Our Group Disperses Once Again
It's finished. For over three months, this group of people has sat in the same room for several hours a day, four days a week, and often been in touch by e-mail on weekends. After tomorrow, we will not meet again.
The members of our little temporary family range in age from early twenties to early sixties, and we hail from every continent except Australia and Antarctica. For these weeks we have read the same materials, discussed and written about a wide variety of different views about topics that have been astonishingly varied: law, physics, obedience, vaccination, global warming, the purpose of literature.
We have shared and learned from each other, have heard presentations on new and ancient knowledge, on Nobel Prize winners, and on favourite books, fiction and non-fiction, old and new.
For me, this cycle of groups that form and disperse has been repeating for over thirty years. During all that time, it has remained endlessly interesting, surprising, new.
For I am an ESL teacher: my students are educated adults, many with advanced degrees and/or professional experience. Over the course of my career, I have helped to hone the English language skills of students from more than eighty countries. I began my ESL career when our profession was brand new, and teaching my students has been like having a front-row seat from which to watch our planetary culture evolving.
How fortunate I am in my work. What a privilege it is to have the opportunity to share ideas with these ever-changing, ever-evolving groups of people from all over the world. And how much I have learned over the years from these intrepid adventurers who have chosen Canada as a new or second home.
Each term end brings the same feelings: the poignancy of losing this particular group, and at the same time, the pleasure of seeing them move forward toward their goals, the delight at seeing how much more English they have acquired in the time we've spent together.
From this term, there is one particular table that will linger long in my memory. The five students who sat there were from five countries and three continents. All term, they studied together, planned leisure activities together and even regularly cooked for each other.
This seems to me to represent a level of conscious friendship, learning and cooperation I have never seen in an ESL class before, and it inspires me, gives me hope for our planet's future. For if there is one lesson we must learn in the 21st century, it is that we are one.
As long ago my Girl Guides used to say at the end of our meetings, "Go well and safely," all my students from English 098.
The members of our little temporary family range in age from early twenties to early sixties, and we hail from every continent except Australia and Antarctica. For these weeks we have read the same materials, discussed and written about a wide variety of different views about topics that have been astonishingly varied: law, physics, obedience, vaccination, global warming, the purpose of literature.
We have shared and learned from each other, have heard presentations on new and ancient knowledge, on Nobel Prize winners, and on favourite books, fiction and non-fiction, old and new.
For me, this cycle of groups that form and disperse has been repeating for over thirty years. During all that time, it has remained endlessly interesting, surprising, new.
For I am an ESL teacher: my students are educated adults, many with advanced degrees and/or professional experience. Over the course of my career, I have helped to hone the English language skills of students from more than eighty countries. I began my ESL career when our profession was brand new, and teaching my students has been like having a front-row seat from which to watch our planetary culture evolving.
How fortunate I am in my work. What a privilege it is to have the opportunity to share ideas with these ever-changing, ever-evolving groups of people from all over the world. And how much I have learned over the years from these intrepid adventurers who have chosen Canada as a new or second home.
Each term end brings the same feelings: the poignancy of losing this particular group, and at the same time, the pleasure of seeing them move forward toward their goals, the delight at seeing how much more English they have acquired in the time we've spent together.
From this term, there is one particular table that will linger long in my memory. The five students who sat there were from five countries and three continents. All term, they studied together, planned leisure activities together and even regularly cooked for each other.
This seems to me to represent a level of conscious friendship, learning and cooperation I have never seen in an ESL class before, and it inspires me, gives me hope for our planet's future. For if there is one lesson we must learn in the 21st century, it is that we are one.
As long ago my Girl Guides used to say at the end of our meetings, "Go well and safely," all my students from English 098.