I always loved the first days of school—the unpacking the boxes that didn’t need to be packed in the first place and finding reminders of students sprinkled out over my old lesson plans and calendars. I taught ESL in public schools outside of New York City. Eventually I made the decision to leave public schools to raise my own young family. The world went on without me and the classroom had changed.

When I returned to work I found a different world teaching ESL part time to university students. It was easy to find a part-time college-level ESL job in the city. Within a few weeks I had parking passes to three different campus’s garages and a pile of ID badges. I was told that the college level would be different than K–12 because there, students were hoping to build on their listening/speaking and reading/writing skills and work endlessly on grammar in hopes of passing the TOEFL or IELTS exam. Some schools had more rigid curricula, others offered guides or simply a textbook, but my training and my experience showed me it was best to try to meet the students first and find out a little about them before designing curriculum. I had to know them so I could know how to teach them. This soon proved to be a weightier goal than I thought.

Looking over my class list, I saw a several new names. Along with Ping, Sung Shin, and Marianella were Ahmed, Rawan, and Fadel. Previously I worked with a large South American population, but these rosters didn’t have more than one or two such students. I still needed something for day one, so I looked through some of my tried-and-true lesson plans that I had collected over the years and thought I could introduce a simple unit on food. Food is a big part of my life, and I felt I could work passionately through it. I would use it as a medium to initiate conversation through our heavily grammar-based class: past tense, “What did you eat this morning?”; adverbs of frequency, “I always drink coffee before class”; count and noncount nouns, “I have many apples and a gallon of milk.” Most importantly, it would give me insight and a cultural connection into their lives. It all made sense. Group work planned out. Venn diagrams, realia, a game, a cloze exercise, a pair-share all poured into a busy week.

I watched students do what they usually do when they settle in, sit near someone they know or think may be of the same first language, but did I notice that the women and men sat apart? What did I notice beyond the clothing? What did I know about their culture, customs, or beliefs? It was Ramadan, and here I was about to teach a thematic lesson on food.

Looking back on those first weeks, I cringe when I think of the culturally insensitive mistakes I made. My teacher training program taught me about understanding cultures and diversity. It taught me to go beyond tolerance toward respect. I studied and worked with students from nearly every region of the world except Middle Eastern, Islamic countries. Perhaps because it was before September 11, their presence went unnoticed. Or perhaps we were so involved with the students we did have—the majority Spanish or Chinese speaking—that we didn’t have time to look outside our classroom families. Regardless, being an effective teacher is a process, and this was going to be another part of that process.

It is impossible to clearly define Muslim culture. Islam is practiced throughout the world in varying degrees. The rules and practices can change across a street as easily as across a border. There are around 40 Islamic-majority countries in the world, and to put them all in the same category would be reckless. The majority do follow the five pillars of Islam and the teachings of the Qur’an. These values play a key role in the daily life of Saudi students and need to be respected.

With the shift in curriculum came other dilemmas. Traditional group work did not work well in the classroom. Considerations for ability level or leadership qualities cannot override the fact that Muslim students are not accustomed to mixing men and women, and for every effort I’d make to create groups, they’d quickly switch back to more traditional grouping. This was confusing at first and created difficulty when I’d have only one or two women in the class. So imagine you are teaching a class of 20-year-old Saudi men and women and you ask a man to partner with a woman for an exercise. Although she is here and accepting of this culture in context, it is possible she would refuse. She most likely has almost never before talked to a man who wasn’t her father, brother, or uncle. If that woman was married, and by chance her husband was in the same classroom, it may never work. I have had some women happily agree to work with other students, and I have had women ask that there be a chair placed between them and another student. It is something to consider on an individual basis.

Hawra

Hawra was a young woman here along with her husband on scholarship from Saudi Arabia. She and Hamza were in my beginning listening and speaking class. When she started studying here, she chose to wear only the traditional hijab and sunglasses. In my windowless classroom, I thought it odd, but because I had quickly learned to err on the side of caution, I chose to allow it because she was participating in class and it made her feel comfortable. After a spring break trip to Orlando, she returned with a veil. When I asked her why, she said she saw another woman with it on and so she felt comfortable wearing it. A problem as an instructor is, if I can’t see her face, how can I tell if she comprehends what I am saying, let alone hear what she is saying? Her reading and writing teacher often expressed concern that she could not rely on Hawra’s nonverbal communication with so much of her face covered.

The Rest of the Class

International students bring to the classroom something extraordinary. The leap of faith that they have taken, some of them still as teenagers, to come to the United States to study English and learn about U.S. culture amazes me. Many of them report having experiences that far exceed their expectations. What was noteworthy is that nearly all the students had the same curiosities about the Saudi students and welcomed the opportunity to have an open discussion in a safe environment about culture and expectations.

Marco

Marco was one of my favorite students. He and his wife had left their home and children for 6 months to study in the United States. They owned a construction company in Caracas and wanted to do more business internationally. In 2 days he was king of the school. He was such a delightful man and spent his days meeting people, shaking hands, drinking up U.S. culture. Much to his wife’s chagrin, Marco had a hug or a kiss for everyone. He, of course, was respectful of his fellow female Saudi students, but he admitted he did not entirely know where the line was. International students often spend time learning about customs from each other, about when to bow, when to kiss, and when to shake hands. Rarely did anyone bring up questions directed at Saudi women.

In creating a safe classroom where students could feel comfortable asking questions, Marco, with careful hesitation, was able to ask, like I did, what was allowed. Can I hug? No. Can I shake your hand? No. Can I ask you if you have a boyfriend? No. Can I put your picture on my Facebook page? No. Is this just women or men? And on and on. We all had questions about this culture that for most of our lives was a closed society and inaccessible to much of the world. What happened through this series of discussions demystified many of the misperceptions and biases we all held. What was transformative about the discussions that followed was that the students were able to identify with each other and had a better understanding of their world. It is, of course, an ongoing discussion. Each semester new students arrive, and as the days go on this discussion presents itself all over again. Cultural connections are created; biases are broken down. This is the reality of our ever-expanding global classrooms.

Jeanne Malcolm is a doctoral student in the Department of Urban Education and a lecturer in the English Language Training Institute at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.