Procrastination of the ultimate sort
I've been tutoring, for the past month or so, at a high school in City Heights. My favorite part is the beginning ESL class; 15 teenage Burmese/Cambodian/Somali refugees learning verbs and eagerly spelling out loud the months of the year. Every week after general class, I read with a 15 year old boy from Burma named Tarnene; he is very quiet, very polite, and almost impossibly small for his age. He has a huge, huge soft spot in my heart because despite the fact that he can barely understand anything he tries so hard, and gets so excited whenever he gets a word right. He improves every week - while three weeks ago he sat silent at the back of the classroom, now he repeats sentences over and over with everyone else, desperately practicing his English.
Today I was supposed to lead a "discussion" of sorts with a few students, asking them questions including simple verbs like "do" and "are." I ran out of example questions fast, and resorted to asking about their families. After conversing with a preternaturally bright Cambodian girl, I turned to Tarnene and asked him if his father spoke English. He looked very embarassed, and said "I don't have a father." Assuming he was then the son of a single mother, I quickly recouped and asked him if his mother spoke English. He turned even brighter red, and said "I don't have a mother." I felt like an ass and wanted to hug him, in the same moment. A sudden and intense desire came over me just then to somehow fix his life completely, even though I knew he was already an orphan and has probably spent most of his life in a Thai refugee camp, hiding from those in his country that persecute him because he is Karen. For an instant, it didn't matter to me: I wanted to take him home with me and teach him English and somehow find his parents and make everything alright. I don't know when I started to like kids, and I can't remember the last time I was ever so naive.
Today I was supposed to lead a "discussion" of sorts with a few students, asking them questions including simple verbs like "do" and "are." I ran out of example questions fast, and resorted to asking about their families. After conversing with a preternaturally bright Cambodian girl, I turned to Tarnene and asked him if his father spoke English. He looked very embarassed, and said "I don't have a father." Assuming he was then the son of a single mother, I quickly recouped and asked him if his mother spoke English. He turned even brighter red, and said "I don't have a mother." I felt like an ass and wanted to hug him, in the same moment. A sudden and intense desire came over me just then to somehow fix his life completely, even though I knew he was already an orphan and has probably spent most of his life in a Thai refugee camp, hiding from those in his country that persecute him because he is Karen. For an instant, it didn't matter to me: I wanted to take him home with me and teach him English and somehow find his parents and make everything alright. I don't know when I started to like kids, and I can't remember the last time I was ever so naive.