Photo by Daniel Hurst Photography

By Eun Joo Angela Ryo

After being a full-time seminary student for the last three years, going back to teaching has been a breath of fresh air.  Don’t get me wrong; seminary has been one of the most formative periods in my adult life.  As a new seminary grad, I still experience post-seminary depression more often than I care to admit.  However, life had to go on — albeit reluctantly — and this teaching job sort of just fell into my lap.  Two weeks after my graduation, I started working as a full time certified teacher at a youth residential facility for undocumented unaccompanied minors.  Before then, I was oblivious to the fact that each year, thousands of children from places like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador make the journey to America via freight trains and buses through the scorching desert for what often ends up being only a mirage of a better future.

At first, I didn’t quite know how to feel about teaching at a youth detention center.  Do I believe in this?  Am I becoming part of the problem by enabling the system that locks up vulnerable immigrant youth?   But knowing that it was a human rights organization with the reunification of the youth and his family or relatives in the US as its number one priority, I decided to give it a shot.  Without speaking a lick of Spanish, I had no idea what or how I was going to teach them.

The first day of work arrived and I was terrified.  “Hola, me…nombre…es…Angela.” (Hello, my name is Angela)  That took about 10 seconds.  Sixteen pairs of curiosity-filled eyes intently stared back at me.  I still had 179 minutes and 50 seconds to kill.  But amazingly, as days and weeks passed by, the language barrier proved to be a tremendous blessing in disguise.  In order for me to teach them a word in English, they had to teach me the same word in Spanish.  In confusion, we desperately sought understanding, and in our mutuality of learning, a strong bond of trust and respect started to form.

Without fancy words or high fluting ideas to hide behind, I felt naked and vulnerable.  And in that vulnerability, I discovered the true joy of teaching…and of course, learning.  To say the least, this teaching experience has been one of the most humbling experiences in my adult career.  Who would have ever thought that I’d be learning Spanish from a bunch of undocumented minors when I’m supposed to be the teacher?  Every morning, the Holy Spirit reminds me to “teach from who you are and teach with love” because I don’t have anything else to offer them.

One of the highlights in my journey has been my conversation with a sixteen-year-old boy named Yony.  From day one, I could tell that he was creative.  He was an amazing artist and his creativity showed through even in the way he learned English.  He would never try to copy things from the book, but as much as he could, he tried to create his own sentences.  He experimented with words and sentence structures in English.  Of course, half the time he made no sense, but I loved the fact that he was taking ownership of a foreign language.  I got excited whenever he did that and cheered him on.

When the time came for him to leave (all residents are released to their sponsors in the US within 7 to 90 days), I used one of my co-workers as an interpreter to say goodbye to him. Pushing back the tears, I told him how talented he was, and how he will go far in life if he continues to try and not give up.  In response, he said, “You are the best teacher I’ve ever had.”  With a modest laugh and in a typical Asian fashion, I said, “Thank you, but I’m SURE that’s not true.”  And he said this to me:  “Well, you are the only teacher I’ve ever had who didn’t make me feel less than who I am.  You affirmed me and pushed me to be more of who I am.” His words deeply reverberated through my heart.

The Spirit of God teaches me how best to grow into myself in the image of Jesus not only for thirty days or accidentally, but everyday, quite intentionally.  Through what seemed like an impossible task at first, I have learned a valuable lesson: that teaching is a process in which both the teacher and the students grow more fully into themselves as they mutually learn from each other.

Eun Joo Angela Ryo immigrated to America from Korea when she was 9. She is a full-time third year MDiv student at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and a part-time interim coordinator of the Center for Asian American Ministries (CAAM).  Angela is also undergoing the process of pastoral ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA).