By the Numbers

When I was six or so, I had to memorize a string of nine numbers. About a year earlier, I had learned to count to one hundred by rote as a requirement for entering kindergarten at the public school. My oldest brother, Mike, helped me with both of these tasks, as well as tying my shoes, another pre-req for kindergarten. The string of nine numbers was broken into chunks of three numbers, two numbers, and four numbers. Mike had me repeat each chunk over and over until I had each one tattooed on my mind and could call it forth on command.

Of course, I was learning my Social Security number.

There is little a person can accomplish in the US without a Social Security number. School enrollment, bank accounts, any kind of credit, and all interactions with local, state, and federal government require it. In grad school, we graduate assistants had to type the last four digits of our SSNs into the copy machine for it to function. And it tallied our paper usage according to the number, refusing to let us make more copies when our maximum quota had been reached.

All the students in my ESOL classes have Social Security numbers that were issued as part of their immigration process as refugees. Few have memorized their numbers; even fewer understand how important this basic identifier is in the US.

The students in Rebecca’s Vocational ESOL class are ostensibly eligible for and actively seeking employment. I say “ostensibly” because they are not all great candidates for the job market. Take Lindu for example. (I have changed all the names of the refugees I write about to protect their privacy.) He is 65 years old and has been in the US for about a year and a half. He began learning English when he arrived here.

“He’s not going to get a job,” Rebecca tells me, speaking quietly so the English-speaking administrators of ASIA, Inc., won’t overhear. “He’s got diabetes. He’s told me several times that he wants to be on SSI. They keep him in this class so they can bill for it.”

Rebecca worked at the International Institute as an Immigration Specialist for eleven years, helping refugees and asylees fill out endless government paperwork for things like changing visa status or petitioning for a family member to enter the country. She understands the complexity of the citizenship process, as well as the byzantine process of applying for and maintaining government funding.

On the second day I showed up to volunteer with her class, we spent the first full hour helping eight students sign in on three separate forms. One form required only a signature and printed name, the other two required the student’s SSN and signature, as well as the class start and end times.

As I walked into class about five minutes late, one of the students was on his way out.

“You’re not staying?” Rebecca asked with a small smile.

“No,” he replied; “Working. Cleveland.”

“But you signed in…”

The student smiled back and turned both his palms up with a slight shrug of his shoulders, as if to say I don’t know.

“See,” Rebecca turned to me, “they don’t really care if they stay; they just want the signature so they can bill for the class.”

Rebecca then spent a few minutes venting some of her frustrations about how this agency “works the system” to get the most funding they can, whether or not the refugees are getting the services and support they need.

“This is really two classes,” she explained about the group of nineteen or so who are usually in her Tuesday/Thursday group. “Half are pretty good and already have some kind of work. The other half, well…”

The “other half” are more like Lindu: older, less skilled, hardly fluent in English at all, not realistically capable of being employed. And yet, by placing them in a Vocational class, the agency can bill the government for a lot more money than if they were in, say, a Basic Life Skills class.

“This is a country of documentation,” Rebecca explains to the students as they struggle with the forms. “We have to fill out a lot of forms and document everything here.”

Once the forms were done, Rebecca spent the second hour of class teaching that “other half” about how SSNs are arranged (3-2-4) and helping them memorize their respective numbers. Meanwhile, I worked with the three more advanced students on directional phrases, like next to, across from, and in between.

Rebecca is leaving this class in two weeks to start a new job with an immigration law firm in town.

“When I go,” she said to me, “I’ll recommend you for the position!”

She said this with enthusiasm, as if it were a gift she was giving me. I responded coolly.

Both Susan, the teacher of the International Institute class I help in, and Rebecca have shown me how difficult, demanding, and taxing it is to make a living teaching ESOL. Susan tells me how hard it is to maintain a household budget when she gets paid for six weeks of teaching, then not for two weeks between classes. Rebecca tells me how she’s been struggling for six weeks to teach this one class made up of two distinctly different learning levels—and how she has asked repeatedly for an assistant, with no response until I showed up this week.

I don’t think she realizes how back-handed her compliment of a recommendation is.

Why would I want to take over a job that demands so much physical and mental energy, that offers very little in the way of administrative or material support, that pays below minimum wage (per hour), and that offers no long-term security or benefits?

The answer is Pabi’s face when he could finally recite his SSN back to me at the end of class without looking at the scrap of paper it was scribbled on. His deeply tanned and creased skin beamed with pride, much as mine had so long ago when I recited my own SSN to my brother, then to my mother, and finally to the principal at school who noted it in my permanent record.

Yes, we are a country of documentation, of numbers and forms and bureaucracy. But we are also, more importantly, a country of people, of faces and names and stories. 

Teacher At Large

I think Karma has a vision problem.

That sounds like an incredibly deep statement, until you realize that Karma is the name I am using for one of the adult students in the Basic Life Skills ESOL class I volunteer in.

He is tall and thin and shy, usually seated next to his wife, who is much more adept at speaking and understanding English, and who always feeds him the answers to questions in class. I include him in my small group work when I can—sometimes he won’t join us or goes to the bathroom for half an hour instead. I once had him copy all the letters of the alphabet on his own; it took him forty-five minutes to get through letter G.

Yesterday, we worked on the days of the week. Susan had distributed a hand-out with calendar grids that had different days of the week marked with an X, topped by the question “what day is it?”; the students were to identify which day of the week was marked, then write the sentence, “it is Monday (etc.)” after it.

I circulated among the forty- to sixty-year-old Bhutanese students, reminding Preba to capitalize the first letter of days of the week, praising Mahasweda for spelling Wednesday correctly. I gave each person as much encouragement and praise as possible.

When I got to Karma, he was manipulating the page as if he were trying to see by dim candlelight, though the overhead fluorescents glared down at us in stark blueishness. He held the page in both hands and peered closely at it with one eye then the other, studying the marks intensely. The days were abbreviated as Mon., Tues., etc. He couldn't seem to make heads or tails of them.

I turned his sheet over, and on the blank back I wrote out the seven days of the week in a column, using the simplest and clearest printing I could. Next to each day I drew a straight, empty line.

“Write these here, Karma,” I instructed, indicating the blank lines. Then we said the days out loud together, me first, Karma echoing. When he hesitated to write anything, I broke it down a little more.

“What letter is this?” I was pointing to the capital M at the beginning of Monday.

After a minute or so of deep study, Karma said, “M.”

“Yes! M, O, N…”

We spelled the word out loud together, then I pointed at the blank line again. “Write it here,” I said.

Susan continued her lesson with the rest of the class, but Karma and I worked on our own lesson at the back table, quietly ignoring everyone else. Karma always seems to respond better when he is my sole focus. He gets lost or intimidated or confused by the larger group. And his obvious struggle to see the marks on this paper make me think his vision is more at fault than his mind.

By the end of class, about 45 minutes after he and I started, Karma had written out all seven days of the week. We spelled each one out loud together, pronouncing them fully as well. I made sure to touch his arm and tell him how well he was doing several times. When Susan dismissed the class with her usual “we are finished for today,” Karma’s wife came over to us.

“Karma did really good work today, Mahasweda,” I gushed. “Make sure he practices these at home!” She nodded at me solemnly, taking Karma’s worksheet and folding it into her bag.

“Thank you,” she said. “Namaste.”

As the class filed out of our basement room, I felt immense relief.

I have been helping with this group for a little over a year now. I know all of their names and some of their families. I have given some of them rides to their homes on wintry days, met some of their children and grandchildren. I know which ones have chronic back problems, headaches, difficult spouses; I can tell who practices English at home and who doesn't.

Increasingly, I feel relief when class is over. I become more and more frustrated with repeating the same exercises and sentences every day, every week. I find myself bored in the middle of a small group session.

I am ready to do something else.

Yesterday afternoon, I met with Marjorie at Project Learn about a new class I will be teaching next month. It is a conversation class for students who have tested out of Project Learn’s highest level, who are technically too fluent for any more classes. They are considered fluent by testing standards, but they are not as confident with their abilities as they would like to be. Marjorie tells me most of these students have jobs, some of them in management or high scientific positions, but feel they need more practice to converse easily. Marjorie has already outlined a syllabus and ordered textbooks for the once-weekly evening class.

“But you can alter or amend the syllabus however you like,” she said. “And feel free to include activities that get them out of the classroom. The art museum is right across the street and is free on Thursdays. Or you could send them on a scavenger hunt in the library, so they’ll have to talk to people to find items on their list.”

I will teach this class solo, not as an assistant, but as the actual teacher. And because this class is beyond the scope of Project Learn’s curriculum, I will not have to adhere to any kind of testing or evaluation for completion. It is only for the benefit of the students, to build their confidence.

That’s why I won’t be getting paid for it. There is no funding in PL’s budget for this type of class, so a volunteer teacher is the only way it can happen.

“I've been looking for a way to get you some compensation, though,” Marjorie said after I accepted the position whole-heartedly. “Would you like to be a Tester-At-Large?”

What the heck is that?

A Tester At Large is trained to evaluate ESOL students for fluency level and goes to satellite classrooms as needed to conduct such evaluations. Marjorie explained how the method I will use is largely subjective, based on how well I can understand a particular student in terms of accent, vocabulary, and syntax. It’s the kind of evaluation my French professor used during the causarieswe did in my undergrad French classes.

I enthusiastically accepted this on-call, monetarily compensated position.

So this time around, I am reinventing myself as a conversation teacher and ESOL Tester-At-Large. 

As I read over the syllabus Marjorie had made, I got really excited about this new class. My classroom will be equipped with a projector and computer hook-up, so I can show videos or YouTube clips. I can give homework assignments of short essays, bring in artifacts or newspaper articles to discuss, use the copy machine for handouts, anything I want.

This new opportunity is exciting for a couple of reasons.  First, I’ll be the teacher. No longer just an assistant. Nice.

Second, I will finally be able to move on from “My name is… What is your name?” to actual conversation. I will have the chance to teach grammar points, too, one of my favorite things to do. (I know; I am a bona fide grammar geek. Marjorie and I bonded over this shared obsession.) Prepositions, articles, and verb agreement are always at the top of the priority list for new English learners.

My class won’t begin until July—the 3^rd, so we will begin by discussing Independence Day and a little American history. Perhaps we will expand that to include some history of the countries the students came from, as well.

In the meantime, I will begin assisting a vocational ESOL class at ASIA, Inc., on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The teacher there is Rebecca Jenkins, formerly of the International Institute, who organized last year’s Oath of Allegiance Ceremony. I am looking forward to reconnecting with her and seeing some of the folks I interviewed at ASIA, Inc. while writing my thesis.

Now, my summer looks a little less bleak, a little more promising. Dare I say I am excited? I can hardly wait to meet the newest me, Tester-At-Large and Teacher In Her Own Right. 

Invention is the Mother of Self

So I graduated last week. I mean I really graduated: wore a cap and gown and Master’s hood, listened to speeches, heard my name called after the words “receiving the Master of Fine Arts,” walked across a stage, and shook the hand of the university’s president. My family took me out for a special dinner afterward; we took pictures and exchanged cards for my graduation, mother’s day, my husband’s birthday.

After that heady weekend of lofty speeches and heartfelt congratulations, I’ve experienced a lull. I am now officially unemployed. I do not know how to handle that. I’ve been a student for almost eight years. Before that, I went from job to job with no downtime in between. From the time I finished high school until last weekend, I was unemployed for maybe a total of three months. And that’s over a span of some twenty-five years. No wonder I feel at loose ends now.

A lot of people have asked me over the past few weeks: “what’s next?” I’m sure these people have the best of intentions, but I have grown to dread and loathe that question. Because I do not know what’s next. For the first time in maybe twenty years. I do not know what’s next.

Some well-meaning friends say that that’s a good thing, that it’s very exciting, that I’m lucky to have this chance to reinvent myself.

The thing is, though, I’ve already reinvented myself. Several times. As a non-traditional student, as a licensed optician, as a childless-by-choice wife, as a writer. How many times do I have to “invent” myself before I can just be who I am already?

Where others see excitement or luck, I feel trepidation, uncertainty, chaos. I’ve had solid structure to my days for a long time, deadlines and requirements to meet, clear expectations and goals. But these were all imposed on me—with my full assent and cooperation—from outside agencies. I’ve spent these decades fulfilling requirements, thinking I would find…what? Approbation? Fulfillment? Success? I guess I thought that someday, somehow, all these programs and structures I was following would lead me to a revelation about who I am, who I want to be, what I can do with my life.

Every single one of these outside programs I’ve followed has lead me, instead, to disappointment or frustration or disillusionment. I often glimpse the me I want to be, but she always dissipates like a mirage in the desert. She is subsumed by the static of life, the advertisements that tell me to buy things, that tell me I’m not making enough money, that tell me to put demands and templates on myself that someone else dreamed up so they could make money off my uncertainty.

Well, now I don’t have as much of that static around me. Being done with school and without a job, I am in a calm, quiet place where I can see the falseness of that static, hear its corrosive influence, recognize its artificiality. In this island of peace, free from the structures on which I have depended for so long, I am trying to find that image of myself again, the self that is true and pure and one hundred per cent me, no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives.

If I could just hold that image—the image of me as a strong, capable, valuable individual who contributes to society in a meaningful way and loves and accepts herself, warts and all, with unabashed pride—if I could just hold that image in my mind long enough and believe in it enough, I think I could stop re-inventing myself and just be me.

But that seems disingenuous, as well. I don’t want to be static, rigid, unchanging. What if the real, true me is in a constant state of flux? What if the real me is still evolving, adapting, growing? I am not the same Sharon who delivered singing telegrams for a living, or the Sharon who drank a case of beer every weekend, or the Sharon who worked 9-5 in a doctor’s office for eight years, or the Sharon who dyed her hair a different color every month and pierced her ears four times. I am Sharon 2014. I am the me of today, right now.

So, I guess the answer to the question is infinity. I have to invent myself infinity times. Every day that I awaken, alive and alert, I am inventing myself and my world. Every time I apply for a job, or introduce myself to a new person, or walk out my front door to engage with the world, I am inventing myself.

The trick is to enjoy this reinvention, to embrace it and see it as the joy of living in an unpredictable and ever-expanding universe. The trick is to accept fear and uncertainty as the only certainties we have, and to harness them as energy for exploration, discovery, unending curiosity about what’s next, what’s new, what’s around this corner.

Tonight, I am attending the New Volunteer Orientation at Project Learn of Summit County. I have an opportunity to teach a conversation class for ESOL students of very high fluency. I am excited and terrified of this opportunity, but I am going to dive into it and let it take me somewhere new. Perhaps I’ll find my new self in that new place, just waiting to be invented again.

I'll keep you posted on that.