When I'm with a new student I haven't taught before or someone who has just come to the school and who is also from a place we get few people from, and this place one around which all kinds of myths and misconceptions have collected, then there's an extra charge in the air. When, moreover, the student is friendly and voluble, communicative regarding on all kinds of subjects related to his country, then our time is full of interest. I, he, we both learn a lot.
But beyond the things for me to learn about him and his country, and he to learn about English and the United States, there are also cultural differences expressed this way by a fellow teacher: 'I don't know how to read him what's going on.'
The gaze. It happened at odd moments in the middle of my presentation, maybe 3 or 4 times in the week, a looking at my face without question or impatience. It was as if I were being, not contemplated, but waited on for the next exhibition of who I was.
I found it unnerving. I realized how much I rely on facial expressions to cue my next words. Since I didn't know what his expression meant I was at a loss how to proceed: did he understand what I'd just said, did he need more explication, what?
Then there's the question of what that gaze implied about how I was perceived: a curious object, a friend, a figure of authority? In his tradition, did it suggest some kind of relationship?
I found myself talking a bit too long and changing tack. That gaze knocked me off my stride, but I'm sure you were unaware of what it was doing.
It was a pleasure meeting you as student and person--serious, playful, hard-working, relaxed, intelligent. You taught me a lot and gave me a lot to think about. Perhaps there are several kinds of otherness: one, just alternative ways of doing the same thing; the other, different perceptions based on an alternative value system, that is to say, world-view.
I've tried to imagine what was going on, based on what I know about your tradition. But these are intellectual suppositions, with a different ontological standing than you and me in encounter in the classroom. I'm glad: otherness is not to be managed, but met. And I did. Thank you.
The gaze. It happened at odd moments in the middle of my presentation, maybe 3 or 4 times in the week, a looking at my face without question or impatience. It was as if I were being, not contemplated, but waited on for the next exhibition of who I was.
I found it unnerving. I realized how much I rely on facial expressions to cue my next words. Since I didn't know what his expression meant I was at a loss how to proceed: did he understand what I'd just said, did he need more explication, what?
Then there's the question of what that gaze implied about how I was perceived: a curious object, a friend, a figure of authority? In his tradition, did it suggest some kind of relationship?
I found myself talking a bit too long and changing tack. That gaze knocked me off my stride, but I'm sure you were unaware of what it was doing.
It was a pleasure meeting you as student and person--serious, playful, hard-working, relaxed, intelligent. You taught me a lot and gave me a lot to think about. Perhaps there are several kinds of otherness: one, just alternative ways of doing the same thing; the other, different perceptions based on an alternative value system, that is to say, world-view.
I've tried to imagine what was going on, based on what I know about your tradition. But these are intellectual suppositions, with a different ontological standing than you and me in encounter in the classroom. I'm glad: otherness is not to be managed, but met. And I did. Thank you.
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