Independence Day

It's Independence Day. A day to celebrate freedom. Americans live and breathe liberty. Independence permeates our red, white and blue souls.

My students, most not citizens yet, have become infected by it. Last week I put the First Amendment on the board. If you need a refresher, it includes freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom to petition. I asked them to discuss which was most important to them.

(Bear in mind that a typical conversation with a student might go like this: "Teacher, I no coming tomorrow. My wife she have appointment.")

I was astonished at the level of discourse. One group began to discuss gender roles and the rights of women in their respective countries. Another group talked about freedom of the press and freedom of speech.  A student pointed out that what people do is more important than what they say. A third conversation revolved around elections and term limits. Students wondered if they could be free without the right to vote for their leaders.

While I reveled my students' achievements in their new language, I was mindful that there are many in America who believe that freedom is finite.  If we give immigrants a share in our freedom, they reason, who knows what they'll do? They certainly won't appreciate it. They may even use it against us. America First! Immigrants never!

I have some good news for those people. Freedom is precious to your immigrants. They know what life is like without it. And they ask whatever god they worship to bless America.

Veiled

It was startling. Only the eyes.  I tried not to stare at my new student. I'd seen others like her before, who chose to cover their faces, but never in my English class. She was tall and thin and so timid that I could barely hear her voice through the veil. She was late the first day because she got lost. She seemed a little lost the whole term. 

At the beginning of the next term, a Latina woman and a woman from Ethiopia came in and sat down. I began to try to learn their names the way I always do. Large post-it notes with their first names on them went on the table in front of them, facing me. “So I can see your name. Face. Name. Face. And remember,” I said. My hands moved from the table to their faces, up and down. 

Just before class was supposed to start, a woman in a hijab walked in and sat in the back. Another new student. “And what’s your name? I need to write it on this paper,” I said. 

“Teacher, it’s me.  I’m not a new student.”

I stared at her face. It was true. The eyes were right. The voice was right. But I had never seen her face before. For the entire previous term, she had covered it with a veil. 

The fascinating thing was I had created a face for her. Her eyes were beautiful. Huge and trusting. Her long lashes used to get tangled in the top of the veil. She constantly pulled it down to see. I assumed that the veil was hiding unparalleled beauty, that those who gazed upon her face would be struck dumb by it’s radiance. 

Unveiled, the thing that struck me about her wasn’t her eyes. It was her crooked teeth. She was beautiful, to be sure, but not in the way of goddesses. She was a mere mortal, who—had she grown up in Minnesota—would have spent her adolescence dreading trips to the orthodontist to tighten her braces.