This article is updated from the original written before I retired from teaching ENL.
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“Go home,” said Juan.
To me.
Those two words made me feel sick at heart, rejected, and devalued. After days of planning lessons and gathering materials, after four weeks of driving 80 miles to Middletown and back during my summer vacation, after four weeks of orchestrating writers’ workshop for this group of middle school students, those two words were my feedback.
“What can we do to improve the program?” I had asked the students on the last day of Young Writer’s Camp.
“Go home,” said Juan.
Two months later, I heard those two words again, this time from a teacher. They were spoken during a workshop on English as a New Language (ENL) that I was co-presenting to middle school teachers in my school district. My colleagues and I had composed several fictitious profiles to illustrate the varied backgrounds of our English Language Learners (ELLs). One of the teachers read this profile:
Profile II: Beginner
Anton
I am a refugee from Afghanistan. We left two years ago. My father is still there. I live with my mother and four brothers and one sister here in Highland Mills. None of us wanted to leave our country. I miss my father so much and I worry about his safety. I can speak English in short sentences using functional vocabulary. I am literate in my first language. I don’t want to be in the U.S., and I am not motivated to learn English. Because my mother leaves for work early in the morning, my brothers and I often sleep late and miss the bus. We hate everything here and we want to go home.
“So go home,” a male teacher called out.
Some people laughed. I felt heartsick again. Surely this teacher’s attitude was communicated to his ELLs, our students.
Now, I’d been a teacher for many years. I knew the extra pressure that fell on a teacher with one or more ELLs in his or her class. Often, teachers were already overwhelmed by the daily demands of our jobs. I knew what it was like to deal with students who would rather be anywhere but in school. That kind of resistance from a recent immigrant seems to smack of ingratitude, never mind the additional attention required from teachers to repeat directions or adjust assignments.
I didn’t know if the teacher who called out was a willing, interested member of the workshop, or if he was just enduring another in-service day. Whatever the teacher’s story when he yelled, “Go home!” I was on the verge of responding aloud. I remained silent, but what I wanted to say was, “Yes! That’s it exactly! Anton wants to go home. But the point is that he can’t. He’s just a kid, subject to the decisions of adults who believe they know what is best for him.
“So what areas of his life can Anton control? He can control his life at school. He can choose not to like school, not to learn English, not to like the United States. From Anton’s point of view, acquiescence would only distance him further from his father. Maybe, for Anton, there is no home to go back to, just a pile of rubble that used to be his neighborhood.”
Pondering the lives of today’s immigrant students, I wonder how their experiences compare to those of my aunt Helen. She passed through Ellis Island around 1900. Did someone ever tell her to go home to Poland, where the Jews were being corralled in ghettos or victimized by pogroms? Did the teachers at her public school in New York City make her feel welcome or unwanted?
The greatest teacher I know begins all her talks with these words, “With great respect and love, I welcome you all, with all my heart.”
When we welcome someone, we give that person value and recognition. Welcoming is an invitation to belong, to be included. Welcome offers warmth and generosity. It says, “Share with us.” Often coming from difficult situations, our ENL students want and need to feel welcomed. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Some teachers perceive an ENL student as an added burden.
When I taught ENL, my first duty was to look in the mirror. Was I welcoming my new students? When a new child registered and joined one of my already crowded groups, did I make her feel safe and included, or did I project an attitude of exasperation that communicated, “Go home”?
It’s not always easy for teachers to find the time and energy to make a new ELL feel welcome. To welcome a new student with respect and warmth is surely no more than we would want for ourselves, or for our own children in a foreign land.
Satya lives in this house, but it is not her home. Right now her home is two continents away, in a dusty village, with him. He’s probably eating his evening meal of rose-flavored yoghurt and a mango. Wherever her teacher resides, Satya’s home is in that place, at his feet.
It is not yet dawn in the Hudson Valley. While her daughter, Devi, her heart’s delight, dreams gently in the bedroom across the hall, Satya lets her soul fly home, to the hut beside the temple, and there he is.
He feels the presence of her spirit and greets her with a wide smile, even though his eyes are closed. The evening meal is over. Others have come to sit in the presence of this man. The silence is alive with his energy. Satya allows her astral body to rest in the love pulsing from her teacher.
His white hair seems incandescent; his high cheekbones rise above the full beard. He is wrapped in a blue shawl, sitting on a folded white wool blanket.
When her dogs begin to bark, Satya’s soul sails back through the dark and light of half a day, back into her body of muscle and bone. It feels at first like she has put on a suit of armor, cold and unyielding. She cannot move her fingers; she must consciously tell her heart to beat faster. The dogs lick her hands; their warm tongues and worry have her eyelids opening. Satya stares up at the pale blue ceiling. Tears trickle from the outer edges of her eyes. The longing is always the worst of the pain.
“Here I am again,” she thinks. “Still such a long, long way from home.”
My first brush with the practice of Ho’oponopono occurred in 2015, at the Cayce Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) in Virginia Beach. One of the workshop presenters, an Energy Medicine practitioner, mentioned it. I suppose I stored the seed away in my mind somewhere, and now it has begun to grow.
Recently, the reverend and practitioners in Agapeeast.org (part of Agape International Spiritual Center), whose classes and services I attend online, spoke of the power and usefulness of the short Ho’oponopono prayer (I’m sorry—Please forgive me—Thank you—I love you).
For quite a while I had been feeling flat during meditation, with no recognizable sense of Spirit. Reverend Victoria of Agapeeast taught the Ho’oponopono prayer. Several students in the class mentioned that it was their “go-to” prayer when their upset was too great to focus on any other method of prayer.
The continued stress of the COVID threat added to family troubles led me to try Ho’oponopono. What an experience! I found focus, ease, and peace in repeating the prayer. It’s been about a week since I’ve used the prayer instead of my traditional mantra. Now I look forward to each meditation session, extending it to forty minutes if the daily schedule permits. It’s like sinking into a scented, warm, cleansing bath. I recommend giving Ho’oponopono a try.
The prayer comes from Hawaiian tradition. Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona, a Hawaiian Kahuna (the one who guards the secret), adapted the practice for anyone to master and apply.
To learn more about her, the history of Ho’oponopono, and the technique, go to:
“The most powerful time to pray or meditate,” Satya tells me, “is between three and five a.m.” She leans back in the peacock chair. On her lap is a cat with the oddest markings, black and white splotches more like a cow than a cat. The dog, Belle, sits at Satya’s feet. It licks her toes with long, tender strokes.
“That must tickle,” I think, but Satya seems not to notice.
“That’s when the higher spirits are most accessible,” Satya adds.
“Like archangels?” I ask.
“Mmm. Uriel and Gabriel, mostly. Michael and Raphael are busy with the dead and dying.”
Am I really having this conversation? Satya’s patio is overhung with sprays of maple leaves turning red at the edges.
“I’m a morning person,” I say, “but that’s even a bit early for me. I like the quiet before the household wakes up.” Today I hold a mug of Satya’s homemade chai, a mixture of black tea, milk, turmeric, ginger and honey. It’s golden, warm in my hands and in my center.
Satya smiles with her wide pansy-blue eyes. “I’m usually up by three. The spirits wake me. I can feel their energy. It’s a lovely time of day, so new, unspoiled. So soft.”
“What do you do at three a.m.?” Sometimes I feel like I’m in the presence of a saint, like Mirabai or Teresa of Avila. And sometimes I think maybe they were right to commit her. But Satya does no harm to anyone.
“Oh, I take a shower. Make up some chai and sit with the animals a bit. Then I align my energy field for the day. And I meditate, of course. And pray. Do some visioning. Nothing special.”
I think of my morning, starting at about six a.m., when the sudden shrill of the alarm clock frightens me out of some odd, rambling dream. After my heart stops pounding, I get up, start the coffee, and make the kids’ lunches. Go back upstairs, give my husband a poke in the ribs and hustle into the bathroom before the kids take over.
Tangled Magic 