June 5, 2024 • 29 mins
Stephanie Anderson teaches English as a New Language in Indiana.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
It's Friday, and there's six more days of school. I'm up.
It's about five forty five, and I really don't want
to wake up because I didn't really sleep.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Really great last night and probably didn't.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Go to bed until one.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I was in bed by like ten, but just couldn't sleep.
And if I don't work out before work, it's just
probably not going to happen. Yeah. If I don't do
it now, I won't do it.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
This is finally a show about a former missionary who
became a special type of middle school English teacher.
Speaker 5 (00:52):
My name is Stephanie Anderson, and I currently live in Indianapolis,
So I'm an E and L teacher, which is English
as a New Language. The school that I work at
is about twelve hundred kids. The majority of students are
African American. Most of my students are Hispanic, but then
(01:12):
I also have a growing population of students coming from Haiti.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
I'll right a couple of announcements this morning. First, this
is we are May eighteenth, or we are celebrating Haitian
Flag Day today even though it falls on tomorrow. So
at this time, all our Haitian Creole students are welcome
(01:38):
to come down to the Commons to get a picture
this morning and celebration of Haitian Flag Day tomorrow, So
teachers you may release are Haitian creole students to the
Commons at this time.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
ASL is kind of an outdated term. It's not something
that's not used anymore, but it's something that is really
kind of pigeonholes because it's English as a second language
when it's ESL, and a lot of our students that
are coming English is not their second language. For some
of them, it is their second language. But for some
of them, even if they're Hispanic, some of them are
(02:14):
coming from places in Guatemala or Nicaragua or Honduras, and
they have different languages, like more native languages, and for
Haitian kids, English sometimes is their fifth language. So that's
why the term has changed from ESL to English as
a new Language. There's a lot of acronyms that do
(02:35):
very similar things but have different purposes. Essentially, let's go, ladies,
let's go, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
If you want a flag, I have some extra flags here.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
I was born in Indianapolis, and I was actually born
during a tornado. I just had my birthday, not too
long ago, and my mom reminded me that I was
born during a tornado, and I haven't stopped since.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I've never known a strange.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
When I was a child, my mom said that I
would just talk to anybody and everyone, and I also
got lost a lot. As a child, we went to
Disney World. I don't know how old I was, maybe seven,
and I remember looking down and they have all these
bricks of people who who have donated money, and I'm
looking and reading these names, and then all of a sudden,
like at the entrance, and then I look up and
(03:22):
no one around me is someone I know. And then
I think I just cried and found some kind of
an adult, and then I found my parents. When we
went to King's Island and in Ohio, I got lost
there with my cousins. I got lost out a seers once,
and my family members all had to block off the
seers because they thought maybe I'd gotten kidnapped. But I
(03:43):
was just hiding in a rack of clothes.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I wander off.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
And I look at something, and then all of a sudden,
I look around and I'm not with my people.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
So I'm not.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Always very observant of staying with the people I'm supposed
to stay with. I stayed in Indianapolis for my whole
childhood and high school career. Moved to Munts, Indiana to
winter Baal State did not do education. I actually did
(04:19):
religious studies, and that was more of a I procrastinated
picking a major for so long that once I got
finished and I looked, you know, I was getting closer
to graduating, I had to look back and be like, well,
what have I taken a lot of courses in?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And I had taken a lot of history, a lot
of geography.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
And then a lot of religion classes, and because it
was interesting to me, well, religion in general. Like at
that time, at late high school early college, was just
trying to figure out who I was as a person
and trying to figure out, like how do I fit
in this whole world. I wasn't a Christian. We didn't
(05:00):
go to church. That was something that I did on
my own. And I had a cousin that an older
cousin that asked me to go to church, and I was.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Like, yeah, yeah, I'll go. You're cool.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
I was a freshman in high school when nine to
eleven happened, and I remember just being baffled by, you know,
that happening, not knowing anything about Islam, not knowing anything
about that part of the world, but being very intrigued
by what had happened, and thinking, I think I'm also
(05:33):
very an optimistic person, and thinking, there's no way that
there's a group of people like that, there's a giant
group of people in the world to just like hate
Americans so much that they would do something like this.
And at the time, I was a very strong Christian
and so I was just trying to think, how, like,
what did they believe? Well, how is it so different
than the way that I believe? And so I think
(05:53):
that's what kind of drew me to religion to begin with.
And Islam always was a focal point when I was studying.
I always was intrigued by Islam over everything else. When
I had to do I took a religious studies clash
that studied it was like an anthropological study of a
group in Muncie, and you've got to choose any religious
(06:16):
group you wanted, and I chose our local mosque and
I loved going. I went every Friday. I met these
amazing women. Because I stayed on the women's side, I
met these amazing women from Itran in Afghanistan and got
to know them. They invited me over to their house.
(06:37):
I never felt like they were pushing me to try
to believe in Hamm it is their profit. Like they
never tried to convert me, and they made me feel
I mean, they knew that I was doing this for school.
They knew that it wasn't now I think would they
have been happy to share with me if I would
have asked in an interest that I wanted to become Muslim, Yeah,
(06:58):
of course.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
But they were really respect that.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Boundary, which I appreciated as if do you want to
read it with me?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
That's okay.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
So this blue box at sixty two, Okay, more good
news was brought. More good news news was brought by
young Jock. By Young j There was a time in
my life that I wanted to be a missionary, and
I think that was the other interest that came into
trying to understand about other people. I wanted to see
(07:27):
what do other people do and how do they live?
And I fully and wholeheartedly believed that it was my
job as a Christian at that time to proselytize and
to convert people to Christianity, because I felt it was
partly my duty because it was asked of me of
the Bible, and I believed at that point that the
(07:49):
Bible was the true and accurate word. I think that
was kind of the like there was little sparks here
and there of just peaking interest of just something different,
something new than what I had known in Indiana. I
never thought that.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I would stay in Indiana forever.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
I guess I never really saw that as a long
term plan. I always saw that there was other places
out in the world and thought, man, it would be
really cool to see what it's like to be there.
My mom had a friend that she hooked me up
(08:29):
with their church was going to Honduras for a week,
and so I went with them. I didn't know anybody
really in this group. I mean, they were really friendly,
and we went to compound that had a school, and
they had like a communal area for all the families
to cook, and then all of the families had individual houses,
(08:51):
but all of the parents were like foster parents or
like adoptive parents, they were not the parents of the children,
and so they all lived there and then they went
to school there, and then while we were there, they
were also working on a college, like a small university
up on the mountain. I ended up helping this guy
(09:13):
do pipework every day. I didn't know what I was doing,
but I hung out with the kids and kept them
occupied while other people were doing real work. So that
was my first time leaving the country really feeling like
I was leaving the country by myself. And then when
I was in college, I got connected with a Christian
organization and I did mission work in the summers. I
(09:36):
went to India first summer and that was my first
like really really big trip. The next summer I went
to Thailand. And then I graduated college and somehow got
connected with a friend of a friend who ran a
Christian school in Nigeria and they said, hey, we have
(09:57):
this library that the school that needs someone to run
it for three months. Would you be interested? I said, yeah,
I could go. I'll go to Nigeria for three months.
I don't have anything to do. And so I talked
to the principal and she's like, actually, we would want
you for a year, a whole school year.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
And that was a huge culture shock.
Speaker 5 (10:17):
That was that was probably the best thing to do first,
like a first big experience living abroad because it just
taught me so much. It taught me how to live
on less than I've ever been used to. I don't
want to say a little, because we were very blessed
compared to a lot of people that lived there. I mean,
(10:39):
we had a generator in our property so at night,
like we would have a generator for our air conditioning.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
But the electricity was very unstable.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
It was never you know, it was always on and off,
and you just got used to it. Our water would
be the well liked would run dry and we just
wouldn't have water to wash dishes and things. Yeah, when
you don't have water, you don't electricity, You've got to
figure out how to make all of your food. There's
definitely perspective in that. When I was working with people
(11:10):
and trying to proselytize them and get to them to to,
you know, believe in Jesus and become saved. I think
at that time I really felt like I was doing
something that was going to make a.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Forever impact on their life.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
And I was sad for people, I think, thinking that
they didn't they didn't have Jesus the same way that
I had them, and they didn't have that same security,
because that's what you're taught, and that's what you know,
preachers say every Sunday, and that's what you read about
in the Bible, is that you don't have that they
(11:47):
don't have that security, and that they are going to
live forever in you know, in hell or just in
you know, in this discomfort, and you don't want that
for anybody. And so I think I felt secure for
a while, but I think still deep down I had
this feeling of do I actually believe enough?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Am I doing this right? Is it enough?
Speaker 5 (12:12):
And I think that in Christianity, I think everyone, I
think in any faith, people are going to doubt their faith,
and everyone's going to.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Go back and forth.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
And I doubt there's anybody in their life that's ever said, oh,
I believed in this once and I believed it forever
and I never doubted. But I think traveling and seeing
more people and different people and meeting again people that
were some of the nicest people, like, the longer that
I saw this, the more that I saw this, the
more that I lived, I just thought, I just can't
(12:44):
imagine that they are living their life and they just
happened to be born somewhere that Christianity is not prevalent,
and I just can't imagine that that's going to be
the end of them because they don't believe because of this,
because they're just not born in the right place. And
so you know, quickly when you start to meet more
(13:05):
people of different religions and different faiths and see how
they express their faiths, and you just it becomes harder
to believe that there's only one way. It's harder to
believe that there's only one route. I don't know, even
after all of this, after studying many religions and seeing
(13:25):
many religions in practice, I don't really know if I
believe really anything anymore. After I'd worked in Nigeria and
worked at a school, I realized, Okay, if I'm going
to go back overseas and work overseas again, teaching English
(13:47):
is probably my best bet.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Like I'm not.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
Nobody needs a religious studies major there in their workforce.
I could have went anywhere, but I was very drawn
to going back to Africa and to an Arab you know,
an Arab country there where.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
They spoke Arabic.
Speaker 5 (14:06):
I decided Egypt because one I found a job and
two I was like, well, this fits both criterias. It's
in Africa and it's an Arabic speaking country and their
Muslim like let's go. Because I had read stories about
women being in Saudi Arabia and I had, you know,
heard all of these things, and I'm thinking it, can't
you hear about these stereotypes about women being oppressed And
(14:28):
I'm like, it can't be as bad as you're hearing,
And so I wanted to see for myself and it
wasn't what you know, we and the West had kind
of exacerbated. So then I found I found a job
online for a school in Egypt. I didn't know much
(14:50):
about Egypt, I'll be really honest, and the website, like
even every part of it seemed a little sketchy. My
mom doesn't know a lot of this that it was
the sketchy. I did communicate with people that had worked
at the school, other English teachers, but I still was
like there was just weird things where they were like
telling me about like how you should get your alcohol
(15:14):
from duty free because it's way more expensive, you know,
when you buy it outside of duty free. And I
start like thinking and I'm like, am I getting kidnapped,
but then I'm also bringing the alcohol for everyone, like,
what's what's happening? So it ended up being fine, and
(15:35):
I ended up, you know, meeting and working with people
that I from all over the United States, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand and the UK, and people that I would
have never met or you know, probably been friends with
it and became really good friends with them.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
So and then I got in a.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
Relationship with a guy and we had talked about getting married,
but he was Muslim, and I think it was I
think I knew deep down it was never really going
to happen because his family was never going to agree.
They never were going to be okay with it was
too different than what they had ever experienced. That I
was one American that I was. I too didn't speak
(16:13):
Arabic and you know, I was working on it, but
I wasn't anywhere close to fluent and I wasn't Muslim.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
But I think we both hoped.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
So that was that was at That was a hard
blow when that ended, when he and I broke up.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
We ended in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
It feels it feels really close sometimes, but then it
feels really far when I when I say the date
out loud and I think about the time that has passed,
and I think about the things I've done since, then
I think, oh, no, that's that's actually kind of not
that close, but it still feels fresh sometimes. Yeah, I
(16:58):
my mental health went downhill, well partially because of that.
Partially I rushed into another relationship with someone who was
wrong for me. But you know, you tried to fill
I tried to fill avoid quickly and that was wrong
for me. And then when that didn't pan out, I
just was crushed. I came back to the United States
(17:26):
essentially because my mental health was trash and needed to
be around my family.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
And then when I.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
Was looking for a job, I had found this job
for E and L, but I didn't really know what
EnL was and didn't even realize that I had to
do a whole nother certification for it, so I kind
of fell into the job. But when I looked at
the description and you're teaching students English, and I'm like, well,
I've been teaching kids English forever, like for seven years,
(17:53):
and all my kids that I taught abroad didn't know
English as their first language.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
I was like, I can do that, and when I.
Speaker 5 (18:05):
Got interviewed here in Indiana, I think my principal had reservations,
but I told them, and this was kind of my
motto through and through is that like kids are kids
are kids. At the end of the day, I don't
care what kid in the world you're talking to, Like
they like candy. Any kid in the world likes candy.
Any kid in the world wants to play and do
(18:26):
silly things and have fun. Like at the end of
the day, kids are kids are kids, and they have
basic needs, which are they want to have fun, they
want to feel safe, they want candy, and they grow fast.
I mean, those are those are kind of the universal
truths for children. So during my day, I have a
(18:49):
little period in the beginning of the class, like at
the beginning of the day that I don't have students,
So that's the first period, and then I have the
second period. I have my Reading Intervention class, which is
seven to eighth graders that are proficient in English but
just need some help with some reading. And then I
have my eighth grade New Learner class, and then I
have a seventh grade new learner class. Then I have lunch,
(19:12):
and then after that I work with a student that
is new to the United States who is not literate
at all, and she's a fifth grader. So we work
on a lot of basic skills, and then I work
with my sixth grade new learners then and they've all
just gotten here this year. Those students that I work
with from Haiti that I support in that class Wahn.
(19:40):
I use Google Translate a lot, especially with my Haitian students.
Spanish I can kind of fumble through here and there,
but with my Haitian students, I'm also trying to learn
Haitian creole on Duelingo and it's not I started French
and then I started Haitian Creole, and there was weird
overlaps that didn't make sense because like God song was
(20:00):
like boy in French, but then it was Man and
Haitian creole on due Lingo at least, and so then
I was like, I don't know which is which. Now
you have to understand the crossover. I think that's the
biggest thing in linguistics and in the job that I have,
the crossover meaning one language to another. So how does
English compare to this other language? So like Hungarian, for example,
(20:23):
is very different than English, and a lot of other
languages because the structure is not a subject verb pattern,
it's actually a verb subject. So like Yoda actually speaks
more like he's Hungarian. They actually copied the Hungarian structure,
like sentence structure, and so that's why he talks the
(20:45):
way he does. Talented him I And so you have
to understand that crossover so that you can understand what
are they going to make mistakes in Spanish and englisher
are nice? Are nice like accompaniment because we have so
many similarities. But like they have to understand, phonics is different,
so like the J is going to be different. Arabic
is like that Arabic there's no P sound, so pepsi
(21:08):
is bibsi. They don't have a V sound, so everything
goes to like a puugh. They have the i'm sound
that we don't have. They have the so like uh
like DJ Colled like DJ Colled. I don't know why
this drives me crazy, Maybe just because you get used
to it after a while. Like I had a friend,
I have a friend named Khalid in Quit and then
(21:28):
I asked him one day, I said, why does DJ
Colled go by DJ Collid and not DJ Khalid?
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Because it should be like A like.
Speaker 5 (21:36):
A and and and I think realistically it's just because
English speakers are never going to say it correctly, so
I think at some point he's just like, forget it.
I'm DJ Colled, DJ Chali. So the highs of being
an an L teacher is just watching them develop and
you see them and this was the same even when
I taught abroad and watching them just grow. And the
(21:58):
funniest thing is you start to realize that you've really
taught them and that they're really paying attention and they're
learning something when they start picking up your mannerisms and
the way that you talk or the things that you say,
and then you go, oh, you have been listening to me.
This is from me, Like I call them honey a lot,
and then I have to quickly tell them once like
(22:19):
what this means, and they just look at me funny,
and then I have to be like, yeah, it's just
like a like it's like a more, it's like a
sweet thing. It's endearment. But then they'll start saying it
back to me sometimes and sometimes it's sarcastic. It's like okay, honey,
and then you're like, oh, okay, yeah, you guys are
are actually learning things. The lows are the stories. I
(22:44):
don't hear a ton of them one because of a
language barrier too.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
I try not to.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
Put my kids in positions where they talk about things
they don't want to talk about.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Or also a lot of our kids that.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Come with some crazy stories don't even know that it's
trauma or that it's a crazy story.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You know.
Speaker 5 (23:03):
One of my teachers I teach with was talking to
a girl a couple of years ago, and the girl
says something like, well, you guys were all kidnapped too,
weren't you. And they're like and they all kind of
look at her, like what, And you know, when she
was she came from Guatemala originally, when they got to
the US border, her mom was here in the United
States but had had, you know, paid people to bring
(23:26):
the daughters here, and then once they got to the border,
then these people asked for more money. And you just
hope and pray that it was just that they were
kept there. You just you just you just hope. And
that's something I've tried to advocate a lot, and I'm
we're starting to see change in that. But I want
(23:47):
to see when my kids come. I want to see them,
you know, start talking to an adult that they can
talk to in their language. That's a counselor. And I'm
not saying draw things out, but just check in with
our kids and see like, are you okay? Because they
don't even realize sometimes. So it's things like that. Those
are the lows. Those are definitely the lows. It's the
stories they come with. Those are the lows.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
But it makes them.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Who they are, and it's their story, and you know,
you don't want to take it from them, and you're
not gonna try to demean it or and you don't
want to. I'm not trying to use their stories of like,
oh woe is me and my poor kids, like that's
not it at all. I know that my kids' parents
are coming here because they they want more for their kids.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
At this time, please release call writers and anyone staying
for an after school activity. A bus riders remain in
the classroom until four o'clock.
Speaker 5 (24:38):
The I don't have great feelings about people that are
very negative about immigrants, especially knowing how hard my kids'
parents work. I don't ask about their status. I don't
want to know their status. I don't want to get
(24:58):
involved in. Now, if a kid told me and wanted
helped with something like they need a lawyer or something, now,
of course I would do whatever I could to connect them.
But I know how difficult potentially their lives were, just
hearing little bits and pieces of their stories, and you know,
I have students that were on the brink of getting
(25:21):
involved in gangs or were involved in gangs in other
countries in Central or South America, and their parents, you know,
are trying to get them out of it.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
I know that.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
And I just think I think even just looking back
on the history of our country and that we were
all immigrants at some point. I mean, we were all
we didn't all start here, and I think America has
a lot of we have a lot of dark history
for sure, And I don't know, it just makes me
sad sometimes when I see people, you know, being like
(25:50):
this is I think, at the end of the day,
it all roots to the unknown, and you know, propaganda
starts and you hear this negative thing and that negative thing.
It's the fear of the unknown, for sure, and I
think a lot of Americans struggle with the fear of
the unknown, which is why when people talk to me
and find out I've lived abroad or I've done this,
they think some people think I'm crazy. They're like, how
(26:13):
could you ever leave the United States and not only leave,
but how could you live there? But again, it all
goes back to kids or kids or kids, people or
people or people. I can meet somebody that's in rural Indiana,
and I can meet somebody that's a Beduin in the
Sinai Peninsul of Egypt, and I can be like, you
(26:34):
guys would be best friends if you were born in
the same place, because you guys do the same things.
You're all just doing hillbilly stuff and riding around, getting
into trouble, shooting, you know, playing with fire. You're all
doing the same things. Like you're just so I don't know.
I see a lot of parallels between people when I travel,
(26:54):
and I think, I think the running towards the scary
thing has just been my typical life cycle. It's a
I don't know if it's a dumb that I just
run into fear. I don't know if it's just that
that's just been my nature that I I don't I
think it was the especially I think as a younger person,
(27:14):
I think you have a lot of these feelings of
I'm never gonna die, I'm going to live forever, and
I think I ran with that for so long, and
so I lived in, you know, probably a dreamland a
little bit here and there. And when you're in a dreamland,
like you can do whatever you want, you can fly.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Well, it's about almost eleven o'clock at night.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
I just got home about thirty minutes or so. Ago
went and hung out with some teacher friends in one
of their houses and had some drinks and pizza and
just kind of hung out. Sometimes we talk about school,
and a lot of times we just kind of like
hang out and do other things and talk about other things.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
And I'm getting ready to wash my face and brush
my teeth and go to bed and hopefully wake up
and do CrossFit in the morning if I can wake up. Yeah,
and then next week will be our last week, and
then I have like nine weeks off, which is well, no,
not nine weeks. I don't know how many weeks we
(28:26):
have off.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
I think we have about like June part of July,
so about two months, and then we'll start back up
and do it all again.
Good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
It's Friday, and there's six more days of school. I'm up.
It's about five forty five, and I really don't want
to wake up because I didn't really sleep.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Really great last night and probably didn't.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Go to bed until one.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I was in bed by like ten, but just couldn't sleep.
And if I don't work out before work, it's just
probably not going to happen. Yeah. If I don't do
it now, I won't do it.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
This is finally a show about a former missionary who
became a special type of middle school English teacher.
Speaker 5 (00:52):
My name is Stephanie Anderson, and I currently live in Indianapolis,
So I'm an E and L teacher, which is English
as a New Language. The school that I work at
is about twelve hundred kids. The majority of students are
African American. Most of my students are Hispanic, but then
(01:12):
I also have a growing population of students coming from Haiti.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
I'll right a couple of announcements this morning. First, this
is we are May eighteenth, or we are celebrating Haitian
Flag Day today even though it falls on tomorrow. So
at this time, all our Haitian Creole students are welcome
(01:38):
to come down to the Commons to get a picture
this morning and celebration of Haitian Flag Day tomorrow, So
teachers you may release are Haitian creole students to the
Commons at this time.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
ASL is kind of an outdated term. It's not something
that's not used anymore, but it's something that is really
kind of pigeonholes because it's English as a second language
when it's ESL, and a lot of our students that
are coming English is not their second language. For some
of them, it is their second language. But for some
of them, even if they're Hispanic, some of them are
(02:14):
coming from places in Guatemala or Nicaragua or Honduras, and
they have different languages, like more native languages, and for
Haitian kids, English sometimes is their fifth language. So that's
why the term has changed from ESL to English as
a new Language. There's a lot of acronyms that do
(02:35):
very similar things but have different purposes. Essentially, let's go, ladies,
let's go, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
If you want a flag, I have some extra flags here.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
I was born in Indianapolis, and I was actually born
during a tornado. I just had my birthday, not too
long ago, and my mom reminded me that I was
born during a tornado, and I haven't stopped since.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I've never known a strange.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
When I was a child, my mom said that I
would just talk to anybody and everyone, and I also
got lost a lot. As a child, we went to
Disney World. I don't know how old I was, maybe seven,
and I remember looking down and they have all these
bricks of people who who have donated money, and I'm
looking and reading these names, and then all of a sudden,
like at the entrance, and then I look up and
(03:22):
no one around me is someone I know. And then
I think I just cried and found some kind of
an adult, and then I found my parents. When we
went to King's Island and in Ohio, I got lost
there with my cousins. I got lost out a seers once,
and my family members all had to block off the
seers because they thought maybe I'd gotten kidnapped. But I
(03:43):
was just hiding in a rack of clothes.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I wander off.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
And I look at something, and then all of a sudden,
I look around and I'm not with my people.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
So I'm not.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Always very observant of staying with the people I'm supposed
to stay with. I stayed in Indianapolis for my whole
childhood and high school career. Moved to Munts, Indiana to
winter Baal State did not do education. I actually did
(04:19):
religious studies, and that was more of a I procrastinated
picking a major for so long that once I got
finished and I looked, you know, I was getting closer
to graduating, I had to look back and be like, well,
what have I taken a lot of courses in?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And I had taken a lot of history, a lot
of geography.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
And then a lot of religion classes, and because it
was interesting to me, well, religion in general. Like at
that time, at late high school early college, was just
trying to figure out who I was as a person
and trying to figure out, like how do I fit
in this whole world. I wasn't a Christian. We didn't
(05:00):
go to church. That was something that I did on
my own. And I had a cousin that an older
cousin that asked me to go to church, and I was.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Like, yeah, yeah, I'll go. You're cool.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
I was a freshman in high school when nine to
eleven happened, and I remember just being baffled by, you know,
that happening, not knowing anything about Islam, not knowing anything
about that part of the world, but being very intrigued
by what had happened, and thinking, I think I'm also
(05:33):
very an optimistic person, and thinking, there's no way that
there's a group of people like that, there's a giant
group of people in the world to just like hate
Americans so much that they would do something like this.
And at the time, I was a very strong Christian
and so I was just trying to think, how, like,
what did they believe? Well, how is it so different
than the way that I believe? And so I think
(05:53):
that's what kind of drew me to religion to begin with.
And Islam always was a focal point when I was studying.
I always was intrigued by Islam over everything else. When
I had to do I took a religious studies clash
that studied it was like an anthropological study of a
group in Muncie, and you've got to choose any religious
(06:16):
group you wanted, and I chose our local mosque and
I loved going. I went every Friday. I met these
amazing women. Because I stayed on the women's side, I
met these amazing women from Itran in Afghanistan and got
to know them. They invited me over to their house.
(06:37):
I never felt like they were pushing me to try
to believe in Hamm it is their profit. Like they
never tried to convert me, and they made me feel
I mean, they knew that I was doing this for school.
They knew that it wasn't now I think would they
have been happy to share with me if I would
have asked in an interest that I wanted to become Muslim, Yeah,
(06:58):
of course.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
But they were really respect that.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Boundary, which I appreciated as if do you want to
read it with me?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
That's okay.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
So this blue box at sixty two, Okay, more good
news was brought. More good news news was brought by
young Jock. By Young j There was a time in
my life that I wanted to be a missionary, and
I think that was the other interest that came into
trying to understand about other people. I wanted to see
(07:27):
what do other people do and how do they live?
And I fully and wholeheartedly believed that it was my
job as a Christian at that time to proselytize and
to convert people to Christianity, because I felt it was
partly my duty because it was asked of me of
the Bible, and I believed at that point that the
(07:49):
Bible was the true and accurate word. I think that
was kind of the like there was little sparks here
and there of just peaking interest of just something different,
something new than what I had known in Indiana. I
never thought that.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I would stay in Indiana forever.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
I guess I never really saw that as a long
term plan. I always saw that there was other places
out in the world and thought, man, it would be
really cool to see what it's like to be there.
My mom had a friend that she hooked me up
(08:29):
with their church was going to Honduras for a week,
and so I went with them. I didn't know anybody
really in this group. I mean, they were really friendly,
and we went to compound that had a school, and
they had like a communal area for all the families
to cook, and then all of the families had individual houses,
(08:51):
but all of the parents were like foster parents or
like adoptive parents, they were not the parents of the children,
and so they all lived there and then they went
to school there, and then while we were there, they
were also working on a college, like a small university
up on the mountain. I ended up helping this guy
(09:13):
do pipework every day. I didn't know what I was doing,
but I hung out with the kids and kept them
occupied while other people were doing real work. So that
was my first time leaving the country really feeling like
I was leaving the country by myself. And then when
I was in college, I got connected with a Christian
organization and I did mission work in the summers. I
(09:36):
went to India first summer and that was my first
like really really big trip. The next summer I went
to Thailand. And then I graduated college and somehow got
connected with a friend of a friend who ran a
Christian school in Nigeria and they said, hey, we have
(09:57):
this library that the school that needs someone to run
it for three months. Would you be interested? I said, yeah,
I could go. I'll go to Nigeria for three months.
I don't have anything to do. And so I talked
to the principal and she's like, actually, we would want
you for a year, a whole school year.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
And that was a huge culture shock.
Speaker 5 (10:17):
That was that was probably the best thing to do first,
like a first big experience living abroad because it just
taught me so much. It taught me how to live
on less than I've ever been used to. I don't
want to say a little, because we were very blessed
compared to a lot of people that lived there. I mean,
(10:39):
we had a generator in our property so at night,
like we would have a generator for our air conditioning.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
But the electricity was very unstable.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
It was never you know, it was always on and off,
and you just got used to it. Our water would
be the well liked would run dry and we just
wouldn't have water to wash dishes and things. Yeah, when
you don't have water, you don't electricity, You've got to
figure out how to make all of your food. There's
definitely perspective in that. When I was working with people
(11:10):
and trying to proselytize them and get to them to to,
you know, believe in Jesus and become saved. I think
at that time I really felt like I was doing
something that was going to make a.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Forever impact on their life.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
And I was sad for people, I think, thinking that
they didn't they didn't have Jesus the same way that
I had them, and they didn't have that same security,
because that's what you're taught, and that's what you know,
preachers say every Sunday, and that's what you read about
in the Bible, is that you don't have that they
(11:47):
don't have that security, and that they are going to
live forever in you know, in hell or just in
you know, in this discomfort, and you don't want that
for anybody. And so I think I felt secure for
a while, but I think still deep down I had
this feeling of do I actually believe enough?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Am I doing this right? Is it enough?
Speaker 5 (12:12):
And I think that in Christianity, I think everyone, I
think in any faith, people are going to doubt their faith,
and everyone's going to.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Go back and forth.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
And I doubt there's anybody in their life that's ever said, oh,
I believed in this once and I believed it forever
and I never doubted. But I think traveling and seeing
more people and different people and meeting again people that
were some of the nicest people, like, the longer that
I saw this, the more that I saw this, the
more that I lived, I just thought, I just can't
(12:44):
imagine that they are living their life and they just
happened to be born somewhere that Christianity is not prevalent,
and I just can't imagine that that's going to be
the end of them because they don't believe because of this,
because they're just not born in the right place. And
so you know, quickly when you start to meet more
(13:05):
people of different religions and different faiths and see how
they express their faiths, and you just it becomes harder
to believe that there's only one way. It's harder to
believe that there's only one route. I don't know, even
after all of this, after studying many religions and seeing
(13:25):
many religions in practice, I don't really know if I
believe really anything anymore. After I'd worked in Nigeria and
worked at a school, I realized, Okay, if I'm going
to go back overseas and work overseas again, teaching English
(13:47):
is probably my best bet.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Like I'm not.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
Nobody needs a religious studies major there in their workforce.
I could have went anywhere, but I was very drawn
to going back to Africa and to an Arab you know,
an Arab country there where.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
They spoke Arabic.
Speaker 5 (14:06):
I decided Egypt because one I found a job and
two I was like, well, this fits both criterias. It's
in Africa and it's an Arabic speaking country and their
Muslim like let's go. Because I had read stories about
women being in Saudi Arabia and I had, you know,
heard all of these things, and I'm thinking it, can't
you hear about these stereotypes about women being oppressed And
(14:28):
I'm like, it can't be as bad as you're hearing,
And so I wanted to see for myself and it
wasn't what you know, we and the West had kind
of exacerbated. So then I found I found a job
online for a school in Egypt. I didn't know much
(14:50):
about Egypt, I'll be really honest, and the website, like
even every part of it seemed a little sketchy. My
mom doesn't know a lot of this that it was
the sketchy. I did communicate with people that had worked
at the school, other English teachers, but I still was
like there was just weird things where they were like
telling me about like how you should get your alcohol
(15:14):
from duty free because it's way more expensive, you know,
when you buy it outside of duty free. And I
start like thinking and I'm like, am I getting kidnapped,
but then I'm also bringing the alcohol for everyone, like,
what's what's happening? So it ended up being fine, and
(15:35):
I ended up, you know, meeting and working with people
that I from all over the United States, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand and the UK, and people that I would
have never met or you know, probably been friends with
it and became really good friends with them.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
So and then I got in a.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
Relationship with a guy and we had talked about getting married,
but he was Muslim, and I think it was I
think I knew deep down it was never really going
to happen because his family was never going to agree.
They never were going to be okay with it was
too different than what they had ever experienced. That I
was one American that I was. I too didn't speak
(16:13):
Arabic and you know, I was working on it, but
I wasn't anywhere close to fluent and I wasn't Muslim.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
But I think we both hoped.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
So that was that was at That was a hard
blow when that ended, when he and I broke up.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
We ended in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
It feels it feels really close sometimes, but then it
feels really far when I when I say the date
out loud and I think about the time that has passed,
and I think about the things I've done since, then
I think, oh, no, that's that's actually kind of not
that close, but it still feels fresh sometimes. Yeah, I
(16:58):
my mental health went downhill, well partially because of that.
Partially I rushed into another relationship with someone who was
wrong for me. But you know, you tried to fill
I tried to fill avoid quickly and that was wrong
for me. And then when that didn't pan out, I
just was crushed. I came back to the United States
(17:26):
essentially because my mental health was trash and needed to
be around my family.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
And then when I.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
Was looking for a job, I had found this job
for E and L, but I didn't really know what
EnL was and didn't even realize that I had to
do a whole nother certification for it, so I kind
of fell into the job. But when I looked at
the description and you're teaching students English, and I'm like, well,
I've been teaching kids English forever, like for seven years,
(17:53):
and all my kids that I taught abroad didn't know
English as their first language.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
I was like, I can do that, and when I.
Speaker 5 (18:05):
Got interviewed here in Indiana, I think my principal had reservations,
but I told them, and this was kind of my
motto through and through is that like kids are kids
are kids. At the end of the day, I don't
care what kid in the world you're talking to, Like
they like candy. Any kid in the world likes candy.
Any kid in the world wants to play and do
(18:26):
silly things and have fun. Like at the end of
the day, kids are kids are kids, and they have
basic needs, which are they want to have fun, they
want to feel safe, they want candy, and they grow fast.
I mean, those are those are kind of the universal
truths for children. So during my day, I have a
(18:49):
little period in the beginning of the class, like at
the beginning of the day that I don't have students,
So that's the first period, and then I have the
second period. I have my Reading Intervention class, which is
seven to eighth graders that are proficient in English but
just need some help with some reading. And then I
have my eighth grade New Learner class, and then I
have a seventh grade new learner class. Then I have lunch,
(19:12):
and then after that I work with a student that
is new to the United States who is not literate
at all, and she's a fifth grader. So we work
on a lot of basic skills, and then I work
with my sixth grade new learners then and they've all
just gotten here this year. Those students that I work
with from Haiti that I support in that class Wahn.
(19:40):
I use Google Translate a lot, especially with my Haitian students.
Spanish I can kind of fumble through here and there,
but with my Haitian students, I'm also trying to learn
Haitian creole on Duelingo and it's not I started French
and then I started Haitian Creole, and there was weird
overlaps that didn't make sense because like God song was
(20:00):
like boy in French, but then it was Man and
Haitian creole on due Lingo at least, and so then
I was like, I don't know which is which. Now
you have to understand the crossover. I think that's the
biggest thing in linguistics and in the job that I have,
the crossover meaning one language to another. So how does
English compare to this other language? So like Hungarian, for example,
(20:23):
is very different than English, and a lot of other
languages because the structure is not a subject verb pattern,
it's actually a verb subject. So like Yoda actually speaks
more like he's Hungarian. They actually copied the Hungarian structure,
like sentence structure, and so that's why he talks the
(20:45):
way he does. Talented him I And so you have
to understand that crossover so that you can understand what
are they going to make mistakes in Spanish and englisher
are nice? Are nice like accompaniment because we have so
many similarities. But like they have to understand, phonics is different,
so like the J is going to be different. Arabic
is like that Arabic there's no P sound, so pepsi
(21:08):
is bibsi. They don't have a V sound, so everything
goes to like a puugh. They have the i'm sound
that we don't have. They have the so like uh
like DJ Colled like DJ Colled. I don't know why
this drives me crazy, Maybe just because you get used
to it after a while. Like I had a friend,
I have a friend named Khalid in Quit and then
(21:28):
I asked him one day, I said, why does DJ
Colled go by DJ Collid and not DJ Khalid?
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Because it should be like A like.
Speaker 5 (21:36):
A and and and I think realistically it's just because
English speakers are never going to say it correctly, so
I think at some point he's just like, forget it.
I'm DJ Colled, DJ Chali. So the highs of being
an an L teacher is just watching them develop and
you see them and this was the same even when
I taught abroad and watching them just grow. And the
(21:58):
funniest thing is you start to realize that you've really
taught them and that they're really paying attention and they're
learning something when they start picking up your mannerisms and
the way that you talk or the things that you say,
and then you go, oh, you have been listening to me.
This is from me, Like I call them honey a lot,
and then I have to quickly tell them once like
(22:19):
what this means, and they just look at me funny,
and then I have to be like, yeah, it's just
like a like it's like a more, it's like a
sweet thing. It's endearment. But then they'll start saying it
back to me sometimes and sometimes it's sarcastic. It's like okay, honey,
and then you're like, oh, okay, yeah, you guys are
are actually learning things. The lows are the stories. I
(22:44):
don't hear a ton of them one because of a
language barrier too.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
I try not to.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
Put my kids in positions where they talk about things
they don't want to talk about.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Or also a lot of our kids that.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Come with some crazy stories don't even know that it's
trauma or that it's a crazy story.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You know.
Speaker 5 (23:03):
One of my teachers I teach with was talking to
a girl a couple of years ago, and the girl
says something like, well, you guys were all kidnapped too,
weren't you. And they're like and they all kind of
look at her, like what, And you know, when she
was she came from Guatemala originally, when they got to
the US border, her mom was here in the United
States but had had, you know, paid people to bring
(23:26):
the daughters here, and then once they got to the border,
then these people asked for more money. And you just
hope and pray that it was just that they were
kept there. You just you just you just hope. And
that's something I've tried to advocate a lot, and I'm
we're starting to see change in that. But I want
(23:47):
to see when my kids come. I want to see them,
you know, start talking to an adult that they can
talk to in their language. That's a counselor. And I'm
not saying draw things out, but just check in with
our kids and see like, are you okay? Because they
don't even realize sometimes. So it's things like that. Those
are the lows. Those are definitely the lows. It's the
stories they come with. Those are the lows.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
But it makes them.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Who they are, and it's their story, and you know,
you don't want to take it from them, and you're
not gonna try to demean it or and you don't
want to. I'm not trying to use their stories of like,
oh woe is me and my poor kids, like that's
not it at all. I know that my kids' parents
are coming here because they they want more for their kids.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
At this time, please release call writers and anyone staying
for an after school activity. A bus riders remain in
the classroom until four o'clock.
Speaker 5 (24:38):
The I don't have great feelings about people that are
very negative about immigrants, especially knowing how hard my kids'
parents work. I don't ask about their status. I don't
want to know their status. I don't want to get
(24:58):
involved in. Now, if a kid told me and wanted
helped with something like they need a lawyer or something, now,
of course I would do whatever I could to connect them.
But I know how difficult potentially their lives were, just
hearing little bits and pieces of their stories, and you know,
I have students that were on the brink of getting
(25:21):
involved in gangs or were involved in gangs in other
countries in Central or South America, and their parents, you know,
are trying to get them out of it.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
I know that.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
And I just think I think even just looking back
on the history of our country and that we were
all immigrants at some point. I mean, we were all
we didn't all start here, and I think America has
a lot of we have a lot of dark history
for sure, And I don't know, it just makes me
sad sometimes when I see people, you know, being like
(25:50):
this is I think, at the end of the day,
it all roots to the unknown, and you know, propaganda
starts and you hear this negative thing and that negative thing.
It's the fear of the unknown, for sure, and I
think a lot of Americans struggle with the fear of
the unknown, which is why when people talk to me
and find out I've lived abroad or I've done this,
they think some people think I'm crazy. They're like, how
(26:13):
could you ever leave the United States and not only leave,
but how could you live there? But again, it all
goes back to kids or kids or kids, people or
people or people. I can meet somebody that's in rural Indiana,
and I can meet somebody that's a Beduin in the
Sinai Peninsul of Egypt, and I can be like, you
(26:34):
guys would be best friends if you were born in
the same place, because you guys do the same things.
You're all just doing hillbilly stuff and riding around, getting
into trouble, shooting, you know, playing with fire. You're all
doing the same things. Like you're just so I don't know.
I see a lot of parallels between people when I travel,
(26:54):
and I think, I think the running towards the scary
thing has just been my typical life cycle. It's a
I don't know if it's a dumb that I just
run into fear. I don't know if it's just that
that's just been my nature that I I don't I
think it was the especially I think as a younger person,
(27:14):
I think you have a lot of these feelings of
I'm never gonna die, I'm going to live forever, and
I think I ran with that for so long, and
so I lived in, you know, probably a dreamland a
little bit here and there. And when you're in a dreamland,
like you can do whatever you want, you can fly.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Well, it's about almost eleven o'clock at night.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
I just got home about thirty minutes or so. Ago
went and hung out with some teacher friends in one
of their houses and had some drinks and pizza and
just kind of hung out. Sometimes we talk about school,
and a lot of times we just kind of like
hang out and do other things and talk about other things.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
And I'm getting ready to wash my face and brush
my teeth and go to bed and hopefully wake up
and do CrossFit in the morning if I can wake up. Yeah,
and then next week will be our last week, and
then I have like nine weeks off, which is well, no,
not nine weeks. I don't know how many weeks we
(28:26):
have off.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
I think we have about like June part of July,
so about two months, and then we'll start back up
and do it all again.
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Dateline NBC
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