When I was working towards my MA TESL in a rural, sparsely populated, predominantly white university town in the US, I tutored a Chinese woman in English as part of my coursework. She had relocated to America alongside her husband, who was studying at my university. A few times, the three of us shared congenial meals outside of tutoring sessions. 

During one of those meals, my tutee casually said, “Before we came to America, we thought it was hard to tell white people apart.”

Her husband added, “Yes, it took us a while to see the differences.”

She smiled gently, “And how surprised we were when white people here told us they thought Asians looked alike.”

“But for us, each Asian person looks very different,” finished off her husband.

That gave me pause for thought. Although I didn’t think Asians all looked alike, I was guilty of not making much of an effort to see people beyond their skin color and the shape of their eyes. Intellectually, I already knew not to view members of an identity group as “the same.” But to my chagrin, this conversation made me realize I was unconsciously sorting people into different categories, and worse, sometimes even assigning certain characteristics (work ethic, etc.) to particular identity groups. But we’re all different, no matter what we look like, where we were raised, or what native language(s) we speak. And the Chinese couple nudged me to stop and take the time to see each person as a unique individual, not a faceless member of a group.

The articles chosen for our “Missed in 2023” Think Tank issue all have a common theme: When we make an effort to look beyond physical characteristics, biases, preconceptions, and even our own past experiences, we can begin to understand other people and their perspectives. I further believe that a language teacher’s job is not just getting students to learn vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and so on. Our job also involves giving students opportunities to see the world through other people’s eyes and helping them develop empathy and understanding for those who are different from them. As you will discover in this month’s Think Tank articles, we can:

• Encourage students to develop and practice a growth mindset
• Organize exchanges between students from different language backgrounds and cultures
• Think deeply about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on our students, including the biases in AI output
• Strive to understand differences in the ways people’s brains work
• Help students analyze the conversational moves in the target language so that they can better understand people and express their own ideas
• Help students in our classrooms develop empathy for one another

Furthermore, at a time of relentless promotion of artificial intelligence in educational spaces, this month’s Think Tank articles serve as a powerful reminder that interacting with machines does not suffice for understanding other human beings. True understanding along with a dismantling of bias requires at least some knowledge of the language and a willingness to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. AI can’t do the latter. While AI can support students as they learn the target language, it can only imitate human abilities. Human teachers are needed to guide learners away from categorically judging people who look different and lead them towards the acceptance that each person is unique. Only by engaging with real human beings, as the Chinese couple and I did with one another, can we look deeper to appreciate our beautiful differences.