On the Complexity of Language and Teaching: Reflections of a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in Portugal

Anthony Otey, US

Anthony Otey is a graduate of Beloit College and now has a Masters in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College. He will be applying to Ph.D programs in Fall 2015.

Ja hisciste tu homework? was a common question I would hear my mother ask as she cooked dinner every evening in our apartment in the Bronx. I come from a home huddled between the English and Spanish languages and a world where I speak English by day and Spanish at night. Growing up, English was the language of school, of the outside world; and Spanish was the language of my mother, mi familia. Spanglish (a mixture of Spanish and English) was a sort of mediation between the two linguistic worlds where my mother and I would sometimes meet halfway. I am a first-generation American whose mother tongue is Spanish while my native tongue is English. Spanish is a part of my family. It was the language I was whispered to and the language in which I would pray during nights when I was too scared to sleep. It was the language through which all the proverbs and memories of Costa Rica would surface during dinner. It is the language I am greeted with upon entering my mother’s home. English, on the other hand, is a language of survival and of navigating the world outside of home. It is my paved path to higher education and being an American.

This bilingual sphere became the framework with which I have supported myself throughout my life experiences thus far. I am a part of two different worlds that do not see matters equally and this particular setting is a significant part of what has brought me towards the experiences I have had so far. As I grew older, I began to grow conscious of the differences between myself and the world seen on American television. The bilingual basement apartment home I lived in contrasted with the white Anglo faces I yearned to be like on television. It soon felt clear to me that I spoke a different English and that I was part of a different reality, and these two spheres could not co-exist if I wanted to succeed and be a “true” American in my mind speaking the type of English I heard on television and not the hybrid version from home. I was far from embracing my bilingual background at the time, though this is something I highly value now.

In Fall of 2012, the beginning of my final year at Beloit College in the United States, I decided to apply as a Fulbright English Language Teaching Assistant in Portugal. Having spent the entire year before studying in both Brazil and France, I was eager to be abroad again and engage further with the Portuguese language--a language I have fallen in love with, that I now have gained near-fluency in, and a language that has become part of my identity.

My cultural identities and language realities clashed as I started my Fulbright English Language Teaching Assistantship in Leiria, Portugal at the Instituto Politécnico de Leiria. Questions such as How best could I, whose feet have always been located between two completely different worlds, represent my country of the United States of America ransacked my mind. How could I teach a language that I felt did not belong to me, a language that I felt inhabited only a part of me?

It was with these questions, thoughts, and personal knowledge in mind that I set out on what would be one of the most formative educational experiences of my career thus far. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program, founded by Senator J. William Fulbright in 1945, is a program that works towards international exchange between students of the U.S. and other countries in the fields of education, culture, and science in order to bring about cultural understanding. I had an amazing year, but it came with challenges I had not anticipated.

In Portugal, my identity was challenged as my Brazilian accent led to me being labeled as o americano que fala brasileiro [the American who speaks Brazilian]. I had learned and studied Portuguese in Brazil and all of a sudden, I found the language I spoke being called “Brazilian.” It was not long before the English I spoke became “American.” Here I was, once again, feeling like I was being put on the margins and excluded from any sense of wholeness within the English language and, now, Portuguese as well. Many aspects of U.S. culture tend to make people of color feel like “an other” and here I was in a foreign country, and made to feel the same way due to the language and region of the world where I come from and the way I speak. Was I misinterpreting cultural sentiments as judgments on me as a person? Brazilian and American media permeate Portuguese culture and perhaps I was caught in a response towards the cultural hegemony from my region of the globe.

My identity was challenged further as I constantly thought about my capacity to teach. As a novice teacher, I worried about my performance in the classroom in the same way some students were worried about their work as students. I was always worried about how I was doing as a student-teacher helping an experienced professor like my mentor. He was someone I would run to for advice or rant to about my accomplishments and frustrations. He would always meet me with a smile and took me under his wing to teach me the art of being a teacher. In the classroom, it was difficult helping teach English without being emotionally involved, seeing as some students would struggle more than others. As a child, I observed my mother studying books by John Steinbeck to improve her English and I always witnessed her frustrations and confusion and wanted to help. I am familiar with the struggle of learning a language in general and the vulnerability that comes along with it, and it was difficult to see frustration and a loss of interest in a student’s face during my classes in Portugal.

Language teaching helped to give me a better sense of appreciation for English and for language itself. In my classroom, I was able to use language to bridge cultures. At the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, not only were there Portuguese students, but also students from Macau and mainland China, and at one point even students who were Syrian refugees. The English language class encouraged students to speak with one another who would otherwise not have met nor integrated with each other. As a result of this unexpected mix in the small Portuguese city of Leiria, not only did I have to think harder about how to explain certain grammatical points and cultural aspects, but I also had to tackle issues of classroom dynamics during times when the students would not interact, especially the students from different parts of China. There are a variety of possible factors that contributed to this, such as social hierarchy, rivalry between universities, and simply fear of the unknown. This caused many silent and unengaging classroom sessions. It was here where I discovered that language teaching is not as straightforward as one may think.

To overcome these challenges, in one class, I decided to have students sit next to someone they did not know. Along with terrified looks and hesitant movements, many pleaded for me not to move them. Defiant (but nervous), I stood by my decision and asked everyone to switch seats. For many minutes there was silence between the pupils as they were no longer in their comfort zone. Nor was I. Questions went unanswered for several minutes until I decided to have them answer individual textbook questions with one another. Students could no longer slide back into their respective languages, but rather had to make an effort to express what they wanted to say and what they did not know how to say, using English. From that point forward, students taught each other about their cultures: from Coimbra, to Damascus, and all the way to Chengdu. What started out as awkward moments in the classroom led to students learning about one another and developing cross-cultural friendships while strengthening their English.

Not only were the students initially uncomfortable, but I felt discomfort as well. I learned that effective teaching requires that teachers must also move out of their comfort zones. Doing so myself allowed me to try different methods of interacting with the students and teaching them, such as using charades to teach phrasal verbs like “lie down” or “chip in.” This helped illustrate the complexity of these simple phrases, and it sparked competition in the class for others to recall phrasal verbs they had heard before in movies and literature. This activity took fear and anxiety away from the grammar lessons and made my students receptive and eager to add more phrasal verbs to their English.

Moving out of my comfort zone helped me improve the long-term health of the classroom. It took time to dissolve the bubbles that existed, but through persistence, I was able to promote dialogue between the various cultural contexts embedded in my classroom. The students had their assumptions checked and would leave class every day having learned something new about themselves and the world around them. With my multilingual and multicultural background, I was also able to engage in these conversations, and all of us, with our cultural differences, found our commonalities as citizens of a globalized world.

My Fulbright year is a time that I will always look fondly upon. That year gave me the gift of teaching and taught me that I must always be prepared for the unexpected in not just teaching, but in every situation that life presents. It taught me to be flexible and to cherish my bilingualism, and helped me to feel a sense of belonging and love in the five language worlds I inhabit.

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