I am teaching my students how to write summaries and book reports in preparation for writing their own reports in a few weeks. One of their homework assignments was to write a short plot about their lives. They all chose an event or period of time in their lives and wrote a brief "plot" about it. Here are some of the events they shared with me this week:
One student had a baby last year, a daughter, who passed away when she was just about four months old. My student explained how sad she was after this event and how taking classes at ESC (the school where I teach) and learning English, along with the passage of time, has helped her to attempt to recover from this tragedy.
This student's husband explained how his father was arrested by the Burmese government in 1988 for participating in the student uprising (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8888_Uprising), where thousands of students were killed for opposing the government. His father spent over 18 years in jail. After his father's release, his father continued to be involved in the political movement against the government and was forced to leave Burma after his involvement in the Saffron Revolution in 2007 (http://uscampaignforburma.org/learn-about-burma/saffron-revolution). His father has been resettled to the United States.
Another student, a Buddhist monk, is Karen (pronounced Kah-rehn) and is from Karen state in Burma. Karen people have been the target of on-going ethnic violence by the Burmese government and its military for more than 25 years (http://www.tbbc.org/camps/history.htm) and the violence continues today (http://www.burmapartnership.org/2010/11/karen-villagers-still-fleeing-post-election-attacks-by-burmese-army/). My student wrote about how his village was attacked and burned when he was about 11 years old. His father was taken away by Burmese soldiers at that time. He is now 26 years old, he hasn't seen his father since that time, and believes that he is dead.
A fourth student wrote about how her father left her and her mother before she was a year old. Because of her father's abandonment, she told how her mother's life has been very hard. However, she explained how her life has been so easy because her mother has always put her needs first.
Other students wrote about an imagined future, a few writing about what life they hope to lead, if they are resettled to the United States. One of these students wrote that she hoped to be a Burmese teacher for Burmese children in the U.S. She explained that she doesn't think that the children will want to speak Burmese if they grow up in the U.S. So, she hopes that she may be able to encourage them to learn to not only speak Burmese, but to also read and write the language as well. She also plans to donate money to her church with her first paycheck, give to the poor, and also help orphans.
I have never taught in the U.S., so I don't know if it is typical for students to share such deeply personal information with a teacher, just for a homework assignment, particularly one they have only known a few months. However, I was really taken aback by the honesty of my students with this assignment. I felt really privileged to be entrusted with this information, as I am unsure if they were really conscious of the fact that what they were writing in their personal notebook would be shared outside of it. I wanted to share their stories with all of you though, because I felt that sometimes we all forget how privileged we are compared with many people in the world - and this definitely reminded me.
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