Loving to Learn, Living to Teach

Forget the CUE guide, the Derek Bok Center and all the attempts of late to transform socially stunted graduate students into Socratic-quality teachers. In the past three years, as I have sat through many poorly-taught sections, I have let my eyes wander, betting that most of my fellow classmates could do a much better job reviewing lecture concepts, explaining grading policies and creating paper topics.

Call it an instinct. I assumed that we, the multi-talented students at Harvard, would excel equally on the other side of the desk. After all, above all else, the classroom is our niche and homework our most cultivated habit.

Despite this long-held assumption, I was still inspired and impressed by my experience this week observing the English as a Second Language class taught by Erica J. LeBow '01. Lebow, a joint English and Sociology concentrator, is one of 35 Harvard students involved in Partners for Empowering Neighborhoods (PEN). This Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) program offers free adult education classes in English as a second language (ESL), computers, math and reading/writing to residents of the Fresh Pond Housing Development in Cambridge and the Bromley Heath neighborhood in Jamaica Plain

Topic of the day: household chores. Ho do you explain "ironing" to a group of newly immigrated adults, ages 22-65, who have arrived at the Fresh Pond projects from China, Honduras, Columbia and Haiti?

"To Defrost." This translation stumped even the most advanced students. LeBow creatively darted to a refrigerator conveniently located in this quasi-classroom, quasi-community center and compared the ice cube's solid state to the running water flowing from a spigot. Teaching ESL often requires a modicum of acting talent. Frequently, LeBow found herself improvising, role-playing and relying on extemporaneous examples and analogies.

"Aha!" was the gleeful exclamation of 65-year-old Desiree, a recent immigrant from Haiti, when she finally comprehended the term. Native English speakers take the words "broom," "sweep," "dishes" and "hammer" for granted. These brand new vocabulary words and phrases will be of critical importance to newly arrived low-income Americans, as they struggle to understand help-wanted advertisements, American shopping malls and even soap operas.

Even Chang, a recent immigrant from northern China and the most proficient English speaker in the class, struggled to pronounce the word, "freeze." For a chef in a local Chinese restaurant, mastery of this word might make or break his culinary presentation and ensure employment success.

Although neither speaking slowly nor enunciating clearly are Harvard students' fortes, LeBow maintained her calm composure and clarity. Soon, the entire class was chiming in unison, "to freeeezzze."

The students were enthusiastic about their young teacher. They seemed undaunted by her age and relative inexperience and greatly appreciative of her ceaseless energy. LeBow develops the curriculum for her weekly class, including discussions, grammar exercises, games and group work.

LeBow handled the puzzled questions--" I thought a nail was the type of a finger?"--like a pro (which her impressive teaching resume confirms). LeBow has taught cello lessons through PBHA's HARMONY (Harvard and Radcliffe Musical Outreach to Neighborhood Youth) and Latin with the Summerbridge Program. This summer, she will teach English literature to disadvantaged sixth and seventh graders in Cambridge.

As I sat awestruck, watching LeBow easily explain the meaning of the phrase "I should" and explicating the difference between finger nails and iron nails, I was struck with one fundamental question that yet remains unanswered.

Considering the skill and effect that students such as LeBow can contribute to the classroom, why is teaching so belittled within the student culture's career appraisals?

To the good fortune of future students, LeBow is currently following a pre-teaching track (She is enrolled in the Undergraduate Teaching Education Program, UTEP). But the vast majority of undergraduates at Harvard who weekly or bi-weekly transform from student to teacher are not necessarily so inclined. According to Assistant Dean for Public Service Judith H. Kidd, about 2,500 students participate in public service each year and at least 75 percent of these students are engaged in some form of tutoring or mentoring program.

We have all heard the self-important Harvard talk of "effecting change to a greater scale." This is a usual response I have heard when students dismiss teaching as a short-term or long-term career possibility. Socially conscious students who nurture idealistic ambitions of saving the world aspire to "large scale change" through careers in law, medicine, government, educational policy or academia.

But, after watching LeBow in action, I am not fully convinced that classroom teaching cannot result in the same degree of wide-scale change. LeBow and the other PEN teachers, according to PEN director Robert F. Luo '00, each teach 12-15 students only one hour each week. Teaching English to immigrants or basic computer literacy to disadvantaged adults can improve the situations of a PEN student's entire family.

Given the incredible aptitude, energy and imagination that we can bring into the classroom, it is a real disservice to our communities that we retire from our budding teaching careers at the age of 21.