Language Bridges: A Humbling Experience

Two months ago, I received an email from members of the Carnegie Mellon Community inviting students to participate in teaching foreign workers English. At first, my friends and I were eager to jump aboard the bandwagon and take the chance because we knew that this would easily earn us a lot of PSP points, which are a requirement for all Business Students at CMUQ.

However, upon the arrival of our students, we were surprised to see that the task at hand was not as easy as we thought. Although we were just teaching the foreign workers basic English, we discovered that there is way more to being a good teacher than simply knowing the material you are responsible for passing on to your students.

During the first two classes or so, our students were a bit tense, and we struggled to make them talk and reply back to us. Whenever we called their names, they would instantly rise from their seats and stand solid straight, like they were in the military or something. We solved this problem and freed them of the tension they had by gradually making them feel more comfortable around us and by boosting their confidence.

By fast forwarding to last class, however, we can clearly see that this is no longer the case, as my next example will demonstrate. As our students were eating some snacks in the middle of their break, one of them slipped away from the rest, grabbed a chair, pulled it next to me and sat on it. He then pulled out a pen and a paper and gave me a brainteaser that had me spend the next twenty minutes trying to wrap my head around it. When the class was about to end and he saw that I was struggling with hopelessness, he came by, told me the answer, and then said: "See Sir. I confuse you Sir", with a wide grin on his face.

Overall, this experience was quite humbling for me, as it taught me a lot of things. It also made me aware and appreciative of all the hard work my teachers and professors go through when teaching me. I now look forward to my next class with my students so I can learn something new from them.