Teaching a Refugee Classroom

When I first found out my practicum placement my reaction was excitement and then hesitation.

Wait, they use first names to address teachers there. That’s going to be a bit of a culture change.

While I was focused on losing the, in my mind, affectionate moniker of ‘Mr. Willems’, I didn’t really contemplate the section that informed me I would be teaching ESL. I figured it would essentially be an English classroom—my traditional area of focus—with a few students who really struggled at reading.

Turns out I was a bit off.

The program that I was thrown into was not quite what I was expecting. It is a unique classroom that deals specifically with refugees from Nepal. Students who have been in the country anywhere from two years to two weeks enter in to the classroom to essentially learn how to adapt to Canada. There is no curriculum, as the students have had almost no formal education in their lives, and there is no assessment, as the idea of them graduating with a diploma is nothing more than a distant concept.

In my five years of teacher education I have not had a single class on how to teach a classroom where the students don’t speak English, the culture and religion are vastly different from anything I have known, the students are dealing with the impact of living in refugee camps their entire lives, and the outcome and assessment is entirely relational.

I met with my cooperating teaching and he warned me that the job was really spontaneous—we couldn’t plan in advance because our classroom direction was steered almost entirely by the students and their individual needs. He warned that there would be a lot of counseling—these students have a hard and sordid past; they have experienced hardships we cannot wrap our brains around. He warned that it’s a bit of unique bubble—the program is essentially separate from the school as it is run through the district not the administration. He warned that the culture shock may be large—these students have often no idea how to respond appropriately to Canada.

I warned him that I was a guy who had a preference for flying by the seat of his pants, had a passion for travel and unique culture, a dislike for going by the books, and a personal belief centered around caring for others above all else. I warned him that this was my dream job.

I was set.

I just had to work on the fact that literally the only thing I knew about Nepal is that it is the home of Mt. Everest. And that I have zero knowledge on how to work with students who have come from refugee camps. And that I haven’t the faintest clue on how to plan a unit without a curriculum or an outcome.

But other than that I was set.

I’ve been with the kids for a month now and I have become extremely aware of how lucky I am to be placed in this classroom. I get to spend my days studying culture and building relationships as opposed to stressing about curriculum and assessment. I get to have extremely candid conversations (albeit in pretty broken English) about life and death from a perspective that I didn’t even know existed until a month ago. The university is still watching me to make sure I am cut out for all added pressure that being a teacher brings on, but I’M not sure I’m still cut out for all the added pressure that being a teacher brings on. After only a month of this alternate perspective, this program has opened my eyes, which I have kept very intentionally shut for the past 5 years of university, to the fact that I hate a lot of the administration and expectations that surrounds education. I have said that I wanted to be a teacher all of my life, but ‘being a teacher’ was the only socially acceptable response for where my passions pointed. I want to see people grow and learn, and when filling out a career questionnaire that automatically places me in the category of teacher.

And now, I’m not so sure.

I don’t know what this will amount to. I really don’t. But I just know that I am super excited about these next three months, super tentative about the shift that is happening in my head, and super blessed to be able to experience it all.