"Where there's a will, there's a way."
That was one of the sayings in our book today. It also said, "A little kindness goes a long way."
I think both are true. Do you?
I've been attempting to overcome my writer's block by simply sitting here and writing, doing whatever I have to do to express some sort of Chung Fu, so at the very least I keep up the craft while I wait for the muse to strike. Even if I don't know what to say, sitting down and writing words is a way to remember how to say it. Sometimes I do stream of consciousness and say whatever pops into my head at the split second I am typing, regardless of grammar and clarity. Other times I pick a topic and go. Writing about pictures, songs and quotes used to do the trick in Japan. Sometimes you're body just slows down because too much has been going on for too long, and you need to be patient and just remember not to forget how to sing your song.
Much of what I think about lately is the value of my current experience as a language teacher. There is the initial value I provide to my students who are paying for improvement and knowledge, but they can get that from any English teacher. The book is pretty clear on what skills they need to develop. I can bring them my unique presence every week, but most teachers have a good presence in their own unique way. Whatever work you do you are serving others, so if you want to be quality you need to give them your best quality, but there is always the question of the best quality you are serving the world. Gandhi said that you should do your job as best as you can no matter what it is, and that if you are a sweeper of floors, then become the best sweeper of floors in the world. But if Gandhi simply swept floors, India would still be getting bullied by the British. Just about every influential person in the world has done some sort of other job beforehand that taught them a skill they didn't realize would help them, or gave them unexpected inspiration, or led to them meeting the right connection to get their career going, or simply took up time until the universe was ready to bring them to their proper stage of influence. Yet all of those people made it because they were aware that whatever they were doing, whatever it was, would be temporary. I am very accustomed to that happening with my endeavors.
I know that storytelling and writing are different from the other ephemeral endeavors because they are the only activities I have continued to do regardless of whatever else I have done. Since I was five years old I have done many things, but I have always written. And even before then I yelled stories while running. Basketball and sports obsession came and went, as did video games, and The Simpsons. I became obsessed with going to concerts, and then traveling, and camping and hiking, and trying new cities. I've even fallen in love a few times. But the one experience (non-essential to basic human sustenance) that has endured is expressing my inner truths and imagination through the written and spoken word.
Recently, during an excellent family reunion that will resume in two days, we had a few English experts sitting around the table. I told them about my interview where my boss asked me how I would explain the difference between two tenses to a beginning student, and how I completely screwed it up because I never think of grammar in terms of the various names people have assigned to the tenses. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my sister screwed up one of them, and that she and her husband, a German, debated the meanings of several tenses. Furthermore, my textbooks had different names than the ones she learned as an English master back in the day. She has more certification and experience than I do, but isn't currently teaching, so I felt better about my previous ignorance. Thus, one of the upshots of this teaching experience (two months and counting) has been to master grammar. I already knew proper grammar. I just didn't know why it was the way it was in certain instances. And I definitely didn't know all of the terminology. So there's that. I don't think there are many famous writers who worry about being found out by some reporter by screwing up the name of a tense. I think that kind of embarrassment is only reserved for English teachers, because nobody else cares. If you can communicate what you have to say, then you win, end of story.
Therefore, I think the real benefit of this experience has been learning how to communicate and be comfortable with humans from new backgrounds which I had yet to encounter. I had barely had any encounters with humans from the continent of Africa before I came to New York to teach English, and very little with people from most South American or Latin American countries. I did have students from Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela in San Francisco. I don't have any students from those countries now, but I have met, taught and learned a little from human beings from Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, Mexico and the Dominican Republic (about half of all of my students are from DR). I've also met many students from Eastern Europe and new parts of the Middle East and Africa: Albania, Kosovo, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Eritrea, Ghana, Togo, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Nigeria. I feel very lucky to meet so many different people, but I really wish I could truly talk to them and learn about their countries and lives, and that they had the ability to share with me. If I were my sister I suppose I would try to learn all of their languages, but there are too many to count. And class time is limited, and there are too many students, and most of them aren't used to opening up about deeper issues or personal lives. I'm no longer in gooey mushy warm San Francisco. I'm in New York. And the Bronx, at that. Many of them almost never even go to Manhattan, let alone the rest of the country.
Earlier I was writing about serving other humans as being a way to matter in the world, and remembering Nelson Mandela's quote about how playing small is not the best way to help humanity. I have a will to offer so much more to the life flowing around me, so I must continue to find the way, and try something new each day.
Does such a sentiment help you on your way? If so, hooray!
That was one of the sayings in our book today. It also said, "A little kindness goes a long way."
I think both are true. Do you?
I've been attempting to overcome my writer's block by simply sitting here and writing, doing whatever I have to do to express some sort of Chung Fu, so at the very least I keep up the craft while I wait for the muse to strike. Even if I don't know what to say, sitting down and writing words is a way to remember how to say it. Sometimes I do stream of consciousness and say whatever pops into my head at the split second I am typing, regardless of grammar and clarity. Other times I pick a topic and go. Writing about pictures, songs and quotes used to do the trick in Japan. Sometimes you're body just slows down because too much has been going on for too long, and you need to be patient and just remember not to forget how to sing your song.
Much of what I think about lately is the value of my current experience as a language teacher. There is the initial value I provide to my students who are paying for improvement and knowledge, but they can get that from any English teacher. The book is pretty clear on what skills they need to develop. I can bring them my unique presence every week, but most teachers have a good presence in their own unique way. Whatever work you do you are serving others, so if you want to be quality you need to give them your best quality, but there is always the question of the best quality you are serving the world. Gandhi said that you should do your job as best as you can no matter what it is, and that if you are a sweeper of floors, then become the best sweeper of floors in the world. But if Gandhi simply swept floors, India would still be getting bullied by the British. Just about every influential person in the world has done some sort of other job beforehand that taught them a skill they didn't realize would help them, or gave them unexpected inspiration, or led to them meeting the right connection to get their career going, or simply took up time until the universe was ready to bring them to their proper stage of influence. Yet all of those people made it because they were aware that whatever they were doing, whatever it was, would be temporary. I am very accustomed to that happening with my endeavors.
I know that storytelling and writing are different from the other ephemeral endeavors because they are the only activities I have continued to do regardless of whatever else I have done. Since I was five years old I have done many things, but I have always written. And even before then I yelled stories while running. Basketball and sports obsession came and went, as did video games, and The Simpsons. I became obsessed with going to concerts, and then traveling, and camping and hiking, and trying new cities. I've even fallen in love a few times. But the one experience (non-essential to basic human sustenance) that has endured is expressing my inner truths and imagination through the written and spoken word.
Recently, during an excellent family reunion that will resume in two days, we had a few English experts sitting around the table. I told them about my interview where my boss asked me how I would explain the difference between two tenses to a beginning student, and how I completely screwed it up because I never think of grammar in terms of the various names people have assigned to the tenses. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my sister screwed up one of them, and that she and her husband, a German, debated the meanings of several tenses. Furthermore, my textbooks had different names than the ones she learned as an English master back in the day. She has more certification and experience than I do, but isn't currently teaching, so I felt better about my previous ignorance. Thus, one of the upshots of this teaching experience (two months and counting) has been to master grammar. I already knew proper grammar. I just didn't know why it was the way it was in certain instances. And I definitely didn't know all of the terminology. So there's that. I don't think there are many famous writers who worry about being found out by some reporter by screwing up the name of a tense. I think that kind of embarrassment is only reserved for English teachers, because nobody else cares. If you can communicate what you have to say, then you win, end of story.
Therefore, I think the real benefit of this experience has been learning how to communicate and be comfortable with humans from new backgrounds which I had yet to encounter. I had barely had any encounters with humans from the continent of Africa before I came to New York to teach English, and very little with people from most South American or Latin American countries. I did have students from Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela in San Francisco. I don't have any students from those countries now, but I have met, taught and learned a little from human beings from Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, Mexico and the Dominican Republic (about half of all of my students are from DR). I've also met many students from Eastern Europe and new parts of the Middle East and Africa: Albania, Kosovo, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Eritrea, Ghana, Togo, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Nigeria. I feel very lucky to meet so many different people, but I really wish I could truly talk to them and learn about their countries and lives, and that they had the ability to share with me. If I were my sister I suppose I would try to learn all of their languages, but there are too many to count. And class time is limited, and there are too many students, and most of them aren't used to opening up about deeper issues or personal lives. I'm no longer in gooey mushy warm San Francisco. I'm in New York. And the Bronx, at that. Many of them almost never even go to Manhattan, let alone the rest of the country.
Earlier I was writing about serving other humans as being a way to matter in the world, and remembering Nelson Mandela's quote about how playing small is not the best way to help humanity. I have a will to offer so much more to the life flowing around me, so I must continue to find the way, and try something new each day.
Does such a sentiment help you on your way? If so, hooray!
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