she wanted to read it to the rest of the class when before we finished from the IT department. She looked down, and said "maybe they laugh. Maybe they make me embarrassed." I told her "if anything, they should feel embarrassed that you can write something in another language!" 

She did not end up reading it. But I did guilt trip the rest of the students by mentioning her completion of a task. And in the entire delivery of my lesson, she was smiling. She was fully attentive, trying everything that I asked of the class. All it takes is consideration. I imagined myself in another country, that speaks a language foreign to me and I cringed. Chan is so brave. It is not fair for those who are not familiar with English to be left behind. English is an important means of communication, and students born here that are fluent in it should grant themselves lucky, because out there, there are students who have no idea about what is going on, and they are looking for somebody, anybody, to assist them in learning.

It just takes that extra effort. Not at all strenuous, and all the while extremely rewarding. For the rest of my stay at my placement school, I will continue to ensure that Chan is receiving every bit of help that I can offer because she is one of the students who has a care for what I have to say - why would I not want to hear what she has to say as well?



*name changed to protect privacy of the student