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The TESOL Diaspora: Making The Outside World A Home.
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We, the members of the TESOL community, have a story to tell. And when it's time
to tell our story, and one day we will, when it's time to put our story into
words and tell the world, our story won't be about exotic travel destinations.
It won't be about tropical Island paradises. It won't be about greedy language
school directors dreaming of huge bank accounts. It won't be about pompous
deputy language school directors and managers attending self-aggrandizing TESOL
conferences in their clumsy attempts to turn language learning into an awkward
science. It won't even be about the games we played or the songs we sang with
little children in faraway places. Although this is a part of our story, and we
will remember some of these things fondly.
No. Our story is far more complicated than that. Far less mundane. Far more
philosophical. Far more important. And far more human. Our story comes not from
the mind, but from the heart. Our story comes not from the brain, but from the
soul. Our story will not ask, How can we make teaching as a Foreign Language
better? Our story will ask, How can we make ourselves better while teaching
English as a Foreign Language? Our story will not ask, How can we make learning
English better? Our story will ask, How can we make the lives of others better
while they're learning English? Our story will not be about the experiments and
theories of the day. Our story will be about the day to day lives and
experiences of everyday people. Our story will not be about our attempts to
escape the outside world by living in the comfort of our home or office. Our
story as individuals in the TESOL community will be about our attempt to make of
the outside world a home. Our home. Today we are living our story. A story that
has yet to be told.
Our story is the continuation of our ancestor's journey. My ancestors came from
what is now Romania, the Ukraine, and Poland. They were Eastern European Jews,
who forged for themselves a new life in a new country for them called Canada. I
work with other teachers whose ancestors came from all across Europe, other
parts of Asia, and Africa. They have moved and settled in the United States,
Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. Their children and
grandchildren, in turn, are now living and teaching in faraway places.
Globalization has never looked so good!
But the history is emigration is the history of alienation. Just as our
ancestors were torn apart from their villages and hamlets, separated by war,
famine, disease, poverty, racism, anti-semitism, and political oppression, we,
the members of the TESOL community, are also separated from our families. We are
also witness to dire poverty, disease, and racism wherever we go. Although we
have left our homelands of our own volition, and for many different reasons, we
continue to face the economic reality that life back home just 'aint what it
used to be. For a lot of us, it's either teach English in Asia, or flip burgers.
The great American playwright Arthur Miller once wrote that all serious plays
address a single question: "How can a man make of the outside world a home?"
This question is the crux of our story that has yet to be told.
"Confronted with world or social relations apart from the family, the problem
becomes", Miller writes, "How may a man make of the outside world a home? How
and in what ways must he struggle, what must he strive to change and overcome
within himself and outside himself if he is to find the safety, the surroundings
of love, the ease of soul, the sense of identity and honor which all men have
connected in their memories with the idea of family?"
I feel that the TESOL community, (if indeed there is such a thing as a TESOL
community), is at a crossroads. Since so few of us have ever felt really
comfortable living in another man's land, our story is not only one of
alienation. It is also one of fragmentation, disillusion, and dissimulation. It
is one with little sense of security and almost no sense of wholeness,
especially spiritual wholeness. Many of us are like lost lambs, estranged from
the hearts of others, and separated from our own hearts and souls as well.
I'll never forget some of the people I've met over the years. People like
Shannon and her 10 year old son, trying desperately to fit into the life of
rural China in the year 2000. "I'm not just looking for a job", she told the
school director during a difficult time. "I'm looking for a place to call home."
Unfortunately, I'm not sure if she ever made the outside world a home. And a
former Montrealer I met in Korea in the Spring of 1997. We were both newbies at
the time. He confided to us one evening that he spent the first three months
crying himself to sleep because "I just can't get used to this place." With
time, patience, and the support of good friends, he eventually did make of the
outside world a home--- if only temporarily.
Even Bangkok, with its infamous nightlife, can be a difficult place for a
foreigner to call home. Try taking a middle-class young westerner, uprooting him
from familiar surroundings, and planting him in Korea, China, Japan, India,
Vietnam or Thailand. Even under the best of circumstances, it is, at times,
extremely difficult to feel at home in any of these places.
So, how can we EFL teachers make of the outside world a home? How can we answer
Arthur Miller's great question, so that we can begin to tell and write our
story? A story that deserves and needs to be told. We can make of the outside
world a home simply be supporting, mentoring, and nurturing one another. A home
is more than bricks, cement, wood, ceramic tiles, and formica counter tops. A
home is a place to kick off your shoes. A home is a place to learn, to live, to
grow, and to find the freedom to be ourselves.
A home is where we support one another. Yes, there are and will continue to be
conflicts. A home would not be a home without some conflict. But in our home we
will not allow any conflict to keep us apart. Instead, we will use our conflict,
our occasional disputes and disagreements, to learn from each other and bring us
closer together. We must give each other the support we need or we will not
succeed in anything! It's that simple.
In his poem "September 1, 1939", W.H. Auden declares, "We must love one another
or die." Only in this case, I would change "love" to "support." As EFL teachers
in the TESOL community, we must support one another or die.
So this is our story. Confronted with a hostile outside world, we must support
one another or die. We must support one another, or we all fail. No one succeeds
alone.
The outside world can never replace the warmth, love, and spirit of our families
and homeland. That would be impossible. It was never meant to. But by working
together, by supporting one another, by nurturing and mentoring and learning
from one another, we all grow together. And by growing together we help to
create and perpetuate an environment where we all succeed. By doing this, the
outside world, where we learn, live, grow, and teach English, becomes a lot more
hospitable. It almost becomes a place to call home.
Steve Schertzer, esl_steve@excite.com
November 1, 2005.
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