Being “Foreign”, Yet A Very “English” teacher…

So, you’re a teacher?

 

 

I never get tired of the questions about teaching; my favourite ones come from my students. When I first started at my current school over a year ago, students went through mixed emotions about being taught English by someone who appeared “foreign.”

 

Firstly, the immediate denial: “No way are you an English teacher Miss! I mean, you’re just supply for the moment aren’t you? Until our “real” teacher comes back? Aren’t you?”

 

 

Secondly, questioning about origins: “So, where are you from?”

When faced with my brash reply, “Thornaby, it’s just down the road from Middlesbrough,” many students were stumped.

“Yeah, Miss, come on, where are you from really?”

 

 

Thirdly, students tried to make reference to my attire and physical appearance to suggest that one dressed in so much material couldn’t possibly claim to be a real teacher of English.

“Yeah, but you look…foreign Miss.”

“Yeah, you dress….different…like them people, you know. Them people…Sikhs.”

One boy piped in helpfully, “No, it’s not Sikhs, it’s like one of them people you see on the news…Iraqis, that’s it, them. They wear stuff on their heads, just like Miss.” Sitting back he looked pleased with himself as the class nodded in unison, looking to me for approval to this breakdown of my attire.

 

 

To the first, I have a standard reply, “No, I’m a real teacher, honest. Punch me, it’ll hurt and you’ll really get expelled, because I’m a real teacher.” To this students always tend to look slightly worried and perturbed at the thought of expulsion after striking a teacher, even if she is smiling when she says it.

 

The second is slightly trickier; I stick to the simple, “I was born in Stockton, in England, which makes me English.” I pause slightly for effect, watching the faces of my new class contort and struggle with the concept of the nappy-headed foreigner, born on British soil, not an asylum seeker or refugee, but a bona fide English person.

“But,” I continue, not wanting to prolong their agony, fearing the wind may change and their contorted faces would get stuck like that – how would that happen anyway? When the wind blows in another direction, does your face stay like that due to wind resistance? Note to self: ask the school Science Faculty if this is scientifically plausible.

 

But I digress; “But, my parents were born in Pakistan and Kashmir, which means they’re from a foreign country, but as I was born here and speak English as my first language, I’m English.” Their faces relax, realising that I’m not really English, I was just born here. The brighter students, who read a lot, have already construed, and are waiting impatiently to start the lesson; foreign or not, Miss needs to teach us. But their thoughts are interrupted.

 

“So Miss, you’re Asian then?” One keen-faced youngster inquires.

“Yes, I am, but I’m also British, so you could say I was British Asian.”

“Oh, like Mr. Patel who works in the shop round our end,” one girl chimes in, “he’s Asian ‘cause he talks funny, but he told me he had a British passport, so he’s British. England’s really funny sometimes.”

 

 

So that solved the problem of my “ethnic” appearance. But we still have the third problem, my attire.

“I dress like this because I am a Muslim; I believe I should cover myself as it is a command from God in my religion.”

“So, you’re an Islam?”

I reply patiently, “Islam is the name of the religion; Muslim is the name of the person who follows it. So I cover up because I believe I should and I want to. Don’t worry, I’m not being forced to,” I hasten to add as the concerned looks of pity and understanding from the girls on the front row alert me to what stereotype they might have of my religion.

 

I do wait in trepidation for the next few questions that many adults ask, about physical discomfort, the temperature of my head, my attire during showering, but nothing comes. I look around expectantly, not wanting to rob my students from their chance at getting educated about “them ragheads” because it is evident they are genuinely interested, and not just trying their best to detract from the lesson.

 

In the silence that ensues, I have time to reflect that these assertions, rather than evoke feelings of xenophobia and racism, made me chuckle at how we Brits raise our children to be so blissfully ignorant. I’m not one to fall into the culture of blame, but let’s face it; educators, parents and even media moguls are responsible for this condition of “harmless, witty and confused prejudice”, unconscious racism, and inadvertent bigotry.

 

In fact, you could argue that “racism” in its current meaning, does not even apply here, as these students mean no harm by it; abuse is not on the menu today, it looks to me like all they are faced with is a crisis. An existential crisis so great that it flummoxes even the brightest in the class: what do you do when you are faced with a new English teacher, a teacher who dresses like a “Raghead”, looks like an oppressed, down-trodden female, but speaks with a broad Teesside-smoggy accent when really she should be in the kitchen cooking or being locked in the cellar by her husband who is 40 years her senior?

 

It is clear that many of the class that sit before me get their declarations about Muslims and people of other races and origins firstly, from their parents and secondly, from the media; both of whom project a picture of “The English” as white, Anglo-Saxon, sporting crew cut hairstyles and clearly “English” clothes – what are “English” clothes? Thus the youngsters remain innocent and irreproachable in their concept of the non-white foreign “other”, who cannot teach English due to the excessive amounts of material on her head. This is an attitude their parents espouse and the media do well to establish firmly in their heads, like planting the seed of a great oak tree, pushing its roots into the fertile soil of their imaginations. Guiltless and irreprehensible, they wait expectantly, as I make my humble attempt to dislodge the seed from their minds.

 

However, despite this planting of the seed, I offer no complaint or one-sided critique of their behaviour, nor am I negative and cynical in my documentation of it. Instead, I blame myself and look to what the Muslim community is doing about this situation. How can we bring ourselves to complain about prejudice and discrimination in multicultural Britain if we don’t get into varied professions? If our students don’t see British Asian Muslim teachers, comfortable in their religious clothing, at one with the environment they teach in, then how can they possibly accept that it is plausible?

 

 

Education aids the formation and evolution of new societies and forms the identities of future generations. Despite these students not being Asian, or Muslim or anything whatsoever to do with any member of my family, I felt a kind of kinship with them, standing there, in my headscarf and loose clothes, a bond of Englishness I felt the need to assert; but once it was asserted, it stayed planted, ready to be watered and nurtured in the right environment. Instead of dismissing their opinions of my dress, ethnicity and ability to teach English, despite not “looking” English, as racism and prejudice, I felt the need to embrace their opinions, take them on board and counter them calmly, opening the door to them, bringing them into the inner sanctum of possibilities so great that they would change their outlook on Britishness forever.

As educators, we have been given the opportunity to shape the future, should we really be shutting the door on our children?