My UN part-time job

I've always fancied working in the UN. For some reason, I thought it would make me appear sexier and extremely intelligent in that nonchalant, mysterious way. Something like Nicole Kidman in The Interpreter, but with a bit more tan and a lesser inches. But, destiny obviously had other plans for me, so I let that UN go into the depths of my memorial abyss.

A good friend of mine told me that you might fail to achieve your dream the first time, but it will always come back to you later, maybe not too quickly but it always comes back to you, in maybe a slightly altered manner. And so it has for me. I've started teaching again after an almost 5-year hiatus and my students come from many countries, mostly from Africa and the Middle East. And to my surprise, my dream of working in the UN has manifested in a rather peculiar way.

I've not been one to be very interested in international issues, especially about conflicts in countries whose names are difficult to pronounce (the ones with double consonants at the beginning are the trickiest!). I found them to be extremely boring and devastating. But, since I started teaching I found that I really need to know these things, especially those conflicts involving countries which my students come from.

You have to know that the Somalians do not get along well with the Ethiopians, so don't sit them next to each other, or don't ask them to do pair or group work together. They'd much rather not do the activity then to compromise their political beliefs. I also have to read up about cultural relations in these countries and also the political issues effecting them because all these will influence their communication in my class. The Iraqis are not happy if I mistake them for Iranians and vice versa (I was naive to think that just because they have almost similar country names, they'd be pals!). I cannot assume that group work (which is THE BEST way to practice using language) will always work in my class because of these problems.

So, you see, I'm basically functioning like a UN official in my classroom. Most of the time I have to be sensitive to the little problems that are happening in the world so that I will not have problems handling my students. I'm an educator and a UN peacemaker rolled in one. How cool is that! I bet you that even JobStreet can't offer you a job like that. My dream has come true, in a way.