soul service and teaching

"Service through stuff is very easy. Very easy. Because it doesn't touch your world, it doesn't change a thing, and it makes you feel good.... Service through empowering another person changes the situation. Because at this point you have to negotiate power not substance, but power.... It says I'm going to serve you now by telling you, you have gifts that you haven't touched and I'm going to help you develop those gifts because you were born to develop those gifts." Carolyn Myss

This is what teaching should be. Soul service: empowering people to recognize and have the courage to use their own gifts. Instead of creating power inequities and struggles, it is merely an act of inspiring and empowering. Simple but not easy. I'm not quite there but it is a guiding principle.

light the fire

“Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” William Butler Yeats

Its almost June which means I'm about a third of the way through my year here. It also means the first trimester is over and grades are due soon. Talk about stressful! I'm supposed to give 4 tests each trimester (2 oral and 2 written) and I've been stressing about how to fit in 2 more in the next week. In other words, mission impossible. I've resigned myself to a presentation and a quiz and hope that next trimester I can plan my tests better. I'm hoping I can plan everything better but I'm trying not to be too ambitious or put my expectations too high because it's what has left me feeling so frustrated at times. I just hope the kids learned half as much as I did.

I started teaching some adult English and will be teaching a second adults class this week (for more advanced learners). This recent expansion of my teaching responsibilities has confirmed that I have no idea what I'm doing. I think it's a common theme among beginning teachers. Teaching is a career which challenges your bravery, your self-esteem and your capacity to change. In my last post I compared teaching English as a foreign language to trying to single-handedly run a three ring circus. There are times when your three ring circus erupts into chaos, the monkeys are attacking the crowd and a stampede is imminent and other times when the high wire is too low and the elephant has the flu and your clowns aren't funny. In both cases you have to be willing to change. Yourself, your lesson, your classroom, your perspective. Sometimes one thing, sometimes everything. You have to be perpetually willing and able to fail, sometimes quite painfully, in front of a class full of students. But here's the thing: I have a suspicion it doesn't need to be quite so difficult and exhausting. I have a feeling if I hang in there I might just figure out how to do this with a little more grace and ease. And the fact is every day I do learn a little more about what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately (for future teachers) it's not an easy thing to describe or explain. Mostly I just feel, like anyone who is practicing a new skill. Sometimes, it just clicks.

But, lets face it, teaching is never easy. There always seems to be a mountain of factors working against you both inside and outside the classroom from student motivation, behavior issues and parent involvement to regional rules and regulations, language barriers, weather, and other various distractions and disruptions. With all that said even under ideal conditions teaching is still one of the more challenging professions. I remember talking to someone at a hostel in San Jose about teaching and he said, “You seem so smart. Why would you want to teach?” I thought, “Why wouldn't I? What better way to put my talent, my intelligence and my passion to work.” I guess he was of the mind that if you can't do, you teach. There is, in the minds of many, an unfortunate stereotype that many people only go into teaching out of necessity and I think we can all attest to the fact that there are far too many joyless teachers who do not like children. But considering the extremely low pay and long hours I would have to bet that the majority of teachers do it because they love it and because they feel acutely the importance not just of teaching but of learning and of education in general.

As Yeats says, education should be more about the lighting of the fire and as my high school Physics teacher said its more about being the “guide on the side” than the “mage on the stage”. And though I'm still in the beginning stages of learning how to teach, and thus muddling around in the mystery, I have a hunch, a gut feeling if you will, that these pieces of wisdom are the key to that “click” feeling. In the past week I've felt that perhaps the sparks are starting to catch on the kindling I've been piling up this first semester. In essence I want to be able to step back more and let my students be the sources of their own learning rather than mere depositories for the knowledge I possess and am willing to bestow upon them. I want them to take on some of the responsibility and feel empowered rather than powerless in the classroom. Too much tedious and ineffective rhetoric that passes for education these days comes from teachers as the authority, as the sole possessors of power and knowledge in the classroom. I feel this is consistently my greatest downfall as a teacher and yet somewhat inevitable considering I was educated in this system as well. And depending on your motives and goals, it works on a lot of levels. It works to keep people in their place and perpetuate a system where few people question the unequal distribution of power.

Well I think I'll stop there because I'm going to need a whole other post to get into all the details of that statement. But needless to say it's what's on my mind when I think about becoming a better teacher. Empowering students, teaching them to think critically and work as part of one harmonious didactic community. Hey, I never said I'm not an idealist!

failure is not a crime

There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments. Wangari Maathai

While overall things are really great and I'm happy to be here, it's not always easy. There are many ups and downs. Some days, weeks, hours seem so much more difficult than others. But this has always been true in my life and maybe that's what keeps me grounded. The fact that no matter how hard it gets the grass is not any greener anywhere else. Even when I'm at my wits end, having gotten no sleep for days, kept awake but various creatures invading my room I have managed to find some small things to appreciate. And there are so many little bright sides to life here that it seems hard to stay down for very long. When “Wheels on the Bus” comes up on my ipod randomly or we have homemade tortillas for breakfast I remember "there is no perfect, there is only life" (from The Secret Life of Bees).

I have settled into quite a routine which, while comforting, I am hoping to shake up a bit in the coming weeks. I've adjusted to many of the changes to my life and things feel pretty normal now. I wake up to roosters, hear the national anthem at 6:00, hop in the cold shower, have fruit and coffee for breakfast and trek uphill to school. At school I have finally figured out the schedule, which means that I have embodied pura vida (aka go with the flow) in ways I never thought possible. Maybe its the language barrier or the past experience with lack-luster leadership but things that would have normally had me ranting and raving seem to roll right off. That's not to say I'm taking a backseat on the important stuff... I still find a way to teach as many kids as I can on any given day. And with each day I feel myself getting a little clearer on exactly what is important and how to be the best teacher I can be.

In the afternoons I usually come home to coffee and a snack (bread/cookies/crackers... we love our carbs here!) and try to relax a bit before doing any planning. In the evening I spend time with my host mom eating dinner and watching “En Nombre del Amor” a telanovella we're obsessed with. They all think it's funny that I'm so into it but it helps me practice my listening skills. I also recently held a parents meeting and will be starting up adult English classes on Wednesday afternoons. On Tuesday I'm going to attempt to teach a few women how to knit too. I think that it will be a practice in patience for all involved and my Spanish skills will be put to the test. But if we can get going I think the project has great potential.

Two weeks ago my computer cord broke and I was being kept awake by ominous crinkling, scratching and scurrying so I have been getting in quite a bit of reading. I recently finished Unbowed by Wangari Maathai, the first African woman and environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It is her memoir of her life and work in Kenya and while I sometimes autobiographies to be a bit dry and hard to get into I could hardly put this one down. In a word: inspiring.

Meanwhile I've gotten more used to the bugs. I don't like them but they're part of my life. Also, at this point I've settled in enough to be able to really focus more of my energy on teaching, which is what I want to do. Some days it's beautiful and we all get along and work together and learn something and feel good at the end of the day. Other days I feel like I'm trying to preform a three ring circus by myself and the audience is looking the other way. Teaching can be incredibly rewarding but also incredibly frustrating. I guess it would be easier if I didn't care so much about having my kids learn something and really doing a good job. But at those times when I feel completely defeated, like not only are we speaking a different language but maybe we're from different planets entirely and nothing seems to be getting through, I try to remember to step back and reflect. When it's not easy is when I can learn the most about my students and about myself. So as Wangari Maathai said in her book “Failure is not a crime.” Far from it. Sometimes it is the best way to truly learn and heal and grow. So here's to nine more months of failure (and learning and healing and growing)!

laughter is the best. period.

So I´ve been slacking off in the blog department but though it seems like nothing interesting happens I am incredibly busy and lots is going on. I´m just used to a lot of the things that at first seemed new and interesting. Anyway I figured a short post is better than none so here´s what happened today:

There was some seriously infectious laughter going through the school. First a 6th grader refered to all the boys in the class as ¨men¨and I couldn´t stop laughing. Then a 3rd grader fell in a drainage hole while we were doing a scavenger hunt. He was fine but man was it funny and the girl in that class, Estefani, has the most amazing laugh so it kind of took over. Someone in the 5th grade farted and, well, they all just about died laughing. Sometimes they are so preadolescent and other times they´re just kids. I thought one kids was going to wet himself he was laughing so hard. One of my 4th graders suggested ¨Rock A Mama¨ (Barrack Obama) as a famous person for our interviews and I made him repeat it 3 times just so I could laugh. But that´s what we do. They laugh at my Spanish and I laugh at their English. Hearing some of their pronunciation and grammar errors ("I like to eat my mother") I can only imagine what I sound like. At least we can all have a good laugh.