I So Sorry Teacher

Publication: BrickStreet: A Journal of the Art
By: F. Brinley Bruton

Kemal is a young Bosnian, tough with greased-back hair. During class he taps his pen against a magazine and then throws his hands behind his head. Kemal often sighs loudly when others struggle over nouns like "bedroom" and "Brooklyn", or skip articles like "the" and the seemingly unimportant verb "is".

Yet his voice quavers when it is his turn to complete a sentence, his turn to wrap his mouth around a language that he did not grow up in.

"Sorry, I so sorry," he says at every missed "is" and "the", every mispronounced "W" and "V".

"I so sorry teacher," Kemal says.

I teach English to refugees. Most of my students don't have jobs, and speak haltingly but constantly about money - how expensive this country is, how little they have, and how many things there are to be wanted - rubbing together index finger and thumb.

There are only about six students per session, but I estimate over 40 refugees have drifted through in the last year. My students would learn much more English with a trained teacher, but I'm the only alternative most have.

We say the alphabet together and individually, which seems like a hugely satisfying experience for everyone. They conquer the alphabet right away. The rhythm of "A-B-C-D-E-F-G..." carries them forward, each letter hinting at the next.

Yes, Shu Yu has problems with "N", "S" and "Z". Mehriban sometimes says "W" instead of "V" or the other way around. But they always get through the alphabet, smile and lean back after uttering an emphatic "Z!"

War and oppression have forced them to leave much behind - farms, sons and daughters, law practices, gardens bursting with roses. They wear their few clothes very carefully.

Sometimes I try to get them to talk about the war and strife they have escaped. It is self-serving and voyeuristic, I know, but sometimes they want to talk as well.

An Albanian swaps stories with a Sierra Leonian, comparing chaos and loss. They seem reluctant to believe that the war of another could be as senseless and brutal as their own.

One night, those belligerent and flush with their own struggles fall silent when the Burmese jewellery maker passes around photographs from home. In the pictures he is a warrior in a jungle, a submachine gun slung across his shirtless torso, a red bandanna crowning his dirt-smudged face. He looks more comfortable squatting in the mud amid the trees, wet dripping from his chin, than he does slouching in a plastic chair stumbling over words like a toddler.

I lose track of this warrior's name. It is after he does not come back to class that I start a list on which every student writes his or her name twice.

In the left-hand column they write their name in their native language - Afghan, Tibetan, Burmese, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Russian, Armenian, Cantonese, Farsi. On the other side they write their names in English. I keep this attendance sheet to prove that these people once sat around the table with me on Tuesday nights conquering a new language.

I avoid the subject of war when Reza, an Albanian Kosovar and former nurse, is around. She has four daughters and whispers like a gossipy teenager throughout most of the class. She smiles toothily, never smudging her red lipstick.

Every class Reza focuses on an old Serbian woman who lived most of her life on a farm in Bosnia. When war broke in the early 1990s the Yugoslav government relocated the Serbian woman and her husband to Kosovo. That life too was soon lost. The old woman, unsure alone on the subway, comes to class with her 12-year-old granddaughter.

One night, after the Serbian woman and her granddaughter stopped coming to class, Reza tells me proudly: "I say to Serb girl: 'Kosovo for Albania, never for Serb,' I say, 'Kosovo never yours.'"

I learn to keep whispering to a minimum.

But everyone seems very anxious to laugh.

One exercise I use has pictures of people, things or animals with words above them to indicate their location. So a picture of "Ruth" holding a book sits underneath the word "library", a picture of a sleeping dog is beneath the word "bathroom".

We go around the table and a young Tibetan monk gets the picture of a monkey with the word "Zoo" above it. He cannot read English and stares at the scribbles before him.

"Where is the monkey?" I ask him, pointing at the picture in front of him.

"The monkey... is in the temple?"

The class laughs and the monk looks confused. I try to reassure him that he is okay, that he has done a good job. He pronounced "monkey" correctly, and remembered to put "is" and "the" in the right places.

At the end of class my students always say "Goodbye," "Thank you teacher," "See you next week." The men often shake my hand; the women squeeze my arm or my fingers. Some deliver a series of curt bows as they back out the door.

But I never know who I will see again. Their New York lives swallow them, sweep them away from a beginners' English class taught by a volunteer teacher.