By Tammy Cario
A student learns pottery and Farsi during an immersive class at DLIFLC.
Pottery might not be the first thing you think of when someone says Persian Farsi, but for some Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center students, pottery class is a great way to build up their language.
“I don’t know what I’m making at the moment, but it’s going to be a whale,” said first-time pottery student PFC Tom Bafton [not his real name], repeating whale in Farsi, during a recent class. Bafton is in week 29 of his Farsi course at DLIFLC.
The Persian Farsi schoolhouse has begun offering other extra-curricular activities like music and soccer, the latter of which Bafton has also joined.
“Anything you can do to get more immersion is always beneficial,” he said.
Sgt. First Class Bobby Keeth, chief military language instructor for the Persian Farsi schoolhouse, agreed. When he was a student at DLIFLC, they only offered a calligraphy course, something that was grade dependent.
“We started the class, I failed a test and then had to drop out,” Keeth said.
This time around, the classes are not dependent on their GPA. For the pottery teacher and DLIFLC instructor Bijan Hemasi [not his real name], the class isn’t a reserved privilege for the deserving few. Instead, he sees this as a chance for the students to do hands-on learning.
“Our students actually learn the language without going to the smart board or the white board,” Hemasi said. They are learning by doing, and more specifically, learning while doing something they are interested in, he said. “And that’s very effective, in my opinion.”
