The Hokey Pokey (Song for kids)

You put your right foot in

You put your right foot out

You put your right foot in

And you shake it all about

You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around

That’s what it’s all about

English Language Fellows (ELF ) work worldwide for the U.S. State Dept. We are, lifting a marketing phrase used by the Peace Corps, doing “the toughest job we’ll ever love.” Figuratively, we’re “soft diplomats.” Nothing could be closer to the truth. Every time we step into a classroom we represent the United States, whether it’s explicit, like when the State Department logos are pasted onto the first slide of all our PowerPoint presentations. Or, on the other hand, as I lead an informal English discussion group during the lunch hour and we loosely discuss topics such as traveling abroad or the success of the Latvian film Flow winning an Academy Award for best animated film. We are inevitably seen as representatives of the U.S. and what we convey, even what may be inferred by the locals, carries weight.

We “do the Hokey Pokey” day-in and day-out, by teaching classes at our assigned university or giving presentations at the local American Information Centers, usually funded by the respective country’s U.S. Embassy. But we also get countless requests by English teachers in the local community to come to their classes to be, as they say in baseball, utility players. Depending on the age of the students, your role as a guest speaker might include giving a presentation on the U.S. Education System, or reading a story about Fuzzy The Cat who thinks there’s a monster under his bed.

Yesterday, I kept a commitment I had made weeks ago to one of my students, Alla, a 4th grade English teacher here in Latvia. While attending one of my classes, Advanced English, designed for English teachers like herself, she asked, somewhat haltingly, if I could come into her class and read to her students. I never say “no.” And as we got things going in her classroom, I thought I would break the ice, by asking the students if they had any questions for me–it’s a quick way too of assessing the English-speaking ability of the group. After asking me what my favorite countries were (I said, South Korea and Hungary, after the U.S., of course), one student said she could say hello in Korean. “Gam-sahab-nida,” she said, with near perfect pronunciation. Then, in quick succession, a smaller boy said he could count to ten in Korean. Teacher Alla, sitting quietly in the back of the room, taking photos, looked shocked. And the young boy starting counting from one to ten, also with perfect enunciation. “Where did you learn to speak Korean?,” I asked, with genuine curiosity. “I take Taekwondo,” he said, with a proud smile. These priceless revelations all taking place before I had even started reading to the class.

These are the sweet moments, the places “in between.” The interludes not necessarily planned or assigned. And to an American English Language Fellow, dancing the Hokey Pokey on any given day, somewhere in the world, that’s really what it’s all about.