Untethered

It's still surprising to me that, after living in Akron for 25 years, there are places I never knew existed. Or maybe I knew they existed, but only on a theoretical, almost mythical level. Experiencing them first-hand for the first time feels like discovery.

My husband often takes the bus to his job in downtown Akron, and we use public transportation almost as a rule while on vacation in New York, Chicago, Paris, Prague. Deciphering color-coded maps and navigating labyrinthine platforms is part of the adventure of exploring a new city. Emerging from echo-filled subway halls to find ourselves in front of the museum or landmark we had aimed for is a singular kind of victory. And while I never balk at these kinds of adventures in other cities, I--like most other car-owners in the car-centric Midwest--have avoided public transportation in my own hometown.

Until yesterday.

I cancelled my Advanced Conversation Class last night so I could spend the full day with my hubby. He was off work yesterday, so we spent the afternoon exploring downtown Akron.

We kicked off our "hometown adventure" with a bus ride from our near-west-side neighborhood to Main Street in downtown. We walked the half mile from our driveway to a bus stop on a thoroughfare, then we waited.

And waited. And waited.

My husband reassured me that this waiting was an integral part of using mass transit in Akron. Our eyes stayed peeled on the busy intersection just up the street from our stop, hoping that each large vehicle that glinted in the midday sun was our bus. Garbage trucks, delivery vans, and U-Hauls fooled us time after time. My shiny enthusiasm faded as my feet and lower back began to ache from standing on the sidewalk. There are no benches at this bus stop, nor at most of them around town. And it's really lucky that yesterday was so sunny and pleasant because there is no cover from the elements, either. I began to understand why the majority of people at bus stops appear so tired and beaten down.

When our giant chariot finally arrived, only about ten minutes late, I boarded first.

"Hi," I said to the heavy-set, gray-haired driver. "I've never ridden the bus before. I'm faculty at the University of Akron, and I read that faculty and students can ride the bus for free now. Is that true?"

The driver smiled from behind his dilation-grade wrapped sunglasses.

"Yes," he answered with surprising enthusiasm. "You just slide your ID card right here."

I did as he indicated and proceeded onto the bus. My hubby paid his single fare, and we were off. There were only three other people in the vehicle that was clearly meant for at least forty. We arrived at our destination on Main Street in about fifteen minutes.

After a delightfully greasy lunch at one of downtown's better eateries, my hubby and I decided to find the covered walkways and underground tunnels that purportedly allow pedestrians to navigate the bulk of downtown without exposure to the elements. When I had picked up my faculty parking pass a week earlier, I had also picked up a "Downtown Akron Parking Guide," a document that was curiously subtitled "and Skywalk Map."

I'm not the biggest sci-fi buff around, but even I know that if you ever have the opportunity to experience something called a "Skywalk," you should take it.

We started at the parking deck by the former Polsky department store, which is now a part of the university and my new workplace. We climbed to the third floor of the deck and walked across an enclosed bridge that connects to the building's fourth floor. This is just the first of many Escher-esque qualities this converted building presents.

On Polsky's third floor—which always feels like a first floor because it's entrance is the main one used by most people, directly accessed from High Street—I showed my hubby the writing lab where I will be working and introduced him to my new boss. Then we were off to more not-so-secret walkways.

We crossed State Street, one story up, then traversed the Key Building, the Malone Building, and the Ohio Building by means of glass-enclosed, air-born tunnels offering lovely views of rooftops and alleyways I had never seen before. A few hurried people passed us, but we ambled along, enjoying the "Get Moving and Breathe" signs posted at intervals and encouraging office workers to "increase energy levels and health!" We crossed Church Street, still suspended above the fray, and continued through City Hall, which advertised its bureaucracy with notably drab walls and flickering fluorescent lights. After crossing above East Bowery Street, we descended two floors in an elevator and arrived at Main Place. Here I really lost my bearings.

In front of us was a shiny lobby area, almost deserted, and rounded stairs that descended into darkness, like the stairs into a subway station. I quelled the trepidation in my chest and bounded down the steps behind my brave hubby.

I landed not before a bustling, smoky, screeching platform, but a quiet, smooth, slanting hallway lined with back-lit glass block on one side and glittering mounted glass sculptures on the other. I felt I had entered another country.

This was the tunnel that passes beneath Main Street and connects downtown workers to the Cascade Plaza on the west side of the street. I had often heard rumors about tunnels under Akron, often in the context of early Akron history or obvious conjecture. Here was such a tunnel in real life! I snapped a photo with my phone to convince myself it was real. Thudding and muffled grinding sounds pounded ominously overhead. I began to think maybe there was a subway system down here that remained a secret all these years, as well.

We emerged from our underground adventure in front of the First Merit Tower and discovered the source of all that ominous noise: workers were using back-hoes and jackhammers to dig up the cement of the courtyard behind the bank. No secret subway, just quotidian construction.

We capped our day of exploration with a spirited sprint across the Route 59 Interbelt and a pleasant walk to the Glendale Steps. We each picked and ate a sumptuous strawberry from the edible garden planted among the historic steps as fortification for the climb upward. At the top, we strolled the community garden and took the trampled shortcut between houses to Maple Street, where we caught an out-bound Number 26 back to our neighborhood.

Riding the local bus may be a stretch as adventures go, but I feel so much more ownership over my hometown now. My husband and I repeatedly used the word "untethered" to describe how we felt during our time downtown. We didn’t have to worry about feeding a parking meter, or circling back to where a car was parked, or whether traffic would be congested on Exchange Street as the parade of commuters made their way to the expressway at five o'clock.

And even though yesterday's weather was as perfect as it gets in Northeast Ohio, I know that it won't last. Very soon, it will be cold and windy and snowing. And then, knowing how to get from point A to point B under cover and out of the elements will be a survival skill of the first order.

The Evolution of Language

"Why is there this American English and then the English that is used in England?"

Rosa asked me this question in the middle of this week's Advanced Conversation class. I conduct this class for about half a dozen English language learners on Thursday evenings at the public library. My students have tested out of all the other levels of ESOL offered through Project Learn, but still wish to increase their fluency. These two hours become something of a hybrid between a casual conversation group and an English grammar class.

When Rosa posed her question, we had been discussing the word "haste," both its definition as a noun and its verb form. I had mentioned that the verb "hasten" is not very common in American speech, that it might sound pretentious, and that Brits might use it more frequently than Americans.

I countered her inquiry with one of my own.

"So, why is the Spanish spoken in Mexico different from the Spanish spoken in Spain?"

A gratifying collective "aaahhh" arose from the other students. Rosa smiled a bit herself, but was not so quick to concede the point.

"But they left Mexico a long time ago," she said, meaning, I am sure, the Conquistadors. "And the Spanish we use in Mexico is our own."

"It's exactly the same thing in America," I said. "If we went back two hundred and fifty years, everyone on this spot would be speaking more or less the same as they were speaking in England at the time."

I went on to explain how any time a group is geographically separated from another group for a period of time, the language of that group will change in its own way, most likely in a different way from how the same language may change in the original group. Language changes to reflect the way people really talk to each other in the real world. I also mentioned how a lot of different immigrant groups have come to America over the years, and a bit of the language of each group has become part of American English.

Before we could return to the lesson we had been working on—a few paragraphs of narrative with inconsistent verb tenses I had asked them to correct—Rosa had another great question.

"But, we hear people saying things all the time, and sometimes they are saying things wrong. How do we know when they are saying things wrong, or if they are right? We are still learning, so how do we know?"

She told us a brief story about when she was cleaning houses at one point, and a man had used a colorful, oblique slang term to indicate that he needed to use the bathroom. It was a phrase Rosa was not familiar with, so she had to ask a colleague to interpret it for her. She was visibly disgusted by the phrase, which involved something about a kitchen.

"Yes," I conceded with sympathy, "You are in a difficult spot. You will hear people say things incorrectly, use poor grammar and slang. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. We are all here to improve our English speaking skills, and all I can do is teach you the best I can."

"But," Rosa said, furrowing her brow, "Are there words people use that are not in the dictionary? Aren't they wrong?"

"Oh, you'll hear all kinds of things on the street you won't find in a dictionary," I said. "Language is fluid, and it changes all the time."

I explained how there are people who work for the dictionary companies whose job it is to read widely and determine which new words are becoming common parts of everyday speech, and which words have fallen out of use. These words are added to or subtracted from our dictionaries every few years.

"Particularly when it comes to technology," I said, "New words appear all the time. Take for example this word."

I wrote fax on the white board.

"Do you guys even know what a fax is? Does anyone fax anymore?"

Ying and Yuwei nodded in acknowledgement, so I continued.

"This word came from this word," I said, writing facsimile above it. Yuwei pronounced it "fak-smile," so I said it aloud for them.

"A facsimile is a copy. When those machines came out, where you could put a piece of paper in the machine here in Akron, and a person in, say, Chicago would receive a copy of that same paper, we started using the word facsimile in everyday speech. Then, because we like to shorten our words, it eventually became just fax."

General nods of understanding encouraged me.

"And how about this word?"

I wrote text on the white board.

"Of course, text is a word that has been around for a long time," I said. "But until about five or ten years ago, we never used it as a verb."

Here I added –ing to it and wrote textednext to it.

"Now, it’s very common to say, 'he texted me,' or 'I'm texting you now.' See how that works? And now these words are in our dictionary, where they weren't at some point in the past."

As I spoke and the lesson unfolded in a way I hadn't anticipated, I had a feeling of déjà-vu. I can remember Dr. Jeantet, one of my college French professors, delivering almost the identical lesson during an undergrad class. And the words of Dr. Palacas, my favorite linguistics professor, also echoed in my mind. He was the first person to convince me that language is fluid, that it changes constantly, and that those changes are generally nothing to fear. I had been an adamant defender of rigid grammar rules, a denier of the plasticity of language until I took his class. He also taught me the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammar, something that helped me ease off on my Nazi-like corrections to friends' grammar. (I know that friends of mine who read this will scoff, but really, I used to be much more annoying than I am now.)

We continued working on the verb tenses in the narrative I had given the class as homework and took a couple of forays into other grammatical points. When we were done, Rosa stuck around for a few minutes, telling me about a trip she and her husband had taken to Switzerland one time. Her husband is American and speaks only a little Spanish, something Rosa is helping him with. He speaks no French, so when they were in the French-speaking section of Switzerland, Rosa had to interpret for him. She found it a nice turnaround, a kind of level playing field where he got to experience a bit of how she feels in America most days.

I do feel for my students who are trying to learn English amid a cacophony of slang and casual misuse. Sure, I can explain how the examples they bring me are incorrect and how to say them in a more grammatical way. But how can they distinguish between the English they should use and the English that makes them sound even less fluent? How do any of us know what is "right" and what is "wrong" when people talk to us?

I think the answer is to read as much good writing as possible. By seeing ideas expressed well in prose, whether it's in a news source or a novel, one begins to absorb the grammar and syntax of effective English without the artificiality of grammar lessons.

In the meantime, we all just have to continue to tread water in the turbulent river of an ever-changing language, occasionally bumping into the crags of slang or the stony dams of Grammar Nazis.

Van said that when she recently said to someone, "I'm free on Saturday," that person corrected her by saying this: "It should be 'I will be free on Saturday." She wondered if they were right.

"Not really," I said. "Both of those are perfectly acceptable. They mean the same thing. That person was just being overly prescriptive."

And that is the most fitting example of how not only language, but we ourselves can change. Ten years ago, I might have been that overly prescriptive person, wielding my grammar as a weapon of intimidation. I'd like to think I've evolved beyond that.

Cheeks, Chin, Chest

In one of my undergrad French classes, the professor took me to task for my minor mispronunciation of the words for sweater and chicken. The latter, une poule, employs a full, round "oo" sound, with a hint of a wat the end, much like the American word for a game of billiards. The former, un pull, since it lacks the o-u combination, must be a tighter "oo" sound. He described the latter as "saying an e sound, but with your lips in the oo form." Even as my fluency progressed and I expressed more and more complex ideas in written French, I could never hear or produce any difference in those two sounds.

This humiliating experience, as it turns out, was excellent training for teaching ESOL.

In Thursday's class at ASIA, Inc., we focused on parts of the body. This is always a nice, concrete lesson that students respond well to. And it's valuable, basic information they need for talking to doctors and understanding safety precautions in a job setting. Besides, one's body is ground zero for experiencing and understanding the universe, so naming its parts in the predominant language of a culture is a fundamental component of becoming a full member of that society.

Using myself as the first model, I took the class through a list of head-to-toe vocabulary.

"What is this?" I asked, pointing to my head.

"Head," several students said, after a brief pause and a few blank stares. I wrote head on the white board, saying each letter aloud.

"How many heads do I have?" I like to include the spelling of numbers in this exercise because it not only seems logical, but it reinforces sight words that are impossible to sound out phonetically, like one and two.

We continued downward through the body: eyes, nose, ears, shoulders, stomach, back, legs, etc. Once all the vocabulary was on the white board, I handed out copies of a page from the textbook. It was a drawing of a woman's face next to that of a man's body standing in profile, both with numbered, blank lines pointing to various body parts to be labeled. I got them started with eyes, then let them work on their own. Lots of Nepali conversation buzzed as they scrutinized the list of words on the white board and helped each other figure out what each line was pointing to. I circled the table slowly, periodically correcting a mislabeled or misspelled item.

After a while, I noticed that everyone was mislabeling cheek and chin, sometimes wildly so. Sanji had a cheek labeled as "shoulder;" Lindu had it marked as "foot." Everyone simple left the line for "chest" blank. How had they gone so terribly astray? I talked a couple of individuals through the corrections, but when I came back around to them, I noticed that they had mislabeled the same cheek again. 

Clearly, some linguistic confusion was brewing.

When most of the students had the majority of the body parts labeled, and time was slipping toward our lunch break, I erased the board and called for everyone's attention. I wrote cheek on the board.

"What word is this?"

A few students said "chin" softly, while others said "cheek." One or two said nothing.

"C-h-e-e-k," I said, indicating each letter with my finger. "Cheek. Where are your cheeks?"

A few pointed to their chins, and a few pointed to their cheeks. One pointed to his chest. When I had gone around to help individuals, I had employed a lot of touching to indicate what was what. For cheek, I had gently pinched Asha's or Kamala's cheek; for chin, I had lightly scratched Lindu's thin, gray beard.

In front of the entire class, I took both my cheeks in my hands and wagged them out and in while saying the word cheeks, so my lips bounced together, giving the word a vibrating, cartoonish cadence. 

They all laughed, then pinched their own cheeks in the same way.

"Everyone stand up!" I thought getting them on their feet would energize them and add some physicality to the exercise, maybe reinforce the vocabulary with muscle memory. I wrote chin under cheek on the board, and chestunder that.

"Chee-ee-ee-ks," I said slowly, flapping the flesh of my face with my hands. The entire class mimicked me.

"Chi-i-i-n," I said, just as slowly, holding the lump of my chin between thumb and forefinger. They mimicked me again.

"Che-e-est," I said, thumping my chest with the palm of my right hand. More mimicking.

This was, honestly, the first time I had ever fully realized how very similar the sounds of these three words are. I guess I learned this vocabulary when I was very young, when the sounds of English seemed self-evident, before I had heard any other language or questioned the arbitrariness of linguistic memes. These three vowel sounds are as close as beet-bit-bet; no wonder my Southeast Asian students had difficulty differentiating them.

We repeated our vocalization and physicality of cheek-chin-chestseveral more times in unison, speeding up a little with each repetition. In the middle of this, Chandra—the very kind and patient man whose office door opens directly onto our classroom—walked through the room from the copy machine to his office. The smallest hint of surprise crossed his normally serene face for a second when he first turned the corner; then his face settled into the sweetly amused smile he always wears.

"Good!" I praised my clever students once they all got the order of words correct, then I erased the board and wrote: head, shoulders, knees, toes, eyes, ears, mouth, nose.

As we launched into the elementary school song, bending at the waist to touch our knees and toes, Chandra quietly closed his office door. That bemused little smile never left his face.

Bonus Post: The Gender Issue

There's a lot of discussion about gender in news and social media outlets these days: gender bias, gender equality, gender ambiguity, transgender people, etc. I'm usually fascinated by these discussions because gender is at once very personal and almost completely socially constructed. I tend to lean toward a gender continuum, which is to say that I dislike the idea of a strictly binary gender model. Gender identity is a huge part of being human, and I believe gender is much more complex and nuanced than the male/female dichotomy Western society tends to embrace.

Nevertheless, when it comes to teaching low-fluency English speakers, simplicity is paramount. I most often stick to really concrete subjects and examples, like objects in the room, or easily demonstrated activities, like walking or lifting.

I am substituting for Mary at ASIA, Inc. on Tuesday and Thursday this week. That means I am teaching both the higher and lower levels of this class from 9:30 am until 3:00 pm, with no help from volunteers. (I'm getting paid, too, which is nice.) I met with Mary Monday, and she suggested a few lessons, one of which was a mock-up of a form to fill out. This is a "vocational" ESOL class, so we try to tailor the lessons to the workplace, which for these people means knowing how to fill out a lot of forms. I don't mind this kind of lesson; it's pretty concrete and involves a lot of repetition, two cornerstones to teaching ESOL.

I saw the problem right away, however. This form included "gender" as one of the things to fill out. We've never broached the idea of gender with this group before. How, exactly, does one explain the complex, abstract idea of gender to people whose working English vocabulary is less than that of first graders?

I started with members of the family because I knew Rebecca had been working on that weeks ago. I wrote the word family on the white board and asked the class what members of the family they remembered. They started slowly, but soon began to call out "grandmother" and "son" with more confidence. I wrote each word in one of two columns under the heading of family. After we had a good long list in each column, I had everyone repeat the entire column after me.

"What are all of these?" I asked, indicating the list of females. I got mostly blank stares. "These are all women; right?" 

Bo and Puk, two of our newer students who understand more than most, nodded.

"I'm a woman; right?" I tapped my hand on my own chest. More people nodded and seemed to get it.

"So, what are all of these?" I indicated the list of males. "These are men; right?" More nods. I felt confident that they were following me, so I pressed on.

"Here's a couple of new words for you," I said as I wrote male above the column of male names and female above the other column. "Male means man, and female means woman. Okay?"

A few students were writing in their notebooks; the others sat and stared at me.

"I'm a woman, right?" I tapped my chest again. "I am female. Kamala is a female. Asha is a female. Nadi is a female. Right?"

Most everyone nodded in agreement. I felt we were making progress.

"So these are all males: father is male; uncle is male' grandfather is male; right?" A few nods. "Lindu is a male. Bo is a male. Puk is a male. Sanji," I confronted the student at the front of the table. "Are you a male?"

"No," he said with a smile. Bo and Puk laughed a little.

Sanji is an interesting student. He is in his late twenties or early thirties and more cute than handsome. He has a child-like quality about him, maybe because of his smooth, round features, maybe because of his easy smile and playful manner. On one of my first volunteer days in this class, as he was searching for his ID card in his wallet, I saw a business card with some handwriting on the back: "good sex call" and a phone number.

"Sanji," I said, laughing a little myself, "are you a man or a woman?"

"Wo…uh…man," he stuttered.

"Yes, you are a man," I said. "That means you are male. Am I a man or a woman?"

"Man…uh…no…woman," he said, shaking his head and correcting himself.

"Yes, I am a woman. That means I am female. Are you female?"

"Yes," he said.

We went back and forth like this a few times. The other students giggled and tried to explain to him in Nepali what he was doing wrong. After a while, we moved on to filling out the form mock-ups. I wrote some of the questions on the board to help them get words in the correct spaces, to write above the lines rather than below them. The second most difficult question was "marital status," but that was cleared up easily. Everyone in the room said they were married. Except Sanji. He couldn't seem to make up his mind about whether he was married or not. Nadi said he doesn't wear a ring, so he can't be married. But when I asked him directly, rephrasing the question to "do you have a wife," Sanji said yes.

He still marked an X in the box next to the F for the gender question. And we started all over again.

"Sanji, are you a man or a woman?"

"Yes, wo…uh, no…uh.. man."

"Sanji, are you male or female?"

"Fem…no…uh…male?"

Sanji, what gender are you?"

"Male!"

Through all of the lessons for the rest of the day, I came back to this one several times. By 2:30, I believe he got it because he hesitated less and answered correctly almost every time. Of course, by then the room was sweltering and all of us were a little punchy. Nadi started calling herself male just to be funny, I think. I let the class go a little early.

All of this only serves to reinforce my belief that gender is way more subtle and complex than the binary of male and female, no matter what cultural context it comes in. I'm pretty sure my students understood not only the lesson I was teaching them, but also the reasons Sanji's difficulty with the gender question was funny. Even if he was merely perplexed by the sounds and rhythms of English, he made us all think about the possibility of a more elastic gender continuum, and the constraining limitations of a binary gender system.

The real beauty in this lesson, for me, is that all of this was happening within the larger context of the 9t Gay Games being hosted in Cleveland, and many of its track and field events being held at The University of Akron. When I was done teaching Tuesday, my husband and I went to campus to catch what we could of those events. We watched a tall German man with a shock of platinum hair do some pole-vaulting, heard some announced results of long-distance running events, and just missed the end of the martial arts expo at the John S. Knight center. There were lots and lots of people of every imaginable size, shape, and fashion sense walking around our fair city, giving the whole place a festival atmosphere.

What I took away from my class Tuesday was that nuance of thought is not necessarily lost because of paucity of vocabulary. And what I hope the average American takes away from the Gay Games is that gender is not only way more complex than our society has allowed for, but also way less important—in the long run—than strength of character. Also, rainbows make fabulous sportswear.

A Closed Door Policy

I have become accustomed to some of the bureaucracy one must deal with when working for agencies funded by government entities—such as using terms like "government entities." The six-weeks-on/two-weeks-off class schedules, the ridiculously low pay, the cramped and ill-equipped classrooms: all of these I am used to now. But it seems that whenever I get a teensy bit comfortable with how things work, another curve ball comes whizzing out of the blue to knock me on the head.

I went bouncing on down the stairs to the Project Learn offices at the main public library Thursday evening, excited to meet my small class of advanced ESOL students. I knew it would be a small class this week; three students had emailed to say they couldn’t make it for various reasons. But one young woman was sure to be there, and Elizabeth had told me a new student would be attending this week, as well. I had a loose lesson plan and a good coffee buzz; I was ready and enthusiastic about the crazy conversations that happen organically with this class.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs to the library's lower level, however, the light-colored wooden double doors to the office hallway were closed. They are usually propped open so that Project Learn employees and clients can come and go freely. And there is usually a Project Learn employee at the L-shaped desk just in front of those doors, ready to greet clients and give directions. The desk was vacant.

I tried the doors; they were locked. I peeked through the crack between them, but saw no movement in the hallway beyond. Then I noticed the people sitting in chairs in the waiting area on the other side of the L-shaped desk. A woman in her early fifties was reading a paperback; a man in probably his early twenties sat next to her with his arms crossed and a sour look on his face. Next to them sat Ving, the woman I had expected to attend my class tonight. Ving is from Vietnam and has lived in the US for twenty years. She's a math teacher at the university, and her English is quite good, though she feels she needs help with grammar.

"Hi, Ving," I said. "Have you been waiting long?"

I was about five minutes late, which is unusual for me. She said she'd only been there a few minutes, and that no one had been at the desk when she arrived.

"I wonder what's going on," I said.

I asked the bookish woman whether they had an appointment today.

"Yes," she said. "He's supposed to take his test tonight for the GED."

She indicated the young man, most likely her son, with her elbow when she spoke. Her face was plain and plump but very quick to smile. Her son looked as though he never smiled.

I took out my phone and started going through my contacts to see if I had a number for anyone who might be able to help us. I knew that Elizabeth usually taught on Thursday evenings, but I only had her email address, not a phone number. I sent her a quick message.

"Well," I said to the three, "I've sent a message but I don't have anyone's phone number. I don't quite know what to do."

The young man twisted his mouth a little, as if he had just been told he had to pay extra taxes this year, and gave us his two cents.

"We could wait here a little longer," he said, "then if nobody comes, we can leave."

He did not uncross his arms. I smiled at him broadly, as if he were a small child who had just said something mildly inappropriate. I sat down next to Ving.

"So how was your week?"

Ving and I chatted about her search for a full-time job and her frustrations with writing cover letters while not getting all of the grammar correct. After a few minutes, the mother and son duo got up and left.

We worked on a few grammar points—Ving is particularly vexed by which verb tense to use in if/then clauses—then we left as well.

Honestly, I was not too upset about a very short class that allowed me to go back out into a most perfectly beautiful evening, one I had been loathe to abandon in the first place. But what is up with locking those doors? I can certainly understand that something unexpected might have happened: whoever was supposed to be working might have become ill and had to leave suddenly, or there may have been some kind of training that all the employees had to attend, leaving the office empty for the evening. But couldn't an email have been sent? Or at least a note posted on the door?

When I first started volunteering at the International Institute, there was a day when I and the entire class showed up only to find the door to our basement classroom had been painted shut from the inside. The painters had left through another door, and no one had given this door any thought until we all tried to open it for our class. On that day, I laughed with all the others and felt lucky to have extra time for my errands and other activities.

This week's locked-door incident feels different, exclusionary, insulting. I still have not received any answer to yesterday's emails, so I still have no idea what’s going on. I don’t know how long I can tolerate the level of uncertainty and disorganization Project Learn seems to thrive on. I'll keep you posted.

A Farewell Blessing

"Today is our last class," Susan said while writing the date August 18 on the white board. "We will return to class in two weeks, on August 18^th."

She held up two fingers for emphasis. Bhudhav and Arya read the sentences out loud, softly, and several others repeated "two weeks."

"You'll want to write this down in your notebooks," Susan instructed. Amita and Saradha looked at me with questions in their eyes, so I mimicked writing and pointed to their notebooks. They diligently made marks on their papers.

"What does return mean?" Susan prompted. "It means come back. We will come back to class in two weeks."

We had been through this routine several times over the past year. In trying to stretch its meager budget as far as possible, Project Learn instituted the six weeks on/two weeks off schedule for all of its classes last fall. The result is a constantly interrupted course of learning for people who need consistency and repetition above all, plus the added bonus of teachers who can scarcely meet their own budgeting needs with a two-week gap in paychecks every other month. It’s not entirely a lose-lose proposition, but it's certainly far from ideal.

For my part, I had conflicting emotions about the end of another session because I won’t return with this class in two weeks. My schedule at my new job includes working all day Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so I won't be able to come to the Institute Monday and Wednesday mornings anymore.

That means no more descending the basement stars into the scent of curry and BO; no more choruses of good morning teetser to greet me; no more grunting beckons or angelic smiles from Yadu; no more Nepali lessons from Saradha.

I led the exercise break one last time. That's probably my favorite part of the class, when everyone gets a little loose and there's a lot of laughter. Yadu stood right next to me in the front of the room, smiling so hard his face almost split in two and awkwardly holding his arms up over his head with his elbows bent, not really executing the correct moves, but constantly trying to hold my hand while I led the class through arm circles, side stretches, and walking in place. During the three deep breaths we do as our final exercise—what the students call "ceiling" because we tilt our heads back to look at the ceiling while inhaling deeply—I consciously absorbed the room's odors one last time. I tattooed onto my sense memory that particular piquant of basement mustiness, halitosis, body odor, and leftover curry. It sounds unpleasant, but it isn't. Rather like the odor of melted tar being sprayed on the dirt roads of Punxsutawney in the summers of my youth, that smell will always bring me back to a specific moment of bittersweet happiness in my life.

After the break, I gathered my small group for one last session of focused teaching. Susan suggested we work on verbs, but Asara had already told me she really wanted to practice the alphabet. She's a little more advanced than most of her classmates and very determined to improve her English. Besides, we had a brand new student with us on this last day, and he seemed thoroughly confused by the whole idea of writing during the first hour.

So I coached Asara, Krishna, Saradha, Lakshmi and the new guy on the ABCs, both capital and lower case. Karma came to join us a little late, and for the first time his wife, Mahasweta, joined us, as well.

Mahasweta is more advanced than her husband and usually stays with Susan and the rest of the class when I conduct my small group, but today she just pulled a chair up next to Karma and sat down. I was surprised but didn't mind, of course. Mahasweta has been my favorite in this class almost from my first day. She is very smart, great with math and counting coins, and has a certain quality about her that I can't really name, but that makes me somehow respect and, I guess, admire her somehow. I don't fully understand it myself; sometimes I suppose we are just drawn to certain other people. I have the feeling that if her English were better, or if we had both been born in the same country, we would surely have been very good friends.

At the end of our time, everyone had a full alphabet written out, and we had clarified the pronunciation of G versus Z. As the students gathered their things, thanked me, and said their goodbyes, I reminded everyone about no class for two weeks.

"Coming back two weeks?" Mahasweta said to me with a question in her eyes.

"Yes," I said. "Come back to class in two weeks. Okay?"

"Yes," she said. She and Karma started to go, then Mahasweta turned back to me.

"You?" she asked. "Coming back two weeks?"

A small bolt of surprise and grief shot through my stomach. I fought the tears that pricked at my eyes.

"Me?" I asked, pointing to my chest. Mahasweta nodded, smiling her dear half-smile.

"No," I said, my voice catching in my throat. "I won’t be here in two weeks. I have a new job."

Her brow furrowed and her eyes looked a little sad, despite the little smiled that stayed on her mouth. "Oh," she said. I had the feeling she wanted to say more, but maybe that was just me.

Maybe I wanted to say more. Maybe I wanted to thank her and her husband for always being so gracious with me, even when I made mistakes and said stupid things in class. Maybe I wanted to tell her how much I admired her courage and stamina in coming to a new country and helping her family survive. Maybe I wanted to tell her how beautiful I thought she was, in spite of—or maybe because of—the scar on her forehead and the deep, weathered lines in her cheeks. Maybe I wanted to tell her how much I wanted her and Karma to continue with these classes and improving their English, how their life here in Akron was going to get better and better the longer they stayed and the more they tried to assimilate. Maybe I wanted to tell her that she and Karma had shown me what teaching means and how valuable it is to share knowledge with others. Maybe I wanted to tell her that she had changed the way I see myself and my hometown, that teaching her and Karma had given me a confidence and joy I never expected to find within myself, and that I was forever changed for having met her. Maybe I wanted to tell her that I would never forget her and that I hoped we would meet again someday. Maybe I saw all those things reflected in her narrow, deep brown eyes. But it was all I could do to keep the tears from bursting forth and embarrassing us both.

So I smiled and said, "I'll miss you."

I put my hand to my heart and bowed a little toward her. She bowed back with her palms together at her chest, and it felt like a kind of blessing.

"Miss you, too," she said.