Cultural bridges and student testimonies

Samia Costandi

Teaching in the environment of war, bombardment, and the threat of being kidnapped is an experience that has molded me into the kind of teacher I am. Through narrative, I can share with you mental images and glimpses of what it was like to teach in an ESL program at Beirut University from 1983 to 1988.

Personal and collective experience of hardship, including standing at the gates of Hades more than once, raised our consciousness; "our" since my experience was not isolated. The ESL program, ingeniously devised by the linguist and educator Dr. Raja Nasr to fit the needs of students at different levels of proficiency and from different backgrounds, employed forty female teachers. The heroic efforts students made to arrive safely in classes could not but be matched by teachers' complete dedication. We took on the roles of friend, mentor, mother, advisor, role model-that is, presence in every way. Most of us did not miss a day of teaching during our five years in the program. If our students were ever absent, we feared that they could have been killed or kidnapped. They sometimes arrived in classes to do their exams after having spent the whole night in a shelter.

The program had been created specifically to help students from lower-status and lower-income groups, sometimes from villages or poor areas. We knew very well that their parents were putting everything they owned into the education of their young, hoping that their sons and daughters would procure a scholarship enabling them either to enter university or perhaps leave the country to create new lives for themselves. Remember, education was not, and is not, free in Lebanon.

This educational milieu was fraught with complexity: here we were alumni who were educated in the Western tradition, mostly in English and American schools, had traveled widely earlier in our lives, spoke with a British or American accent, trying to teach kids whose communities were bombarded daily by Israel and other local parties with American-made bombs and shells. These kids were mostly Moslem Lebanese living in what was called Western Beirut. It was a welter of contradictions; all teachers in the program, no matter whether Christian or Moslem, considered the Israeli and American assault on Lebanon despicable; however, here we were teaching English literature and English language to traumatized students who were yearning for an opportunity to enter American universities!

The moral basis of our endeavor stemmed from three basic implicit beliefs: First, cultural boundaries must be crossed in order for dialogue to ensue, in order for bridges of understanding to be created. Second, despite the West's antagonism towards our communities, our students had to learn to appreciate what Western societies thrive on internally: democratic rights and privileges. Third, and on the other hand, knowing the "enemy" was crucial in order to fight it in different, non-violent ways, ways that had to do with success, travel, the media, empowerment through knowledge, and gaining access to the West through its own ideals. More importantly, it was about appropriating the text of the colonizer.

None of us teachers had diplomas in teaching ESL, but theory was matched with practice since we were required to procure our diplomas while we were teaching. These were exciting times since we would always meet and exchange views on what was working best. Seeing students pass the TOEFL exam was our reward. Each passing grade was a victory on the social, psychological, ethical, and linguistic levels.

I believe strongly that the fact that we were all women made the program successful. I am saying this simply because it is difficult to find many men adhering to feminist ideology in Beirut. Carol Gilligan's description of the difference between female and male consciousness and ways of engaging the world morally (in her book In a Different Voice suggests an adequate comment. One of her interviewees, an adolescent female, said the following: "I have a very strong sense of being responsible to the world, that I can't just live for my enjoyment, but just the fact of being in the world gives me an obligation to do what I can to make the world a better place to live in, no matter how small a scale that may be on" (Gilligan, p. 21).

What Gilligan calls "the complexity and multifaceted character of real people and real situations" (p. 21) changed the pedagogic act from an information-transmitting act to an act of rebirth, regeneration and deep engagement in the lives of students on many levels. It became an endeavor that required what Edward Said calls the ethical commitment of the intellectual. As Helen Buss says in her book Mapping Ourselves, we had to contend with cultural myths that were not useful and create new myths, new fictions to make truth. We constructed new frameworks, named priorities, assumed particular readings--and, I would add, interpreted readings in new ways--in order to give our students new visions. We carved our own identities as teachers in that complex culture, in language, despite all odds, with difficulty, but probably successfully. We helped our students construct their own truths, new truths that were framed in new contexts that were not in harmony with the prevailing patriarchal and political hegemony (Buss, p. 29).

The job of the teacher was to make the class interesting, entertaining, captivating, if you like, to take students on mental trips that opened their horizons and gave them alternative world views. It was very challenging, particularly since we were working against all odds. Aside from the lack of physical safety and security, many of our adult students had immense responsibilities to contend with at home since parents or siblings had been killed. For most, this was not really English as a Second Language, but a foreign language, considering that language is embedded in culture and that language is much more than words. "Different worlds had to meet." After all, what would make a young Lebanese man or woman who had no background in Western education enjoy European or English literature?

Whether it was the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice, in the conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, or the fascinating plot of a more accessible book, Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Able, I tried to make those literary pieces and situations accessible to my students through drawing comparisons with their own lives. For example, many identified with Mrs. Bennett's enthusiasm to marry off her daughters they came from homes where their families, particularly mothers, were interested in marrying off their daughters. The characters of Mr. and Mrs. Bennett were not strange to them. However, they needed to get over the intimidation of the language and the worry about grades before they could enjoy the literature and the readings.

I would make students enact dramatically certain sections of our readings of novels, and they enjoyed doing that. It was a welcome contrast to the monotony and sterility of the political rhetoric they were used to tuning into every day. Sometimes they volunteered to do the acting, and sometimes I pushed them, particularly those who were mischievous and needed to be engaged. Humour was one of the most salient features of the teaching-learning process that led to comprehension. As Parker Palmer says, "To teach is to create a space, a learning space that has three essential dimensions: openness, boundaries, and an air of hospitality" (Palmer, 1983, pp. 69-72). Although our boundaries were violated daily by the war, we managed to thrive on openness and hospitality.

These class assignments gave us moments of fun, humour, and healthy interaction. The classroom was a hospitable place where everyone was encouraged not only to express themselves but to make suggestions about what to do next. I once had one of my most troublesome students dance with one of the girls as they played Darcy and Elizabeth at the ball in Pride and Prejudice.

Once, I brought a friend into the classroom to play guitar, and the students and I sang with him. You must understand that in a traditional setting such teaching is unheard of. No one taught us teachers to act like this. We had to be inventive and make the classroom a safe and inviting meeting place which anchored students, yet entertained them to arouse their interest.

We watched videos, like the screen adaptation of Hemingway's classic The Old Man and the Sea. I used that story as a metaphor for the struggles they were going through as human beings. Even though one student challenged me and said that it represented nothing to him, I threw the question back at the class, and other students challenged him in turn and spoke about the courage of the old man, about unfulfilled dreams and ambitions, about determination, persistence and commitment.

As far as grades were concerned, I used to say at the outset of every course, "No one can fail this class unless they are determined to do so!" We tried to give students confidence in themselves and continuous encouragement.

The first class I taught was actually the best one, the most enthusiastic and brilliant. Sixty students all passed their English exams, forty with an average matching a master's student's score of over 600. Many of them traveled abroad and unfortunately never came back. Total disgust with a life in the midst of a vicious war made them incurably disillusioned. Was that a success, the fact that they never came back? I wonder about that sometimes, but then personal autonomy and integrity were, for them, not possible at the time in the existing frameworks. Others succeeded and stayed in Beirut; many left to study abroad but did eventually come back. Some are employed in various ministries today. At the end of the semester I invited that very first class to my home, and they brought me a gift, a tree, with a card hanging on it saying, "From a very special class to a very special teacher." But this was not my legacy only; it was the legacy of every teacher in that program in the war-torn city of Beirut.

Bibliography

Belenky, M. et al. (1986). Women's ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind. New York: Basic Books.

Buss, Helen. (1993). Mapping ourselves. Montreal: McGill Queen's University Press.

Gilligan, Carol. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Palmer, Parker J. (1983). To know as we are known: A spirituality of education. San Francisco, California. Harper and Row.

Said, Edward. (1994). Representations of the intellectual. New York: Pantheon Books.