Looking to the Youth

Written by2018-19 Kaohsiung ETA Uswa Iqbal & Maggie McMillin

At the start of class, I posed the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” A third-grader, flailing his raised hand, confidently answered, “I just want to be myself.”

Going into our year as Fulbright English Teaching Assistants, we had no idea what to expect. It was our first time in Taiwan, and although we both had mentorship and tutoring experience, we had never been “real” teachers.

In the classroom, we faced a steep learning curve and significant cultural and language barriers. Regardless, we learned, adapted, grew, and we left Taiwan feeling very different: different about the Fulbright Program, about ourselves, and about what it means to be a teacher, a friend, and a human. 

Above all, we felt lucky. We were grateful for every interaction that we shared with our students, and for the chance to connect with them and to learn from them. Our students were resilient, kind, hardworking, and unapologetically themselves. They gave us a model for hope in a world that often seems hopeless. In working with youth, we were reminded that kids really are our future and that they have the ability to help us learn and relearn everything in a new (and arguably better) way.

Through their actions, our students reiterated to us the importance of practicing what we preach, being vulnerable, choosing kindness, and emphasizing acceptance. They pushed us to think about how we can live in more genuine and authentic ways: how we can truly be ourselves. Below are some anecdotes based on our time in Taiwan that highlight the reciprocal nature of teaching. We hope that each story makes you feel a little something and think a little differently. 

Most importantly, we hope that it encourages you to open up to the youth in your life and find ways to give back to them and empower them. 

Understanding

My co-teacher sat next to one of our students. 

The student’s head was down, and unfinished homework was laid out on his desk. He had just been yelled at by another teacher, standing silently while she asked why didn’t you turn in your homework, why is it taking you so long, what’s wrong with you?

“Do you want to cry first, or do your work?” my co-teacher asked.

“Cry.”

“Ok, cry. And then I’ll help you finish.” 

She placed a box of tissues in front of him and waited. After a few minutes, he blew his nose, picked up his pencil, and started filling out the vocabulary sheet in front of him.

Balance

Ray and Jimmy: two brothers as different as you could imagine.

Ray, a lover of art and dance, was one of my most confident and participatory fourth graders. He aced every exam, helped his classmates, asked insightful questions, and smiled so big that his cheek dimples became coin slots. His notebook was scribbled with phrases that I would say: “Oh for sure!” “Let me think about it,” and “Yes, no, maybe so.”

Jimmy, the school’s best athlete, and famous class clown was a fifth-grader who was often in trouble with his teachers. He didn’t do his homework, sighed through each class, and never missed an opportunity to crack inappropriate jokes. When it came time for representing the school though, he was always the chosen pick, emulating strength and charisma. 

In the quiet aftermath of school one day, I saw Ray and Jimmy sitting by the school gate. This was the only time the whole year that I saw them interact. As I approached them, I saw Jimmy lovingly ruffle Ray’s hair as Ray tried to grab a bag of chips from Jimmy. They were laughing.

“What time do you go home?” I asked.

“I go home at 5, and Jimmy goes home at 5:30,” answered Ray.

“Oh, different times?” 

Jimmy smiled and replied, “I live with our dad, Ray lives with our mom, but we’re still brothers.”

Genuinity

There was a strict no cell phone policy at school. 

The kids never took them out, but some teachers took pictures and videos of everything. If it was well-lit and had a good background and the kids looked clean and kind, it would be added to the continually updated Facebook feed.

I took pictures often. I sent them to my mom or put them on Instagram or stored them away to look back on later. The kids posed for group pictures when they performed the dances they had learned together or when a special guest visited the school. At Christmas it was Santa Claus, delivering presents; on weekday afternoons it was their rollerblading teacher. In pictures like these, they all have polite smiles and hold up peace signs. 

My co-teacher joked that they were “well-trained.”

But whenever I pulled out my phone for a candid picture, they recoiled. 

At recess, they shrieked and ran. In class, they covered their faces or turned away. I wanted pictures of them focusing hard on their assignments or playing happily in the freshly cut grass or helping their little siblings cross the street after school, but they didn’t care. They were minding their own business, and they weren’t doing any of it for the photo opp. The opposite, actually; whenever my phone was out, their body language and their expressions told me they were distracted, sometimes annoyed.

The more I thought about that, the less stock I put in the carefully curated Facebook photos, and the more attention I paid to the moments that only me and my students ever saw.

Empathy

During Ramadan, I taught each of my classes about how and why Muslims fast. 

A week later, my second graders showed up to class extra sweaty and flushed. As they huffed and coughed, I asked, “Where are your water bottles?”

“We didn’t bring them!”

“Why?”

“We forgot.”

“Oh it’s ok, go get them.”

“We didn’t forget. We aren’t thirsty.”

“But you’re all warm from playing. It will help cool you down.”

“But you’re also warm from the heat. We can’t drink water if you can’t. It’s not nice.”

Non-judgment 

Ray loved doing anything if he could do it together. 

Not just with me; he held my hand on field trips and ate his lunch next to me at school, but he was also always playing games with his favorite classmates or chasing his cousin around the playground or chatting with the school cook while he waited in line for food. His smile made you feel like you were in on a secret joke, and he was always smiling.

When I chaperoned a field trip to a kid’s theater show, I had known him for a year. 

He dragged me to and from the vending machine, walked around the building holding my hand, and proudly showed me the contents of his lunchbox. He let me help him as he hopped onto the first step of the escalators. He told me all about his grandma and his breakfast and what he had seen on the bus ride over. When I took him to the bathrooms, he paused outside and turned back to look at me. 

“Wait,” he said, looking at my short hair and at the signs on the bathroom doors. “Are you a girl or a boy?”

“Ray! I’m a girl!” 

I pointed him towards the boy’s bathroom and told him I would wait outside. When he came back he grabbed my hand and smiled again. 

“Let’s race back!” he shouted.

Goodness

Dragon and Sean were fifth graders who were harshly reprimanded by their homeroom teachers on a daily basis for being “too slow.” 

On St. Patrick’s Day, each class made Shamrock Shakes, often more than needed. 

My co-teacher and I asked the students, “What should we do with the leftover milkshakes?” 

“Give me more!” 

“No, me!” 

“Teacher, please! Me me me!” were the most common responses.

Dragon and Sean, out of 280 students, were the only ones to answer, “Save it for our homeroom teacher please.”

Perspective

I was playing soccer with my fifth graders, my most difficult students. 

They were unfocused in my class, antsy and rude.

On the side of the field, a small fight was breaking out about which team would take the most unathletic player in the grade.

“You can’t play with us! Go somewhere else.” One student was yelling.

Caught in the middle, quiet and timid Jerry was looking from classmate to classmate for someone who would take pity and let him join the game. I approached slowly, unenthusiastic about trying to mediate in English, but several kids spoke up before I did.

“Hey, you can’t say that. You’re the class president.” 

“The class president has to make things fair.”

“Come on. You can be on our team.”

In class they snickered behind each others’ backs, picked fights, and rolled their eyes during instructions, but they also held each other accountable, and even more enthusiastically than I did. 

I told their teacher later that day, “Your class was being so mature at recess. I thought it was great, they were really taking the class president seriously.”

“Of course,” she said. “That’s how they are. They’re good kids.”

Vulnerability

As a farewell gift, I wrote each of my students a personalized letter, outlining my favorite memories of them as well as characteristics that I admired about them. 

When I handed out the letters during my fifth grade class, I was surprised to hear that many students wanted my co-teacher to translate the letters aloud instead of watching the movie that we had selected.

Alex, one of my most active students, didn’t want his letter translated. He remained quiet the entire class period, and I assumed it was because we didn’t get to watch the movie. 

Three days later, as I was packing up my suitcase to leave Taiwan, a small heart shaped piece of paper fell out of the stack of farewell notes from my students.

As my friend translated it to me, I couldn’t hold back my tears.

Part of Alex’s letter read, “You are the first person to write me a letter and the first person I’m writing a letter to. You are also the first person to make me cry from reading a letter. Before you, I didn’t know any foreigners. But because of you, I now think foreigners are good. After our last class, I cried so much. I stayed in the bathroom and cried, but I didn’t want you to see. I thought I could be strong and say goodbye, but I knew I would cry, so this is my goodbye…”

Gratitude

After my last class with my fourth graders, I went outside their classroom and sat on the ground for a moment of reflection. As I sulked and wondered when or if we would see each other next, my fourth grader Mina quietly sat down beside me. 

She spoke with such grace and wisdom that it felt like I was the child and her the adult. 

“Don’t be too sad Uswa. Think about how lucky we are to meet each other, spend one year together, and miss each other forever.”