Learning from my Students

I had my first instance of a student crying in class today, and I almost cried myself. It was a pretty emotional moment and I'm not sure I handled it as well as I could have.

I have been using an activity in class the last few weeks where students roll a die and move a marker around a game board. Each space on the board prompts them to share a little information about themselves. Most are fairly mundane (What is your favorite meal? Describe your bedroom. What would you do with $1,000,000?), but some are more difficult to answer (What are your worst fears? What is your happiest memory? What are you proud of?). Typically studnets skirt these questions by saying things like "I am afraid of spiders," "I am afraid of the dark," or "I am proud of a gymnastics medal I won when I was 12." Sometimes the kids have a hard time because they are 15 and shy about bearing too much vulnerability to their peers (and to me), but I figured it was a harmless bit of pressure and it led to some humorous, but never humiliating moments. Students got to fantasize about dream houses and vacations, giggle about actors they have crushes on and it got them to speak English for an hour.

Today however, one of my 15 year-old students (an immigrant from Chechnya who must have been born during the first Chechnyan war for independence and then grew up during a violent period of frequent kidnappings and instability only to move to France during the second Chechnyan War) said that she was "proud that she had survived to get out of Chechnya." I replied that that was certainly something to be proud of and a very good response, not sure I had correctly understood what she said. But as we moved on to the next person's turn she became more and more visibly emotional and had to leave the class to compose herself. When she returned she seemed embarrassed to have teared up in class but was greeted with mature and honest assurances from her classmates and I assured her that she had every right to become emotional when talking about something like that.

The class continued normally, but afterward I saw the girl crying in the hallway and being comforted by her friends. I decided not to say anything because her friends were looking after her and she had seemed embarrassed by her emotions. I thought an awkward encounter in which I tried to express something adequately meaningful or compassionate in French would only embarrass her further. I'm not sure now that it was the right decision to walk away without saying anything or acknowledging the legitimacy of her emotional response. I feel like it was a little cowardly of me. I walked back up after turning in my attendance to see if she was still there and how she was doing but I didn't find her. I have to decide if it would be appropriate for me to say something if we cross paths in the hallway sometime next week.

I was pretty moved by what she said in class and by her willingness to acknowledge something like that in a setting where it was pretty clear that no one else could really relate to what she had experienced. A quick wikipedia search when I got home made that even clearer. 1994-2009 was a pretty bloody period in Chechnyan history with upwards of 35,00 civilian casualties and 500,000 internally displaced people. Evidently ransoms from kidnapping constituted the largest part of the country's economy for a few years in the late 1990s.

As a teacher, I generally assume I am a little more worldly and emotionally mature than my students. I have the credibility to teach English and sailing, but I figure I bear a responsibility to be a bit of a role model for my students and someone they could look to for advice or guidance as well. This class today was pretty humbling. I lacked any kind of experience that could prepare me to respond to this situation with an adequate amount of support or even a few words that could re-affirm my student's confidence in herself and the normalcy (or at least rationality) of what she was dealing with. This wasn't a 15-year old girl breaking down because of a boyfriend or hormones or even parents going through a divorce. Walking home from work I felt a little embarrassed about being proud of my successful year in France or about letting myself get stressed out about looking for a good job.