Teacher gets a lesson

I teach English as a second language on Tuesday nights and it’s a blast. Part of the fun is having something others need, and being able to give it to them: English language proficiency. We do simple dialogues and have fun at the blackboard and talk about comic strips. Having people hang on your every word as you stand in front of a classroom is nothing to be proud about when your only expertise is your own mother tongue. You had better know your own mother tongue, after all. Still, if there is one thing I have found in my life it is that pridefulness needs no basis in reality.

Last week I happened to ask one of the students, a young woman from Myanmar, to pray before our lesson for a helper who was out sick. Not feeling confident enough of her English to speak to God in it, she asked permission to proceed in her own language of intimacy. The sound of it when she spoke was lyrical, as the rest of us all thought, and we asked her if it was Burmese. She replied that though she does speak Burmese, she was praying in Karen. When pressed further, she divulged that she speaks three “Karen” languages, variants of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic branches. And since I have also occasionally overheard her speaking in Korean to the Koreans in the class, I did the math and realized that I was the teacher of a sweet and meek twentysomething woman who is fluent in at least five languages and is well on her way to mastering a sixth: English.

After the prayer, when I got up to illustrate a point at the blackboard, I was still thinking about the skills of the woman I was lecturing to, and wondering at what unknown gifts and accomplishments are harbored in the company of her classmates. The result in my heart was no diminishment of joy or gratitude for being able to help as an ESL teacher, but there was a decided “correction” or adjustment in attitude. I can safely say, at the risk of sounding proud, I was very humble at that moment.

Someone once told me that humility is merely acknowledging reality. I like that. It means that one does not have to gin up humility, or feign humility, or try too hard to strike a mental pose of humility. One has only to consider the facts of the situation, and it is enough. So we take the lowest seat at the table, as Jesus said to, not because we are poseurs, but “lest someone more distinguished than you” be in the room (Luke 14:8). And I have found time and time again that this is always the case.