The children sat silently, staring up at Olivia with wide eyes. They appeared terrified of her. One little girl cried. They were young. God, so young. And potentially mute judging from the absolute silence in the room. Not so much as a cough disrupted the perfect quiet. They all watched her, waiting.
She’d expected to be paired with a co-teacher, at least for the first week. The ad she’d responded to had stated specifically “training supplied, no experience necessary.” What training? She didn’t get any training. The school headmistress had led her to the classroom, wished her well, and left. She had nothing prepared. Even Chris and Tisha, who’d promised to be on hand for support, had scurried off to their own classrooms. Her hopes that maybe at least the oldest class of pupils, fourteen to sixteen, would file in first had also been dashed. A class of six- to nine-year-olds peered up at her, clearly waiting for her to do something. The mental residue left behind after living with Scott for ten years laughed at her.
Come on, get your crap together. These kids needed to trust and respect her. Standing here gulping like a fish out of water would not instill confidence. She breathed deeply. What would she do in a college course?
She hiked a smile into place. “Good morning.”
The children shuffled on their hard wooden benches, sat up straight, and appeared intrigued. “Good morning,” a few shy responses echoed back to her.
She let out a sigh. She’d engaged them. That was something. Okay, now what? Turning to the chalkboard, she wrote Good morning. She turned back but no one studiously scribbled the words into notebooks. Come to think of it, none of them had notebooks. Damn it. Okay, back up a step.
She pointed to herself. “Mrs. Day—” She nearly choked, halting mid-introduction. She still, somehow, had not fully adjusted back to her maiden name. “Ms. Montag.”
Twenty pairs of eyes blinked at her.
Forcing a bright smile and chipper tone of voice, she tried again, this time resting a palm on her chest. “Ms. Montag.”
No one repeated her name, but one little girl ducked her head and grinned sheepishly—and possibly muttered something. She pointed to the smiling girl, nodding furiously. “And you?”
The girl sat up straight again, still smiling but also still silent.
Deciding to give it one more go before giving up, she pointed to herself again. “Ms. Mon-tag.” She drew the word out slowly, over enunciating to the point she felt as though she insulted them. But she reminded herself they were learning, and it was a process. She pointed to the little girl again. “You?”
She saw the girl’s mouth move and faintly heard sound. She cupped her hand to her ear and leaned cartoonishly forward. “What?”
Giggles burst across the room. Giggles! Even the crying girl’s mouth curled slightly as she hiccuped a breath.
The girl repeated herself, this time speaking up. But Olivia didn’t understand what she said. She heard the girl, heard the name, but she couldn’t catch the word and make sense of it. The sound was too unfamiliar. Too . . . foreign.
Scott laughed at her in the back of her psyche. He’d been the youngest department chair appointed in the college’s history. And yet she’d never managed to secure a full-time job as a professor. Adjunct, sure. But never the coveted tenure-track, full-time positions. Intelligent and hardworking, Scott landed a job straight out of college, probably helped by the article he’d submitted and published in Nature with his doctorate professor. It wasn’t even his research. He’d worked in the lab and his professor allowed him second author on the paper. But things always seemed to work out for Scott. Olivia worked as hard, and yet never made it farther than adjunct professor. Scott of course implied regularly that she wasn’t as smart as the other applicants and that was why she was relegated to adjunct positions. Never mind those other applicants who landed the jobs she applied for were all men. Never mind that the department gave lip service to equality, diversity, and inclusion but virtually every department chair and the majority of the full-time faculty were men.
If Scott could see her now, all these children staring up at her expectantly. Poor things stuck with her. Why had she thought for one moment she could do this? If she couldn’t even pronounce their names, how could she possibly hope to connect with them and teach them? How foolhardy and arrogant of her to race across the world, trek to their tiny little piece of it, and believe she could make any difference whatsoever. Smart people didn’t do things like this. Mortified, she opened her mouth to attempt pronunciation, knowing she would butcher it, making a fool out of herself and embarrassing the child.
The girl, possibly correctly interpreting Olivia’s hesitation, jumped from her seat, slowly pronouncing, syllable by syllable, over enunciating as Olivia had done. “Esh. War. Ee. Uh. Aishwarya.”
Olivia tried it. “Aishwarya?”
The girl clapped and nodded.
“Aishwarya!” She did it. She could do this. She pointed to herself. “Ms. Montag.” She pointed to the beaming little girl. “Aishwarya. Who else?”
Fortunately, most of the names were easier to pronounce. Or perhaps her confidence had returned, and she didn’t feel as scared of trying them. She had no trouble getting each child to give their name after Aishwarya got the ball rolling. Only the little girl who had been crying remained quiet while her classmates waved hands in the air and volunteered names.
Olivia squatted in front of the little girl’s place at the long desk when everyone else had given their name. “And you?”
The poor thing looked terrified, but quietly said, “Lakshmi.”
“Lakshmi. Beautiful!”
She’d broken the ice. Now what? She looked around the room. No books. No cubbies with supplies. She didn’t have crafts or worksheets. How could she impart the ability to speak English fluently on these children?
She turned to the chalkboard and drew a simple flower—simple because her artistic skills were dreadfully rudimentary. Under the picture she wrote FLOWER. “I like flowers,” she said. The children repeated, or at least attempted to repeat, her words. She held the chalk out. “Aishwarya? What do you like?”
The girl sprang from her seat, took the chalk, and proceeded to draw a picture of a dog. Very clearly a dog. “Good job!” Under the drawing she wrote DOG. “D-O-G. Dog. Aishwarya likes dogs. I like dogs.”
The children repeated her words back to her.
A little boy ran to the front. “Me! Me!”
Ah-hah! So they did know some English already. Good to know. What was his name? “Aru, do you want to draw? What do you like?”
The boy drew a ball, which she labeled BALL. The class understood the game and seemed to enjoy it. The children ran forward, eagerly contributing to the collection of favorite things on the chalkboard. Each picture she labeled, pronounced clearly, and had them repeat back. She also continued to repeat, “I like—” and whatever the children drew. Soon they repeated the entire phrase. She was getting somewhere. Did they comprehend? She had no idea, but comprehension could come later. For now, they were saying the words, getting the feel of English in their mouths. If nothing else, it was a start, and she could end the class feeling like she’d accomplished something.
She checked her watch. She’d managed to fill nearly the entire class time and breathed a sigh of relief. Looking around the room, she realized shy little Lakshmi had not drawn anything—the only student who had not. She held out the chalk. “Lakshmi? Can you draw something? What do you like?”
Lakshmi, eyes still red and bleary from crying at the beginning of class, rose from her seat and plodded forward. The girl took the chalk and drew a stick figure of a woman, complete with long triangle dress to indicate female.
Olivia stared at it. She liked women? She liked her friends? She wanted her mom? This one wasn’t as simple and obvious as the other children’s drawings had been. “You like . . .” She struggled to fill in the blank.
Lakshmi completed the sentence for her. “I like Auntie!” she cried out, throwing her arms around Olivia’s legs.
Auntie? What? She stared down at the girl who smiled up at her. Stunned, Olivia patted the girl’s back. Whatever was happening, she’d take it. This was a huge improvement over tears.
The other children jumped from their seats and ran to the front, all echoing, “I like Auntie!” and rushing to hug her.
The headmistress appeared in the doorway to tell her class was over, time to shift. Seeing Olivia standing in the center of a giant group hug, the woman smiled and nodded. “A good first day, I see.”
Good? It was wonderful, she thought, tears pricking her eyes. She patted the children’s backs and never wanted the hug to end.
The students waved and called, “Goodbye, Auntie!” as they scurried out the door. Sorry to see them go, she now felt eager to see them again tomorrow.
The headmistress, Mrs. Gupta, approached and tipped her head. “Already calling you Auntie? Well done.”
The lilting, musical quality to Mrs. Gupta’s words lifted her spirits even more. “I don’t feel like I did anything too great. But I enjoyed it. Auntie is a good thing? I mean they all hugged me, so I assumed.”
“It means they accepted you and are showing you respect. You have been welcomed as they would welcome their own family. Yes, a good thing.”
The headmistress adjusted her dupatta and left as the next class filed in. This class consisted of middle-grade, ten-to-fourteen-year-olds. Drawing pictures on the chalkboard and repeating the same sentences over and over likely wouldn’t cut it with this class. As if to prove they were more advanced, the children took their seats, and one little girl in the front read her name on the board and said, “Good morning, Ms. Montag.” The rest of the children repeated the phrase.
No teary faces in this older group. Each of them sat stock-straight, waiting for her to impart knowledge. Unsure where the class would go, names seemed like the best starting place. And they couldn’t move forward until they started. She took a deep breath.
“Good morning! You know I am Ms. Montag. I’d like to know your names.” She pointed to the girl in the front row who had read her name from the board. “What is your name?”
“My name is Aditi.” The girl’s head bobbed with each syllable. But she got it.
Olivia repeated a few times with minor corrections until she said it correctly. “Aditi.”
She should have realized it was too easy. The other children didn’t seem as quick to grasp what was being said to them. Some said their names after glancing at Aditi, some said nothing and looked to Aditi for help. The girl then rattled off words in another language, which resulted in all the students sharing their names. Instead of the euphoric success she’d felt with the younger class, Olivia felt out of the loop and a bit frustrated when the students gave their names. This wasn’t a result of her teaching or instruction but Aditi coming in with an assist. Ideally, she could switch back and forth between languages as the little girl could, but she couldn’t, leaving her distant and removed. This was a disadvantage. If the children had a crutch, they would fall back on that rather than learning English.
The repetition of the phrases “What is your name?” and the corresponding responses “My name is . . .” reminded her of college Spanish. In those classes, she’d been the student, lost, listening to sounds that meant nothing—until the day things clicked and her brain could connect the words and phrases with something that made sense. She remembered the Spanish professor, how she’d always smiled and laughed and kept the atmosphere light, even when some students grumbled and didn’t want to participate and clearly resented the language requirement necessary to earn a degree. The professor repeated and repeated and repeated until they got it. That would be her role model. She would do the same. Resenting Aditi, who clearly only wished to help, would get her nowhere. Starting tomorrow, she would ask the little girl not to intercede, but not today. Today they all just needed to muddle through.
In order to truly communicate in English, the children would need to be able to not only speak it, but also to read and write it. Her Spanish professor had always written on the board. Olivia picked up the chalk and wrote “What is your name?” Then below that she added “My name is _____”
She tapped the chalk under each word as she recited the sentences. She wanted the children to write the phrases as well, but the empty classroom offered nothing but chalk and board. So today they would speak. And she would evaluate how much hesitation was shyness and fear of a brand-new teacher, and how much was true confusion.
What could she talk about with them? She needed something simple and easily understood. She glanced outside, noting the temperature of the room crept steadily up as the sun progressed in the sky. This afternoon would likely be sweltering and unbearable. Already, perspiration developed under her arms and soaked the underside of her bra.
The sun! She could draw the sun. And she could ask silly questions and maybe get the students playing and laughing. She remembered her Spanish professor doing that as well—asking preposterous questions until they all realized she was being ridiculous and farcical and then laughing as they shouted, “No!”
On the board she drew clouds—a big blanket of storm clouds across the top, which she shaded with slash marks to turn them into dark storm clouds. Then she slashed angry raindrops falling from the clouds. She turned back to find the children leaning forward, watching intently, brows furrowed. Yep, she was doing this. They were going to discuss the weather.
“Is it raining today?” she asked, contorting her features into cartoonish confusion.
Heads cocked, furrowed brows furrowed even more, faces scrunched in thought as they attempted to work out what she said to them. Aditi turned to stare out the window, then looked at Olivia as if she might be crazy.
Olivia nodded her head. “It’s raining. Yes?”
Aditi’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “No. No raining.”
Olivia made a huge show of appearing surprised. “No?” She walked to the window and stared out, then slapped her hand to her forehead. “No! It’s not raining! The sun is out!”
The children exploded into great big belly laughs at her exaggerated antics exactly as she had hoped. “No!” some of them yelled. “No raining!”
She returned to the board and drew a huge X over her clouds and drops. “No rain!” She drew a sun and wrote SUN. She heard the children repeating, “No rain!” and “Sun” while she worked.
“It is sunny today,” she said as she wrote the words. And everyone repeated it back to her. “Aditi, do you like sun? Or do you like rain?”
“I like sun!” the girl answered.
Olivia would need to offer something more to the girl, who was clearly more advanced than most of the others.
Without prompting, the other children offered their opinions. She continued through the class time, drawing and pantomiming various weather conditions—wind, clouds, snow. Snow confounded the children as most of them had lived in this tropical region all their lives and truly had no concept of frozen water falling from the sky. They laughed and shouted “No!” at her, sure they’d caught her being preposterous again.
When the headmistress appeared to announce it was time to move on, Olivia did not stand in the middle of a group hug. The children told her goodbye and that was all. But somehow, she found the class period just as satisfying, even without the hugs.