We Shall Overcome

Two days ago, I had my last class ever at my school. This was with the group I usually refer to as "My Tajik Ladies"--a group of twentysomething and thirtysomething women from Tajikistan I had been teaching since January. It was a sweeter occasion than I had expected. All of these women professed that they would miss me and said it was "very bad" that they were to have another teacher when they liked me so much.

This is quite a change from the situation I had with these ladies after our first class together. My Tajik ladies are a somewhat unusual group in that they straddle a fence that exists in the way my school (and most other language schools) handle instruction. Our school usually divides teachers and students into two groups: school-based and in-company. School-based classes usually consist of students who pay for their own lessons and attend them in a classroom at the language school. In-company groups, on the other hand, usually consist of students whose lessons are paid for by their employer and take place at their worksite. My Tajik ladies were unusual because, though they were classified as an "in-company" group, their lessons took place at our school's central branch.

Before my first lesson with them, I was told that these women were the wives of executives at some sort of investment company. I was told that the class would be Elementary (usually the first level of EFL instruction, though some schools offer Beginner or Starter courses for those rare students who come in without a knowledge of the English alphabet or phonemic symbols) but that I should give them our standard written and speaking tests anyhow, because some might be what are known in our trade as "false beginners" (students who claim not to know any English but have in fact studied a little bit of it at some point and forgotten it).

Standard procedure with new classes is to start with a shorter "test lesson" where students have a short conversation with the teacher, followed by the written and speaking tests. A typical lesson is usually 90 minutes to 2 hours and 15 minutes long. Test lessons are under an hour. With higher-level groups, this can be explained fairly simply, but as my Tajik ladies proved, with only one exception, to be near-total beginners, I was unable to get them to understand why the lesson was shorter. Apparently, they afterward went and complained, demanding a new teacher. My administrative director must have done some pretty fancy footwork to get them to accept me as their teacher, but somehow she did. But she also warned me to tread carefully with them.

Somehow, despite this rocky start, I managed to win over these ladies. While I never felt I was especially great and teaching Elementary level English, I did get to have some fun with them, and in the process even learn a little bit about Tajikistan.

And also, a little about myself and about the teaching of English.

Our final lesson was a case in point. The central grammar point of this lesson was the going to future for plans and intentions, and the theme was vacation. Our textbook built this lesson around a fake reality TV program in which two couples each choose a vacation but are then forced to go on the vacation chosen by the other couple. By way of leading into the topic, I asked my students to interview each other about their last vacations.

Most of the students who take English lessons with our school are quite privileged. I've gotten used to students telling me about exotic vacation in the Bahamas and the Swiss Alps, and I expected the same from these ladies. Instead, one student told me that she had never taken a vacation. Two others described vacations a couple of years back to visit relations in Tajikistan. On these vacations, the women had stayed not in five-star accomodations but with relatives who, it was clear, didn't have much room to accomodate them: in a previous lesson, when I asked these ladies to draw their family trees, I was told in all earnestness that this would be very difficult, because they all came from families with more than ten siblings, had parents with more than ten siblings, and had brothers and sisters whose own families were shaping up to be of similar size. I doubt that any of these women's relatives have a spare room for out-of-town guests.

I am amazed at what these women seem to have overcome to be where they are today. Tajikistan, I gather, is still a very conservative country. Except in the capital, women are generally expected to wear hijab (traditional Muslim head coverings for women). More than one of these women said they had come to Moscow at least in part because they did not want to abide by this custom. All seem to have escaped the traditional women's lot of being constantly pregnant; some of these women had no children at all, and the others had only one or two.

There are two things, I've found, that can lead an EFL teacher to doubt the value of what he does. The first is the sense that, since his students are generally pretty wealthy people, he is just in the business of helping rich people get even richer. The second is the nagging worry that he is an agent of cultural imperialism and globalization. When a teacher, such as your roving reporter, has eaten at McDonalds on three continents and seen signs in English directing him to the toilets of three continents' airports, it's hard for him not to wonder if he isn't a small water drop in the seemingly unstoppable tsunami of American cultural dominance.

My Tajik ladies have turned that idea on its head. English isn't making them less Tajik. It's opening up the world for them--literally. I know that eventually, all of these ladies will use English, whether in business or on their travels, to speak to people from all over the world. That point was reinforced for me at the end of my lesson, when I had my students work in pairs to plan their dream vacations. Two of my students decided to plan a pilgrimage to Mecca. I can easily see these women, dressed in the plain white clothing required of hajji (pilgrims to Mecca), conversing with fellow believers from every corner of the globe--in English they learned from me.

But EFL teachers provide their students with so much more than the opportunity to make chit-chat on holidays abroad. I realized this last night, as I sat watching a documentary on my computer. Through the magic of the Internet, I've managed to find Eyes on the Prize, a landmark PBS documentary about the Civil Rights Movement. I've been working my way through the long (14 hours) series, and last night I got to the final hour, which deals with the lasting legacy of the movement. At one point, footage is shown of Chinese protesters in Tianamen Square, holding up makeshift banners with words that once echoed from every mound and molehill of Mississippi:

We shall overcome.

And, I realized, those words didn't get on that banner by magic. No. Some intrepid adventurer went off to China to teach English, and taught those words to whoever made that banner. And in the process, he taught them so much more.