Teaching English? A challenge is a challenge.

June 2

“You will be teaching some very basic English classes” says Father T-McD in his email. “Yes, a three hour class on teaching should suffice” says ISSLP.

“Actually you’ll be teaching three classes a day to three very different group sizes with even more drastically different levels of proficiency. On top of that, pretty soon you’ll be giving a two a day seminar to a group of teachers on teaching English”

I could say it seems unfair, and that would be true. I could say it is nothing like what I expected, and that would also be true. I could get upset, pout, and bathe in self-pity at our lack of preparation, but that would do nothing for me or anyone here. A challenge is a challenge. That’s all it comes down to. It may not be packaged the way we expected it to be or wearing the guise we thought it would, but it is a challenge all the same. It turned out that this challenge actually required me to be resourceful in a way I never had before. You find out a little about the depth of your character by pushing yourself past your comfort zone. “Our greatest feat is not in never failing, but rising every time we fall.”

It took some time, but John and I have embraced our challenge. We are taking on the task of teaching with the ferocity of two boxers just released form their corners in the final round. Admittedly John still tends to drag his feet quite consistently, but for the most part his spirit has improved. I’ll admit my biggest challenge here is probably dealing with his mood swings and somewhat womanish sensitivity although with practice and guidance I am steadily improving. Sometimes I have to just take a deep breath and relax even when I feel like strangling him.

Anyways we continue to look for ways to spice up our teaching approach. Today we played the scrambled sentence game with our high school class. It was pretty much chaos with all the girls in my class (I still think more and more are showing up). We gave them candy which was probably a bad idea because we can only go downhill from there.

The more we look at it however, the more it seems that English is probably the most valuable use of our time that we could commit to these people. There is no type of manual labor that we could perform more efficiently than some man here, and in performing that sort of task we would essentially only be stealing a job from someone who actually needed it. We are here most importantly to learn, so no matter what our trip will be worthwhile, and if nothing else the next time a white person comes through this village they should at least be greeted with a smile and a “HELLO. HOWAREYOU?” in still very broken English. Although the man might also be swarmed by a group of little munchkins with outstretched hands beckoning “pen”, “chocolate”, and “basketball”. Oh well, not my problem.