The following is a brief list of other points the ESL instructor should keep in mind when teaching survivors of torture:
Women and children constitute 80 per cent of the world's refugee population. We do not have exact figures, but it stands to reason that a proportion of this group has also experienced torture. The needs of female survivors should be given special attention in the ESL classroom. When women are tortured they are often subjected to some form of sexual abuse, such as rape. Because of these experiences it is often difficult for women to cope in a mixed ESL class. To help them feel more at ease, you may wish to allow women to do group or pair work exclusively with other women. Often they will be quieter than male learners and reticent about speaking out in class. Respect this, but try to focus a part of each lesson on a component that will encourage the women to contribute. For example most survivors come from traditional households where women act as care givers and are responsible for looking after children and preparing meals. Include these experiences in some lessons. If funds allow, open a class for women only. At the CCVT we offered such a class. It proved immensely successful. Women who had participated in mixed classes prior to this time said they felt much more comfortable in the women's class and as a result, progressed further with the new language. We also found the women were more apt to attend the class until the course's conclusion and day-to-day attendance was consistently higher than in most of the other classes offered at the CCVT.
Always remember your role. Your job is to teach ESL. It is not your job to try to compensate for what has been taken away from a survivor. Survivors will sometimes depend on others to do things for them that they feel they cannot accomplish on their own i.e. making appointments, negotiating problems with government workers. Offering to do these tasks for the learners because you sympathize with what they have endured deprives them of the opportunity to become self-sufficient in their new community.
Don't expect a survivor to be more sympathetic to the pain of others simply because of his/her own past experiences. There is no rule that says that survivors are more empathetic to other groups in the community who are exploited or oppressed on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation. As an educator your role should be to help them develop an understanding of the 'social norms' and the laws, as well as the principles behind these laws, that exist in Canada. Tolerance, if not understanding can evolve from encouraging individuals to connect their own personal experiences of feeling denied, neglected, or repressed to the systemic oppression which others face in our community. Some survivors may require specialized counseling before they can begin to learn a new language. Others may focus completely on the learning process in an attempt to forget their persecution experiences. You will find, therefore, that some learners seem to be obsessive about learning English. If this is the case, give them homework that will help them integrate into the community i.e. a reading exercise that involves subway ads, or searching the newspaper for free things to do on the weekend.
Be aware of what life in Canada is like for a refugee and how racism and sexism are expressed in our community. A survivor who has lived under a dictatorship or in a war-torn area often arrives in Canada with utopian expectations of the new culture and its people. Coping with racism and/or sexism in his/her new community may be much more difficult because one's hopeful illusions of a prosperous and accepting community are undermined.
A traumatic past is one part of a survivor's life history and therefore only one part of who s/he is. Avoid defining someone solely as a victim. Past achievements and current interests should not be subsumed from their total history. The learner's present successes and abilities need to be acknowledged.
