Let me tell you a secret. (This is not good advertisement for me, since I TEACH English ….) Ready? I don’t care if you can speak English or not.
No, really. I don’t!
I don’t even care if my own kids (who are raised in Japan) can speak English or not. I know it would be “nice” for them to be able to speak to their cousins who live in Hawaii, or maybe expand their future opportunities by speaking the international language.

But what I really look for : Are they enjoying the “self” that picks up the new skill? Does the learning process delight them? If the answer is “yes” or “maybe, with a little help,” then I want to be there for them!

I would never force a child to learn the violin, if they did not like the process of learning how to play.

I recently started playing the violin again after 25 years. I am not a good violin player. And even after 10 years of playing, I never got good. But even as a child,  I LOVED the process of learning how to play– I would keep at it for hours for the one or two beautiful notes that would occasionally sing out from my tiny violin.

It may be the same way with learning languages.
Look beyond WHAT we are learning and ask,  “Am I enjoying the process?”
Your “beautiful note”might the time you shared a smile with the English-speaking Canadian woman who thanked you for showing her how to get to Tokyo . Our powerful yet invisible connection to one another comes in and out of view because of your processing of all manners of learning, including new languages.

I’m here to help you love this magical process of language learning.
I want to help students see beyond the “benefits,” beyond the “what’s-in-it-for-me” reasons for language learning?

In my lessons, I try to move past the practical reasons and methods of learning. — I enjoy peeking under the “reasons for learning”lid, and celebrating the “person who IS learning.” 

So, how are you doing in your learning?

Are you feeling the thrill of new understanding?
Are you feeling the lovely tingle of connection to your fellow humans when you catch the deeper meanings of their words?

Language is but one gateway to deeper communication
But funnily enough, sometimes it blocks us/ shields us/ blinds us from seeing our common humanness.

As a teacher, I would like to see language for what it is:
Not a goal, but a cool by-product of something deeper, the lovely results from experiencing the “joy of learning and connecting.”

These are the thoughts that I have been exploring today.

In a coaching session  with fellow “coursemate,” Peter, (he was coaching me) we talked about connection. It was our first time talking one on one, outside of the course we had both been taking for a couple of months. I knew he was a nice guy but I was a teeny bit afraid that there was a chance we would not “connect.”

So he got me thinking after the call. (It turned out to be way longer than we both had planned– so much to share, it turns out!)

It made me think, “Isn’t it interesting that we notice the “un” connectedness of connection — as if we were standing with pockets of void around us until we decide to acknowledge and/or embrace one another’s existence?

So does this connection come and go? Is it “there” one minute, then “not there” the next?

“Ummm, we never really connected.”

“The connection wasn’t there, you know.”

“Let’s connect sometime!”

Maybe we’ve talked about people we weren’t comfortable with or talked to people we planned to get together with later on. Is connection really just the act of two ends meeting (as is implied in the lines above)?

Peter slipped in this observation ever so casually when I whined a bit about not being able to catch up with how more experienced a friend was. He suggested that it was not trying to get on the same level with people; people who have more “knowledge” or more “experience” or more “understanding” that is “making” the connection stronger. The moment that we realize that “we are the same person,” not higher or lower, older or younger, or more or less “qualified” — that we feel and reveal the connection that is and has always been there. Strong. Steady. Unwavering. Not more “present” today or less “present” yesterday.

So if we are neither plugging into or unplugging from one another. That’s a pretty cool thing to know. If it’s just a matter of not being able to see it all the time. That’s also a good thing to know. It’s easy to know (well, relatively easy) that we are not our “money” or our “car” or our “family,” even.

But how are we when comes to fundamental values like “love” or “trust” (or the virtue of “connecting” with people, even?) Can we say the same? Am I not my values? That’s what makes me, ME, right? or maybe not. 

Values. Are they not also “outer coats” that we were told (with the best of intentions) protected us from the cruel elements? Are they not just that — “coats” to protect us. They are not the ME — the “being” that remains intact no matter what coat we are wearing.

Does it make more sense to think that we are unconnected beings trying to connect, or that we are connected beings that are tricked into feeling that we are not?

This is the concept that I am turning over in my mind today.