Luella and Brenda

I have two African-American students from the Miskito coast of Nicaragua.  From the web:  "100,000 people speak a second language called Miskito Coastal Creole, which is a mixture of Miskito, English, Spanish, and African languages that arose after colonization."   They learn Spanish in school.   Luella is an older woman who had grown up in a stilt house overlooking the lagoon.  She spoke English and came to class to learn how to write.  Brenda is a much younger woman with a 9-year-old son.  Luella and Brenda are both very mild mannered and kindly.   Luella means "women warrior."  Brenda means "sword."

Padma

I had a lovely elderly Sri Lankan student named Padma.  She was a teacher in Sri Lanka, and her husband had been a headmaster.  They spoke English well and had come to class to get a sense of American pronunciation.  It felt absurd to try to teach someone who is speaking with a lovely Sri-Lankan-British accent to change the pronunciation of their vowels to sound like geese honking.  Padma was very sweet and womanly and I became very fond of her.  Her husband was a bit more brittle, and he would bark out the correct pronunciation when someone tortured the pronunciation of a word.    He didn't understand it when I would let people struggle their way through a reading passage without interrupting them with a correction.

Padma means Lotus in Hindi.

Korean names

I can memorize a classful of student names really quickly.  For some reason, however, I find Korean names very challenging.  First there is the issue of what to call an older Korean man or woman.  In our classes we infantilize everyone.  Even my 70 year old student from Oaxaca is Carmen, and I let my students address me by my first name, too.  This is, part of modern American culture. . However, I know it would seem disrespectful to address an older Korean by his or her first name.  Usually I ask them how they want to be addressed.  Younger people, though, are addressed  by first and second names.  I find the tones or maybe they are dipthongs, of the vowels a bit hard to reproduce and I tend to get the names switched.  So when I am in a class with new Korean students, I use a little cheat sheet, I keep the names written on my papers and I sneak a peak at them before calling on the student..

Names in our textbook

My textbook attempts to be very inclusive.  The readings and conversation include characters from all over the world, and much of the English narration is often done with traces of international accents.  In one introductory conversation, intended to teach greetings, Neela and Li, obviously from different nationalities, meet and greet and pass each other on the street three times.  The last exchange,.  Good evening Neela, Hello Li, See you later, Neela, Goodbye Li,, is full of romantic possibility.  Neela is an Indian name, meaning.color of the sea, and Li is Chinese.  Used for a man, it means "powerful," according to the baby name websites.

Jose, Jesus and Maria

I always have a Maria in every class, I usually have a Jose, and I somethings have a Jesus.  I like it when they sit next to each other and I can call on Jose, Jesus y Maria.

Interesting student names

His name was Wenceslau, and he was from Mexico.  Wenceclas is a Slavonic name meaning "even more glorified."  There is a Wenceclas Square in Praque.  My 22 year old  student, however, was a trombone player in a mariachi band.  It was Fall quarter, so at Christmas I taught the class the Christmas song, Good King Wenceclas. He seemed to get a kick out of it.  I have always wondered where his folks had heard that name and why they were moved to name him that. 

Interesting student names - 2

Facundo!  According to the baby name sites, "Facundo" means "expressive," "loquacious."

Facundo was a very serious man, not prone to smiling.  ( In fact, I don't recall him smiling once in the two months he studied with me.)   I became aware within two days that he was not an ordinary student.  He came in the end of the year and, despite not knowing a word of English, could use logic and pattern recognition to follow instructions and figure out correct responses.  He had told me he was some kind of a laborer in his home country, but when I commented on his work, he came back the next day and confessed that in fact he was an elementary school teacher in Oaxaca. 

He told me a bit of his history, which was that he came from the mountains of Oaxaca-- in fact the family home was built in a cave on the side of the mountain-- and he had had to walk two hours to school as a child.  He persisted and became a teacher.

He had been invited here by his nephew, who was documented, and he was working as a dishwasher at a big restaurant.  The work was physically really heavy and tiring and he hated it.  At some point after class, I told him that it made me a bit sad that Mexico was losing people like him.  Who is going to teach poor Oaxacan children, if the teachers leave?  In the morning, he came to school and said, "I've considered what you said, and I think you are right."  He had already called his school and they hadn't found anyone to replace him and he could have his job back.   He left the next week.