Sunday, June 12, 2011
It Makes My Heart Strong
Published in the June 2011 Issue of Underwired Magazine
Unlike Oprah, I did not have a farewell season, a farewell two weeks or even a farewell day when I was “let go” from my last job. It was with a company that I had been with for almost 10 years, grown-up with and considered family. This was a company that sent my mother an orchid while she was in the hospital during her second cancer, had encouraged me to go to Guatemala twice to build with Habitat and had helped me through the death of two close friends and former employees. They taught me how to manage and run a successful and busy store, negotiate my position within a company and build business and social relationships. So it was quite a blow when a fateful string of events lead me to be put in a position where one of the co-owners of the company confronted and yelled at me in front of customers and co-workers. My reaction was controlled and silent but interpreted as cold and unfriendly. Although I would not change anything about the events leading up to the incident, nor the incident itself, it still resulted in me being forced out of the company.
This was undeniably the one and only pushed-out-of-the-nest moment of my life. The patriarch of my formidable work experience and I had a classic adolescent-versus-parent style altercation. I’m not exactly sure what role I played in this analogy but I do know that I lost. I lost my job and I was devastated. I cried for two days and hardly slept. I lamented my story over and over again and tried to stop thinking about the customers and possibly even co-workers, who I would probably never see again.
Then I started my new job.
That same week I started working at Americana Community Center as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher – a position that I had been trying to obtain for the better part of a year. After the fog of being fired from one job and starting another had lifted, I quickly realized the big puddle of luck I had slipped and fallen into. The opportunity to teach immigrants and refugees exposed a vast range of attributes that my previous job did not. It also made me realize the absence of several stresses that I had no sense of being substantial strains in my daily life until they were no longer present. For example, I no longer had nightmares about endless lines of customers, cringed when the phone rang or feared who I might run into on my shift. Within a week of teaching I started to feel my body ease and settle into what would become a new sense of normalcy.
On an average week day I now wake-up around 6AM to exercise (on a good day), eat breakfast with my husband and make sure that my lesson plans are prepared for my 9AM class. This is a dramatic change compared to my 10-minute out-the-door timeline that I utilized for my previous job. Now, instead of saying “good morning” to a multitude of groggy-faced customers coming in to get their regular coffee, I share morning greetings with my students from South Sudan, Burma, Somalia, Burundi, Iraq and Vietnam. Where my previous job brought a comfortable and predictable routine, my students bring quite the opposite – challenging questions, learning barriers that must be breached and cultural differences that cause them to frequently laugh at me for reasons that I cannot figure. My students bring with them their past: war torn nations, natal countries that they can no longer call home and stories of refugee camps that often offered faulty shelter and little support but are still missed. And with this, even more learning challenges and thus, more teaching challenges. Needless to say, all the lesson planning and activity preparation in the world cannot guarantee a successful class session. Where my previous job depended on if I smiled, made good drinks, got along with my co-workers and cleaned well; my new job requires, and offers, so much more.
While talking to a student from South Sudan after class one evening I asked him, “Do the memories of your home make it hard to come to class?” He looked at me puzzled. I continued, “When you think about the past, does it make you sad? Does it make it hard to get up in the morning? To go to work? To come to class?” He understood and began to shake his head, “No, because it makes my heart strong. I go to work. I got to school. I learn English. I tell other people to go to school.” Attempting to hold back tears of admiration I respond, “You think about the future.” He nods his head yes as we share a moment. And this is only one moment, among many in the past 3 months, which have made me feel so privileged. I sit next to my students, these strong individuals from all around the world, and I get to share this space with them. I get to meet them, hear their stories and share their lives. They tell me that I am important, that I am a good teacher. They pray for me. They are eager to learn English and fuse their past lives with their new future. And I am eager to help them.
Although my previous job urged their employees to feel a sense of wonder in their everyday work it was always something difficult for me to buy into. But now at Americana, working as an ESL teacher, I get it. I understand that feeling that I was supposed to have all this time. And it makes me thankful to have been fired from my last job in such a tumultuous way. Because after all, it makes my heart strong.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment