Last week I substituted in our ESL program for the first time. These students are awesome, by the way. They were all eager to learn and hard-working, and they had amazingly positive attitudes.
Ok, back to the lesson. They were learning to conjugate verbs in the present perfect tense, and to help them practice this as well as their listening skills, their instructor left a handout with the lyrics to Pink’s “Glitter in the Air,” with blanks in place of many of the verbs. We listened to the song a few times so that they could fill in the blanks.
After listening to the song twice, we went over the lyrics to ensure that everyone had the right verbs in the blanks. I then asked the class if there were any other words or phrases that they didn’t understand.
One young man raised his hand and asked me about the song’s phrase, “Have you ever been touched so gently you had to cry?” After I explained the word “gently” he asked, “Why would you cry if someone touched you gently?” A very good question indeed.
I looked over to the women’s table (for some reason they tend to segregate themselves by gender, and all of the men looked clueless) and asked, “Can any of the women answer this question?” One looked at me with understanding in her eyes and answered, “It would make you cry if you had never before been touched gently.”
Yes, that would make someone cry. Yes, that would melt a heart. Yes, that would break something open that needed healing.
And so I started to wonder how many people in the world need to experience a gentle touch that would make them cry; how many people need a gentle word to relax their spirit; how many people need an embrace that feels like home.
The next line of the song is, “Have you ever invited a stranger to come inside?”
No comments:
Post a Comment