No Alarms, No Surprises, Please.

Fearing what we cannot control does not deter us as prideful entities from attempting to anyways. The beast is fearsome, and the beast has gnarly teeth, but what's a little disembowelment for the chance at playing David? Now, this is an extreme example, and I probably would raise eyebrows by equating (insert politically correct multicultural acronym here) students with mythical monsters of lore. Yet, in the psyche of the "white bread" middle American Caucasian, the barriers which exist between the comfort of their lattes and NBC fall lineups, and the swirling outsider nature of the immigrant/international life, seem just as daunting. I don't believe this is xenophobic, so much as it is a part of inherent cultural division. To put it bluntly, stereotypes and distrust are just as American, British, or Canadian as apple pie, crumpets, and hockey fights, respectively. This country was founded on "all men are equal" with giant spiky asterisks looming. Other countries skipped the rhetoric, and went straight to the asterisks. "One nation, one people" will never catch on, because we don't want it to. We want our regional sports rivalries, our Olympic flag waving ceremonies, and even our war(games). It's nature to choose sides, to exclude, and to be wary of change. So with this being said, where do the international/L2/ESL/yippie ki yay/ whatever students fit into this line-drawing exercise? Or, do we really need them to fit at all?
Somewhere in our discussion on Thursday night, a concept hit me like a ton of apples off the cart. Why are we putting cultural differences and assumed intelligence ahead of our stated objective of WRITING CONCERNS? Guess what...it matters not what you think about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, nor does it matter if you are up on current Japanese pop music trends. We, as consultants, are here to help one community; writers! Weird, eh? I understand that barriers of language, presentation, etc., exist. I know not every session will hit "breakthrough" on the awesome-meter. Yet, piece by piece, puzzle by puzzle, we are here to help every race, creed, color, sexual orientation, or any other property of identity which walks through our doors. If they happen to be from another country, and need the extra help with sentence structure, we are adult enough to make this distinction (I hope!). I happen to know many people from outside the States who grasp the nuances of English more than I ever could hope to. And I'm the consultant! We have to take this, case by case, person by person, because an attitude of generalization only serves dehumanize our work, rendering it inadequate.
In this spirit, I would like to talk about the one student I consulted with this week, who fit the qualification of an (acronym wanted) student. He was from Japan, and was very concerned about his formatting and structuring, in regards to a business letter he was writing. We tackled every concept I could cram into 30 minutes of face to face, and if anything seemed unclear, I did my best to bring it out of the ether. He gave me several ego-boosting compliments, stating at the end of our time, "I most definitely will be back." This one sentence was huge for me. I just treated him as a person with writing concerns, who wrote at one level and wanted to get to another. He recognized that, became comfortable, and reciprocated it such a way, that our session was more productive than I could have hoped. Division is inherent, I guess. Yet, courtesy and hard work never got the memo.