Every Tuesday morning I travel to Nationalities Senior Center in North Philadelphia hoping that I won’t be found out. While I walk the six blocks from the subway I compulsively feel inside my bag to ensure I have copies of my lesson for the day. A lesson plan, which I am sad to admit, I agonized over picking out.
On the first day of class my Asian learners addressed me as spelling? Or that there are a million questions they could ask and I wouldn’t know answer?
If anything, I felt sorry that the group was stuck with me. But I taught on. Every week a core group of Chinese and
‘teacher’. I smiled and greeted them, but inside I cringed. I wasn’t a teacher. I had never tried to teach anyone anything before. And even if I had attempted, I never remember any successes. What if they knew that though I have a degree in English Writing I still struggle with grammar and Vietnamese elders came over to my folding table exactly at 9:30 a.m. prepared with pen and paper. We would go through the lesson together as a group and I encouraged each learner to participate.
I soon started noticing something strange. The learner who swore she was unable to read was reading. And the gentleman who said he could read but not speak in English was holding a conversation with me. One learner was adamant that she couldn’t write. Yet her penmanship was better than most adults I know. All my learners underestimated their abilities. They just needed a little positive reinforcement.
I soon found that I also needed the same thing. After a lesson a few weeks ago one learner told me that she liked how I wrote things out on the dry erase board clearly. It was a simple comment but it made me feel good. And after each class I gained a little bit more confidence.
Before, when I had little confidence teaching, I would sit by myself at the table after class. Now I sit with my learners and I become their student. They teach me words in Chinese and excitedly clap when I pronounce something correctly. It feels nice to be able to say that we are all learning together.
By Julie Gottlieb
