The Adventure Begins

It's a terrifying experience, standing in front of thirty young faces, junior high students, for the first time. What are they thinking? Even if I could have heard their thoughts, I wouldn't have understood them.

For most of my students, this was a new experience as well, the first opportunity to learn English with a native speaker and their first chance to form a relationship with an American. On my first day in each class, I introduced myself and let my new students ask me questions. My seventh grade students asked me about the movie “American Pie.” This class, 7C was probably my favorite, and when I was teaching them, it reminded me of my youngest brother Tim, also in seventh grade. When they brought up “American Pie,” and all the other adult elements of American pop culture, I felt like their big sister... Hey, you guys shouldn't know about that! It bothered me to think that these were their only images of America. I suppose if I only watched “The Hills,” I’d think that all American girls were blonde too. But I couldn't just tell my students what life is like back in the States, growing up in upstate New York (No, I can’t see the Statue of Liberty from my house), and my home in Chicago (Chicago Bulls! Barack Obama!), or explain that my story is just a fleck of the diversity of the American experience. I needed to be more than an English teacher. 

I hoped that our friendship would expand their ideas of my culture even as I was learning what it means to be Indonesian and in particular, learning about the experience of Papuan Indonesians, in the province where I was posted for my one-year Fulbright experience. Our relationship took the learning beyond grammar technicalities so my students could know me as a person.  

~Rebecca Miller, Fulbright Fellow, Class of 2007

Comments

[Renee Jackson]

This was a pleasure to read. Thank you for sharing with us.