In the first few days she taught English to sixth, seventh and eighth graders at Olcott Memorial Higher Secondary School in Besant Nagar, Jessica Frankl almost morphed into Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Her bewilderment was close to Dorothy’s. Finding herself in an incredibly new environment, the latter would utter that timeless line, which has now settled into a regular phrase “We are not in Kansas anymore!” to her pet dog Totto. Jessica, an ESL teacher from the United States on a Fulbright scholarship, had her own version of it — “not in California anymore”.
Back in San Francisco, California, Jessica would teach English to children from immigrant backgrounds, and usually, they could speak a smattering of English for her to work around.
After all, back in the United States, her students found English being spoken all around them. The students at school in Besant Nagar school do not enjoy that advantage.
At Olcott school, her students struggled to put English words into sentences. That was in July 2022. Cut to the farewell party Jessica received a few days ago (her one-year teaching assignment comes to a close in the first week of April 2023), Jessica was moved to tears listening to her students’ extempore speeches — in English. There was another pair of wet eyes in the room and they belonged to Sashikala Sriram, honorary director of Olcott school, who had ensured Jessica taught at this institution, one being run for underprivileged children.
“Enrolments were dipping at the school as parents wanted English-medium education. Therefore, in 2018, we started the English-medium stream, offering it in addition to the already-existing Tamil medium stream,” recalls Sashikala.
The idea to bring Jessica to this school was an added layer to the exercise.
Sashikala reveals she is a Fulbright scholar from 2010, when she got to go to the United States on a teaching initiative under the Distinguished Award for Teachers (DAT) programme.
Back to Jessica’s classroom, the ESL teacher from United States observes the students had a trove of English words at their disposal, but just did not know how to compose sentences out of them.
After a point, the method she uses with immigrant students in her classrooms in the United States worked at Besant Nagar: Getting the students to tell stories about their world and realities.
The learning and engagement extended beyond the classroom and in time, there was an interplay of two worlds. The children got to celebrate American holidays, Halloween being one of them. For her turn, Jessica got to have a rich sense of what Indian festivities are all about.
Sashikala took her under her wing, taking her to Navarathri fest, among other observances and celebrations. A picnic to Pudicherry was also thrown in, as part of an organic cultural immersion exercise.
She also got Jessica to visit other schools, to help her to a panoromic view of education in India.
At the end of it, what helped Jessica be empathetic with the Olcottt students and their learning needs is her natural understanding of immigrant realities.
Jewish from the Ashkenazi line (associated with central and eastern Europe), Jessica’s forebears (from Austria and the Czech region) had immigrated into the United States at various times before the Holocaust. In fact — as shared by Jessica — she is related to Viktor E Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist celebrated for founding the path-breaking logotherapy. Jessica’s forebears were speaking Yiddish before they set foot in the United States.
Sashikala reveals she would make efforts to sustain the momentum that has been created by Jessica.
The ball has already been set rolling towards that goal: Out of the eight classes of English for these graders every week, Jessica got five. The other teachers handling English had been in some of Jessica’s classes to imbibe her teaching methods, which Sashikala describes as “skill-based”.
“In the future, I would try to get two more Fulbright scholars to teach English at Olcott,” says Sashikala.
Three of the students Jessica taught over the last one year have been trained to take the TOEFL exam, and if they clear it, they might get to study in the United States for one year on a student exchange programme. While Jessica was teaching English to Olcott students over this academic year, two other Fublright scholars, Jordan Smithson and Rina Ravisundar, were doing the same, in Vanvani and Lady Nye respectively.
