Dr. Adams\u27 contribution to:
In M. Robbins (Ed.), The pressures of teaching: How teachers cope with classroom stress (pp. 87-98). New York: Kaplan Publishing

Adams, Susan R.

English

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Butler University Digital Commons @ Butler University Scholarship and Professional Work – Education College of Education 2010 The Joys and Sorrows of Teaching High School ESL: Sarangarel's Story Susan R. Adams Butler University, sradams@butler.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/coe_papers  Part of the Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, and the Secondary Education and Teaching Commons Recommended Citation Adams, Susan R., "The Joys and Sorrows of Teaching High School ESL: Sarangarel's Story" (2010). Scholarship and Professional Work – Education. 62. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/coe_papers/62 This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Education at Digital Commons @ Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarship and Professional Work – Education by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Butler University. For more information, please contact digitalscholarship@butler.edu. ~[iliJTHE]OYSANDSORROWS OF TEACHINGHIGH SCHOOL ESL:SARANGEREL'S STORYSusan R. AdamsENGLISH AS A second language (ESL) teachers leadfascinating lives. We have the privilege of work-ing closely with students from many countries, richlydiverse cultures, and a cornucopia of languages anddialects. Our students and their families move to pulsesand beats that are not always discernable to us until weget to know them and their families, learn their stories,and understand their dreams and desires. Until we dothe hard work of listening, asking good questions, not88 The Pressures of Teachingmaking assumptions, and digging into these stories,most of us know we are not really reaching and teachingthe whole child; and of course, this entire process is com-plicated enormously by the number of languages spokenby our students.Contrary to popular misconception, ESL teachers donot speak all of the languages of their students. Main-stream teachers often bring non-English speaking stu-dents to me, sigh, and say, "Could you talk to her? Shedoes not understand a word I am saying!" I then proceedto explain in simple English what the teacher had beentrying to say, and the mainstream teacher is almost dis-gusted when it works. "Well! I could have done that!" isa common response. "Why didn't you if it is so easy?"is what I always want to say. Many of us speak some ofthe more common languages, especially Spanish, but fewof us are prepared to speak the languages of those groupswith small representation. I speak Spanish and can man-age fairly well with other Romance languages, but I amno match for African or Asian languages with which Ihave no experience as a learner. I often have studentsfrom four continents, speaking 12 different languages.The vast majority of my students are Spanish-speakers,and we communicate pretty well. Others have been fromFrench-speaking African nations and we found a way toget our points across. Sometimes a student has arrivedspeaking a language that is new and seems obscure inour community. Take, for example, Mongolian.The joys and Sorrows of Teaching High School ESL 89Sarangerel, who was promptly renamed Sara by theother teachers in my urban Indianapolis high school,came to our school in late February. She had only been inthe United States for about six months, but had alreadyattended at least three other schools that we could ver-ify. She was I7 years old, extremely courteous, slender,dark-eyed with a spark of determination and humor,reserved with the other students, and highly motivatedto do well in our school.Sarangerel worked hard to adapt to the ways of oururban, mostly African American high school quickly,and it was clear to all of her teachers that she had alreadytaken many of the traditional high school courses in hernative Mongolia, but that she struggled to communicateher deep knowledge in English. While she floundered inU.S. history due to a lack of background knowledge anda textbook written in college-level English, she excelledin math and science, especially when she could demon-strate her skills in numbers or diagrams.She was a joy in class, always checking to make surethat she was doing what the teachers wanted, somehowalways exceeding expectations in spite of her beginner'sstatus in English. At the end of every class period, shewould approach the teacher with anxious eyes, insistentthat we tell her how she had done and what she could dobetter next time. This practice set her apart for two rea-sons: Most students made a mad dash for the door at thebell to soak up some social time in the hall and it made90 The Pressures of Teaching/her late to almost every class, but she had a way of smil-ing shyly and smoothing her tardiness over with teach-ers. Somehow we just could not penalize her for caringso much about her own learning.Because Sarangerel had already been enrolled inthree other U.S. schools, she had learned some English,so while our conversations were slow and stilted, we weremostly able to understand each other in simple terms. Iwas able to schedule two class periods of ESL a day withher, with our long-term plan being to have her graduatehigh school at the end of the following year. Sarangerelwas very clear in her mind that she was headed to collegeand we all believed her. She worked tirelessly on everytask I laid before her, preferring to work alone and towrite instead of working collaboratively with the otherESL students in the room. Sarangerel worried constantlythat she was not making enough progress and that herspoken English was not pleasing me.Although her mother had accompanied her to ourschool when Sarangerel was enrolled, it was impossibleto communicate directly with her mother, who spoke noEnglish. No one in our district was readily available totranslate, so we muddled through, assisted by Saranger-el's previous enrollment experiences in other schools andby her sincere effort to understand what we said. WhenI sat down with her to complete the enrollment formsand to go over her transcripts, I attempted to understandwhy she had already been in so many schools in so few~IThe joys and Sorrows of Teaching High School ESL 9Imonths. We did everything we could to communicatesuch complex explanations to each other; anyone watch-ing us would have thought we were playing Charades, oreven Win, Lose or Draw. Sarangerel endured this tediousprocess with a gentle smile, great patience, and a keensense of humor as I ruled out migrant worker status andother employment explanations for the frequent moves.Every question I asked seemed to come back to "friendslive there" and after a while I let it go.Less than one month after Sarangerel arrived, ourannual state assessment rolled around. In spite of thefact she had been enrolled less than one year, she insistedon taking it. I was convinced that she had a chance atpassing the math portion of the test if she could decodeenough of the text in order to solve the problems. I hadgiven this test many times and I had seen ESL studentswho knew far less math than Sarangerel pass the test,which is basically a ninth grade algebra and beginninggeometry test. The test is composed of two parts: a mul-tiple-choice, number-crunching component, and a farmore difficult, extended-response component. Sarangerellabored intensively over the test, sailing easily throughthe multiple-choice portion and then bogging down overthe extended response questions, which required her todecode the story problem, show her work, and often,and explain her answers.Long after the other students had finished thetest and left, Sarangerel plugged away determinedly,92 The Pressures of Teaching//sometimes crying quietly when she ran into scenarios shecould make no sense of. Although the test designers claimour assessment has been rigorously examined for culturalbiases, that year's test was a running series of story prob-lems based on a high school preparing for homecoming,a distinctly middle-class American tradition, and one notalways practiced in urban high schools. We had celebratedhomecoming in early October at my school, but most ofmy students had largely ignored it, seeing no reason toparticipate in such activities as screaming pep sessions inthe gym or sitting in the cold to watch American football.If we had only known that homecoming was going to beon the test, I would have insisted they pay attention!My other students had balked over the same home-coming scenario and many had quietly pleaded for meto explain what the storyline was talking about, which Iam not permitted to do during state assessment testing.Testing is always a painful experience for the studentsand the ESL teachers alike. I knew that all I had to dowas explain in rough terms what homecoming is, andthen most of them could have easily answered the storyproblems. I knew from working closely with their mathteachers that they had mastered the math skills neces-sary to pass this part of the test. What they could not dowas make sense of the scenarios and communicate theirresponses in the kind of English required by the test.On the test, there were questions about the amountof lumber needed for building parade floats, how much""'--1IThe Joys and Sorrows of Teaching High School ESL 93space would be set aside for crowds, and other detailslost on this young Mongolian woman who had nevereven witnessed homecoming. I knew without a doubtthat Sarangerel could do far more than the test requiredif it were in Mongolian, but I paced the classroom andchewed my fingers anxiously, hoping she could siftthrough the unnecessary details and solve the simplemath problem underneath. Finally, she sighed, closedthe book, wiped her eyes, and smiled at me. I huggedher, sent her home, and hoped her brilliance would beapparent to the graders.About two weeks later, Sarangerel's mother appearedin the doorway of my classroom. This did not surpriseme; parents of English language learners (ELLs) oftenbypass the main office and go straight to the ESL class-room in hopes that they will be welcomed and understoodthere. Going into the office meant that our well-intendedsecretary would shout "Wait here! I will get Ms. Adams!"repeatedly as she picked up the phone to call me, leav-ing them to wait helplessly in the corner. As Sarangerelglanced up and saw her mother in the door, her face fell.As we both walked to the door, I muttered, "What isgoing on?" She said, "We moving tomorrow." My otherstudents got quiet and pretended to do their work, butwere listening intently so that later they could pass onthe chisme (Spanish for gossip) correctly and with juicydetails to their friends. They were accustomed to parentswanting to speak with me, but those visits were generallyII94 The Pressures of Teachingto deal with behavior problems, and Sarangerel was neverin trouble, so they were very curious.I invited her mother inside our classroom door,where I could keep my eye on my students but main-tain a respectable distance away from them. Her motherwas dressed like a professional business woman in a suitjacket, skin, nylons, and heels, although they were afew years out of fashion and might have been bought atGoodwill instead of Macy's. I felt frumpy indeed in myubiquitous denim jumper, orthopedic shoes, and withmy decidedly inelegant school ID around my neck. WithSarangerel's translation help, I told her mother how wellSarangerel had adapted to our school, how all her teach-ers adored her, how hard she worked, and how happyeveryone was to have Sarangerel in our school. My stu-dents stayed calm, quietly listening to this exchange,which was all usual fare for parent conversations in myclassroom. Her mother beamed as Sarangerel gave herthe short and modest Mongolian version of my praise.I put on my best, authoritative, take-no-prisonersteacher face and cut to the chase, insisting firmly thather mother reconsider moving, pointing out that we onlyhad six weeks of school left and that Sarangerel's gradeswould suffer in the move. Her mother smiled politelyand insisted that they were indeed moving tomorrowto be closer to friends in Virginia. Clutching at straws,I blurted, "What about your friends here? Couldn'tSarangerel stay with them until the end of the semester?"The joys and Sorrows of Teaching High School ESL 95At this her mother hesitated, but then replied that alltheir local friends were males and it would be inappro-priate for Sarangcrel to remain with them. Franticallyracking my mind for solutions, I resorted to begging,"Please, please do not move Sarangerel again! Youhave no idea how difficult it is for her to keep chang-ing schools, and she is too respectful to tell you. Youare being very selfish! She is doing well here, and sheneeds to finish the year with us! You need to stay herefor Sarangerel just a few more weeks!"At this emotional outburst, Sarangerel stopped inter-preting, too uncomfortable to tell her mother what Ihad said, and physically moved away from her motherand me. Then the craziest thing happened. With no onetranslating, Sarangerel's mother began explaining inMongolian how difficult their transition to the UnitedStates had been for the parents, how they had lookedhigh and low for work that would support the family,how desperately lonely they were for their home, fam-ily, and friends in Mongolia, and how worried they wereabout providing a good future for Sarangerel.By now we were both weeping openly, clutching eachother while Sarangerel and her classmates watched withgaping mouths. No translation was necessary. This wasone of those moments where things just work, whereour essential humanness is our real connection, andwhere stopping to translate would have meant a loss ofnuance, intention, and depth of feeling. Our fears and96 The Pressures of Teaching/frustrations gushed out, and we somehow understoodeach other deeply and completely. Finally, after we hadeach poured out our hearts in our own languages, withme taking one more chance to try to explain how dif-ficult it is on kids to be jerked in and out of schools,we smiled, wiped our eyes, laughed a little, and huggedeach other fiercely.I turned to Sarangere1, apologized for embarrassingher, and told her how deeply sorry we all were to loseher, that we loved her and wanted the best for her. Aftermany good-byes and a few more tears, Sarangere1 andher mother went to the office to officially withdraw herfrom our school and arrange for a transfer to the fifthschool number in Sarangerel's short U.S. journey. Shaken,I returned to my students who were so quietly stunned bythe drama they had just witnessed that they said nothing,most of them avoiding eye contact with me. We were allsaddened by the loss of our new friend, Sarangerel, andwe all sensed the fragility of our being together, knowingwe could lose someone else tomorrow.Three weeks later, I received notification that Sarang-erel had passed our state math assessment. I wished Icould have celebrated this victory with her and couldhave savored the triumph of overcoming a test designedto trip her up, but I sat quietly picturing her in her newschool, and hoping those new teachers were loving herand realizing her potential. For me, this is the epitome ofwhat it means to be an ESL teacher; we suffer so manyThe Joys and Sorrows of Teaching High School ESL 97painful losses and few bittersweet wins. We laugh andcry with people who do not speak our language or under-stand our school systems, but who long for somethingbetter with us. We taste the magic of transcending bor-ders and reaching out to one another across differences.There is no other teaching job quite like this.

The Joys and Sorrows of Teaching High School ESL: Sarangarel\u27s Story

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The Joys and Sorrows of Teaching High School ESL: Sarangarel\u27s Story

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