One of the most exciting things about moving Chicago is being able to say that I live in Illinois!  It may only be temporary, but for someone who has spent the last 18 years of her life living in Valparaiso, IN (minus a semester in Costa Rica), spending two months in the big city is a pretty big deal.  One of my favorite parts about living in the city is listening to people speak in their many native tongues.  When I’m at the train station, I can hear a pair of students conversing in Arabic.  While I’m walking through Millennium Park, I can understand the parents talking to their children in Spanish.  When I walk down the street, I recognize one of the very few German words I know as a man talks on the phone.  During the time I spent at my internship over the last two months, I have heard conversations in French, Arabic, Rohingya, Burmese, Tigrinya, Somali, Mon, Farsi, and a plethora of other languages that I don’t know a single word of.

As a self-declared lover of languages, hearing so many languages in such a small space is exciting.  As an intern at Heartland Alliance and as a language teacher, listening to their voices is inspiring.   This is what the whole world will probably be like in a few more decades, and I for one can’t wait to be part of it!

Unfortunately, not everyone shares my love of languages, and even more unfortunately, not everyone recognizes the value of living in a community as diverse as Chicago.  Once the United States accepts 50,000 refugees this year, no more will be welcomed in unless they have a close family tie here.  Thousands of people who have been waiting in refugee camps for years will be denied access to the place they want to call home.

Instead of sparking political debate, I want to use the remainder of this blog post to praise the efforts of people who are working to welcome people into our country.  Last week, my family and I had the opportunity to attend Chicago’s celebration of World Refugee Day.  The day was one of protest, but the time was mostly designated for celebration and fun!  It was a wonderful opportunity to interact with coworkers and participants outside of the work environment, but more importantly, it showed them that they are valued in the larger Chicago community.  We gathered together as people from all over the globe to participate in a march, eat international food, watch the “Refugee World Cup,” and dance to international music.  One of the songs they played there was also the song that the English students sang loud and proud at their graduation from the last quarter of classes, and I can’t think of a better way to sum up what the refugee experience in the United States should be like:

“This land is your land, this land is my land,

From California, to the New York Island.

From the Redwood Forrest, to the Gulf stream waters.

This land was made for you and me.”

I started my college career at Valparaiso University as a Spanish and Secondary Education major, but through the various experiences I’ve had over the last four years, I’ve discovered a calling to teach English to speakers of other languages. I’ve spent years in TESOL and education classes and countless hours in the classroom working with elementary and middle school English learners, so a CAPS fellowship in this field seemed like a logical next step in learning to apply what I’ve learned in the “real world”. This summer, my internship in Chicago with the English Language Training department of Heartland Alliance’s Refugee and Immigrant Community Services will give me a glimpse of another branch of what I am now exploring as my vocation.
 
 

Over the past five days, I have learned about assisting in adult English classes, filing paperwork, inputting data, testing new participants, and making coffee. Assisting with English classes is how I spend the biggest chunk of my day, and it is the best overall description of what I do, but making the coffee is arguably my most important task, depending on whom you ask. All jokes aside though, it is nice to feel like I am contributing to this organization. I enjoy data input and find filing to be relaxing, and the tasks will save my supervisor and the other English teachers a few hours of their time. Besides learning about my daily responsibilities, the experiences I have had at Heartland have already taught me more about myself than I expected this early on in the summer.
 
 

The position I am in now is much more relaxed than what I experienced as a student teacher. Students come and go from class as needed to go to appointments and get one-on-one help from tutors, and they frequently speak to one another in their native languages during class. While this commotion was hard for me to adjust to during my first few hours of observations, I have come to appreciate the environment in ELT classes. I have learned to go with the flow of this new style of classroom, and it works well for the participants. The students and teachers all enjoy themselves during class, and the students are there because they want to learn! They frequently express their thanks to me, the teachers, and the other volunteers at the end of a lesson, which is a welcome change from most high school students’ attitudes.
 
 

I have also learned to be much more outgoing and friendly! Well, I’m working on it. The environment that Heartland employees create in the office is similar to the atmosphere that exists in the classrooms. Coworkers always greet one another with a smile and by name. It is so refreshing to be in such a positive place every day. Even as a relative newcomer, I can tell that the people there really care about what they do. I can only hope that by the end of the summer, I will have adopted this passionate and welcoming attitude. I may be teaching English lessons, but the people I interact with every day are teaching me to be a better person.