A Language of Our Own by jillian

A Language of Our Own by jillian - January 2017 Scholarship Essay

In 2014, my friends and I found ourselves in a classroom, which most teenagers tend to avoid on summer vacation. We voluntarily spent a week in an old school building in Louisville, Kentucky - but little did we know we would be the teachers. The school was once part of a Catholic church that was built long before the marvelous invention of central air. Needless to say, the small window unit wasn’t helping us much, but we weren’t too focused on the amount of sweat dripping from our bodies.
Over the course of a week, my friends and I helped teach English to refugees from Cuba and various Middle Eastern countries as a part of a church mission trip. These refugees had three to four months to become proficient in the English language and secure a job. I was not going to complain about the heat in front of people who faced problems much more challenging than mine.
As teachers, we were supplied with Spanish to English, and Arabic to English dictionaries. One of my friends was fluent in Spanish and helped as many as six Cuban refugees at a time. However, I am not fluent in any language other than English, so my job was a little more difficult.
I was paired with a couple from Cuba and a couple from Israel. There were more refugees than language dictionaries, so if I could use charades in order to convey what needed to be taught, I did.
I was so nervous when I first heard that we were teaching refugees. There I was, a 15 year old, totally outside of her comfort zone, and I was expected to teach grown adults, grown adults, might I add, that didn’t speak English. I was nervous because I felt that having teenagers for teachers would come off as degrading to the refugees, but instead the only thing that was apparent was gratitude. The refugees appreciated what we were doing for them, and we tried to match their determination to learn as we taught.
Throughout the experience, I reminded myself that while teaching English without being proficient in their native language was strenuous, their life was more so. These people had to uproot their families for the promise of something better. However, their dream of America, even while in America, was out of reach. These refugees were people who had well paying jobs in their native countries but gave up everything to start over in hopes of a better future. They had three months to learn a whole new language and find work, and if they couldn’t, they would lose all financial support and be forced to go back to the unsafe homes they had left.
At the end of the week, the refugees opened us up to their culture by showing us their native styles of music while teaching us to dance. Though we couldn’t fluently communicate through spoken word, our mutual understanding allowed for a bond to form that was much stronger than that of which a language could provide.
Often times, ESL schools are underfunded because the people who attend are taught for free since they do not have the language proficiency to hold a well paying job in the United States. This realization, through our experience, impacted all of us on our mission trip so deeply, that we started a supply drive at our church. We collected classroom supplies that would be distributed to various ESL schools in our area as well as back to the organization in Louisville.
Not only did this trip teach me to expand my horizons and jump outside of my comfort zone, but it taught me that everyone is fighting a battle I know nothing about. I was also reminded that I have so many reasons to be grateful, but that gratitude means nothing if I don’t share what I am blessed with to those in need.