Mainely Middle
Journal of the Maine Association for Middle
Level Education
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2000/2001 |
The Learning Curve:Leaving the Comfort ZoneLast summer I stepped out of my comfort zone for three weeks and it taught me a lesson about teaching. It happened quite by coincidence. Leaving your comfort zone is not something that happens very often to adults. Instead of feeling powerful, in control, full of answers, I felt the inverse: powerless and struggling for answers. It reminded me of the way I felt when I was a kid; when I went to school. It was like being new, different, and forced to learn out of necessity. It's not hard to have this experience &endash; just go to a foreign country. I went to Italy: a culture that was hospitable, to be sure, though foreign to me. But most significantly, I spent three weeks working very hard at using the language of my surroundings. To navigate, buy food, fill the car with gas, find a restroom, purchase postcards and stamps &endash; the most minute needs or demands of daily life &endash; all required a verbal exchange in a language I did not know. I got very good at rapid thumbing through the dictionary, guessing at the meaning of signs or instructions (try doing this at 140 kph on the Auto Strada with espresso fueled Italian drivers tailgating!), applying my high school French and those Latin roots from English class. And, of course, smiling or using facial expression to convey perplexity and thanks. Social skills transcend language. There I was: back in the beginner group, a learner again, on a steep learning curve. We had a wonderful trip, but the experience made me think a lot about what school must be like for many kids: a foreign language, a foreign country in which survival depends on acquiring an unfamiliar set of skills or responses. People look at you like you're dumb, just because you can't say what you want, what you think, what you need. I had not felt such confusion as a learner since algebra class, back in ninth grade. Algebra was a foreign language to me; which is why I spent two years in first year algebra! And it's probably what learning English was like for some of my former students, when I was their English teacher. It was "Greek" to them. I could have been a better "translator," as I think back on my teaching. By my second week in Italy, I could understand far more than I could express. A few familiar language patterns were starting to emerge from the barrage of words and rhythms my ears were taking in. I now knew some people. I could pick up on subtleties in the language, enough to know when one shopkeeper was telling another that I didn't know what I was talking about. But I did! I knew exactly what I wanted to say &endash; I was trying to make a joke &endash; I just couldn't find the right words. Nor could I express the fact that I knew what they were saying. How many students go to a foreign country every day when they step into school, leaving their comfort zone as they encounter linguistic, social, or physical demands that are unfamiliar, difficult or even hazardous? At least I knew what to do about my discomfort. My problem was solved with translation, something I could do for myself with that dictionary. I looked up hundreds of words. Before I went into a store, I studied the vocabulary I would need; before ordering lunch, I studied the vocabulary I would need. I dreamt in Italian vocabulary. It still took courage to attempt to speak those newly acquired words, make mistakes with the pronunciation, risk embarrassment or failure. Many kids don't even know what steps to take, what questions to ask to begin to solve this problem of translation. I will not forget Fabbrizio, who ran the local trattoria and alimentari in Italy. He encouraged my vocabulary and grammar; spoke a little English himself, to lead the way with risk-taking, and he was friendly. He wasn't a terrific translator, but he established a comfort zone in which failure didn't matter &endash; the attempt to communicate was honored. And I remember my second year algebra teacher, who had the tools to translate that foreign mathematical language into something that approached clarity. I finally understood what those quadratic equations were describing. They were just a different kind of sentence after all! So look around your classroom and remember: Some of those kids looking up at you are thinking in Italian. Your comfort zone is their foreign country. Got your English-Italian dictionary handy? Va bene!
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