Small groups, small steps

Susan has me doing small group work with some of the students in the second half of our class time during this fall session. She picks out four or five students who have the most difficulty producing words and sentences on their own, students who consistently depend on a neighbor to prompt them with the words in English or Nepali before they speak. My job is to go extra slow with these students, to have them repeat simple questions and answers over and over, so they can build some confidence in their own speaking capabilities rather than just repeat the sounds others make. I am also correcting small mistakes in syntax and pronunciation to help them form better foundational habits in their rudimentary English and avoid long-term linguistic problems.

Here's what that looks like:

Burka is Saraswati's husband. Saraswati is really sharp, and rather proficient in her English skills. When we worked with counting coins, she was the quickest in the class, both with the names of all the numbers, as well as the arithmetic. She has no problem answering rapidly when I ask her, "when did you come to the U.S.?" "I came to the U.S. on...," she says, and she fills in a date with the correct format of month, day and year--no problem. Then she turns to Burka and seamlessly asks him, "When did you come to the U.S.?" Burka stares at the table and waits.

Both Saraswati and Burka are probably in their late forties or early fifties, with ample crow's feet and other ravages of time across faces that smile easily. Burka is tall and thin with somber, dark eyes; Saraswati is short and compact with clear eyes that miss nothing. Saraswati paints the tika on her forehead and wears sarong skirts with a large purple hoodie; Burka wears a black collared shirt and black jeans with flip-flops and does not mark his forehead. They have seven children.

No matter the question posed to Burka, he will stare at that table until Saraswati tells him what to say. This is not unusual for the entire group. They all help each other out with an "all for one, one for all" kind of camaraderie that is refreshing in the cut-throat competitive environment that America can foster. This can also be frustrating as a teacher because the "helping" often keeps slower students like Burka from making much progress of their own. Thus the small group work. So long as Burka sits next to Saraswati--and he always sits next to her--he will remain dependent on her for his answers.

This week, I had Burka in both Monday's and Wednesday's small group. Monday, I split the group into three sections according to what I saw as their respective levels, and had them work on different activities. Malati and Esther, our two newest students, seem very adept at writing already, so I had them work on some more advanced conversation involving days of the week. Buddha Rani and Kamala seem befuddled by writing, but speak readily, so I had them copying sentences down, in order to get written syntax and spelling perfected. For Burka, whose notebook looks like that of a first-grader, with a jumble of fat letters in no particular order, I wanted to get down to basics. I wrote out the alphabet for him, capitals and lower case, and asked him to copy all of it. Maybe this was a little too regressive, but I really didn't think it could hurt. He took to the task assiduously and completed letter g by the end of our half hour.

Switching gears from conversation with Malati and Esther, to correcting sentences for Kamala, to praising Burka's letters was exhausting. And I don't think I did anyone much good that day. More than once, I saw flat-out disdain--or maybe it was amusement; I hope it was amusement--in Malati's face, as I stammered and corrected myself, tried to figure out just where I had left off and what point I had been trying to make. All of the students were kind and polite with me. They are always kind and polite, smiling, laughing gently. They speak to each other in Nepali a great deal, and I always wonder what they're saying, assuming, of course, that they're telling each other how ridiculous I am. But maybe they're more generous than that; maybe they understand that these exercises are in their best interest and they're trying to zero in on the larger lesson, the deeper meaning. Maybe their Nepali interjections are similar to the English bits I would sprinkle into a French conversation class: clarifications and links to something I already know to reinforce memorization. I shouldn't underestimate their efforts.

On Wednesday, I took a different approach, both for their benefit and for my sanity. We do a lot of writing in this class, so I decided to take this one half-hour to just focus on speaking. I had Burka, Draupadi, Kamala, the female Chandra, and Jay, who is in his seventies and sometimes gets a little belligerent when I make him repeat things. I had been working with Jay alone before the break.

He had become very confused when Susan called him to the board to write his name and the date he came the U.S. I found it astonishing: to answer her command he wrote the word "name" and "date." And it was clear from his sincere expression that he was not making a joke. Rather than just dismiss him, I wanted to work with him and clarify what, exactly, "name" and "date" mean, because these were concepts he had known and been able to communicate months earlier. So we had already spent a good half hour separate from the class, at a table off to the side, working out what today's date was, and teasing out the date he had come to the U.S. He had been so confused by this--something he had previously known easily--that I had him get out his identification card so I could look at it. Unsmiling and without his topi in the photo, he looked even older than he does every day. The gray stubble on his chin looked forlorn; the tika on his forehead seemed cartoonish; his eyes were wide with childish fright. My frustration with his obtuseness melted away, and we began to make some progress.

I wrote out the sentence "when did you come to the U.S.?" As Jay copied it into his own notebook, he repeated the words aloud, sounding out the letters phonetically, elongating them, so the words became a lilting song. I noticed how pure his concentration was, how he seemed not to notice the sounds of the rest of the class behind him, or the sound of his own voice ringing out when the others fell silent. He focused only on my yellow pad, on the letters forming from the tip of his pencil, and the music he made of them with his voice. The deep connection he formed with words through music moved me. When Susan and the class stood up to take the exercise break, I had to touch Jay's arm to break the magical spell of his concentration. And I was almost sorry to do it.

The rest of the small group that Wednesday went well. We worked our way through four questions and answers: where are you from? what day is today? are you married? and do you have children? For each question, I started by asking Burka; he answered, then asked Kamala, who answered and asked Draupadi. She answered and asked Jay, who answered and asked Chandra, who answered and asked me. Around and around we went, ever so slowly. I gently corrected each of them for slips in syntax or mispronunciation; we laughed at ourselves and let each other take as much time as needed to get it right. When I asked Burka the final question, he surprised me. He had been gaining a bit of confidence throughout the half hour, hesitating a little less when it was his turn, making more eye contact, speaking a little louder.

"Burka, do you have children?" I expected to have to repeat the question, as I had all the others. but he answered right away.

"Yes, I have seven children."

"Wow! That's great!" I blurted out the superlative compliment before I could help myself. We hadn't really worked on inserting a number like that, just on the generic yes or no answer. His was a rather sophisticated response, in perfect syntax, without hesitation. I wanted to reinforce this progress as much as possible. I gave him a thumbs up. "Good job, Burka! Really good job!"

We finished our set of questions, and I saw that our time was up. Saraswati came over to fetch her husband, as everyone gathered their notebooks and bags.

"Saraswati, Burka did really good work today!" I don't believe I have seen a more genuinely happy smile on a grown man's face as I saw on Burka at that moment. He looked like a much younger man for a moment. And I felt like a real teacher.