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Read Student Stories: Joshua
No one suffers from swollen stomachs due to the lack of didactic meter. Most English majors confront this dilemma at the end of their freshman year as friends start to plan their future career moves. Someone will inevitably say: “Oh you’re an English major. What are you going to do with that?” Most people stutter out some whisper of an answer. “Well, maybe I’ll teach.” Or: “Uhhhh . . . I don’t know.” I felt ashamed that my education wasn’t going to help anyone else.
So when I signed up for classes my sophomore year I didn’t drool over the reading list of English 3002: Modern Literary Criticism but instead moved to something concrete: English 3741 Literacy and Diversity.
Sitting through my Literacy class was like finally confronting a side of my self I knew was always there. It was finding a self that related to other people as much as it related to the literary themes of a book. The first thing we learned was what it meant to be literate. The reality of this definition almost knocked me out: I was part of a small portion of the world privileged to know how to read and write. Something we take for granted as we read For Whom the Bell Tolls at night.
The class also gave me a gateway for giving. I was literate, and there were people that weren’t. It didn’t mean I had to feel guilty: I could use my knowledge to help those less fortunate.
In my first tutoring position at an ESL high school, most of the students were Somali or Ethiopian. They all spoke so glowingly of home. For NBC news-watching Americans like me, their home was anything but inviting: so often I watched another disaster spread across a continent that seemed doomed to constant strife.
Yet, no matter how many news reports I witnessed, I couldn’t get the students’ descriptions out of my head. I began to fill out application after application, looking for the first study abroad form that would ship me across the Atlantic. I knew what it was to help on my own terms, to live in America and teach English as a second language and know that they were the uncomfortable ones. I had yet to know how I would feel abroad.
When the hazy lights of Dakar popped out of the sunrise these histories accompanied me, haunting me even after I had left Dakar for Joal, the small fishing village where I taught English. What are you going to do with that major? I was going to do exactly what I could, try to help people through the knowledge I had. Of course, this confidence can’t make you completely levelheaded when you step into a classroom of 60 students, all of them fluent in at least two languages you barely understand, but it does help. Lessons from home flash through your mind as you close your eyes for a moment, wipe the blackboard clean, and prepare a grammar point, 120 ears listening for the slightest mistake.
Service learning classes inspired this English major to teach in Senegal
"With service learning classes, you're not just participating in the campus environment: You're a figure outside in the community. After awhile you realize that you're making an impact...You're connecting with different people: and having all these different relationships really changes your future."
Lyncy Y.
