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Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 1; January 03
A Reaction to A TEACHER AND HER SORROW
Emily Banks
Dear Editor,
I am writing to HLT to comment on an article published in the Nov 2002 Issue, Year 4, Issue 6, A Teacher and Her Sorrow, by Cecile Marit.
I have read and re-read the article several times, enjoying, among other things the beauty of the language and poetry of the thought.
And yet something makes me uneasy……… With this intensity of feeling why does Cecile Marit not make me feel the individuality of her students, the separateness of her students, each one's intensely different way of being, quite apart from cultural differences.
Perhaps this article is about the sadness of a lack of boundaries, or the hardness of a search for boundaries? I get the feeling of some one whose "self" fills a good deal of the available space, leaving scant room for the sizeable reality of "the other".
Do I have a problem with boundaries, when I teach? If I do not present a clear, well-defined shore, how can "the other" safely land on the island that is me?
Thank you, Cecile , ( if I may) for leading me into this dawning area of awareness.
Yours sincerely,
Emily Banks, teacher of immigrants, NSW, Australia.
