A lot has happened. I left Houston, I went back, I finished training, I rented a house, I killed over 30,000 mosquitos with my bare hands and another 15,000 with a borrowed vacuum cleaner. I became the legal guardian of a beautiful 17 year old princess, I met with a lawyer for the first time in my life, I paid a lawyer for the first time in my life (ouch), I have driven in a flood, I have eaten fried chicken, I had a roommate, I lost a roommate, I overloaded the washer, gone running and then got scarred of wild boars, defended my sustenance from invasions of ants, danced with a boxer, stolen cars, relied on the kindness of strangers, made several trips to Memphis, I also videotaped a guacamole contest, learned to belly-dance and I have made some amazing friends which have taught me what charity and humility look like personified and generally LOVE THE DELTA.
However, until last Thursday I had done nothing to teach the children of the delta.
To be fair to them, I have spent the better part of eight years trying to forget high school, heck, I spent the better part of high school trying to forget high school. So admittedly I probably have a skewed perspective on how this is all supposed to work. How quietly can you expect children to sit after all?
Day one, they were pretty terrified when I spoke to them in Spanish. Which combined with first day jitters and the fact that they are all ninth graders (except for like, three), and the fact that I got some boys with insta-crushes (Miss, you have such pretty eyes...) day one was pretty good. Not perfect, not mind blowingly effective but ok. I made some mistakes I realized pretty quickly, and have been scrambling to rectify them...
Day two. Wow. I came home and slept from about six to about 9am. Apparently, constant "take that outta your mouth, this is a test we do not talk, sit in your seat, do not cut her hair, why didn't you go at lunch, I'll wait until you are ready, do not make me speak over you, silence does not mean talking... will tire you out. It also killed my will to teach. Go figure.
Until I went to a learning team meeting and Deanna got me all fired up. She reminded me about the motivational part of investment, how teaching makes us more like the Savior and how I joined Teach for America in part because no one else will deal with the abuse these squirrelly little guys can deal out.
Well that got me thinking, and I remembered a talk by Spencer W. Kimball call Jesus the Perfect Leader and looked it up online. The talk brings up the fact that when we screw up it is generally the expression of needs we have. I didn't actually read that one but while I was searching I found one called "Guided by his Exemplary Life" and I realized a lot of things,
First, I either believe I am here because I believe that God wants me to be or I don't. And if I don't then I need to get out. But I do feel like this is the right place for me and so I can't really question that. Therefore, if I believe that, then I have to believe he is going to help me.
Secondly and most importantly, if I believe the prior, then I have to do it his way. Otherwise how can I expect to be successful? I can't.
So today I went in and tried to be as prepared as possible only to have the stellar technology of East Side thwart me in having ANY type of preparation at ALL to begin class. Which meant that, I prayed hard and taught an hour and a half geography lesson with no prep, or tools in Spanish. And credit to the aforementioned realizations it was a phenomenal success. My first hour kids were excited, they were engaged and focused.
So then of course instead of learning from what had just happened I did what I thought I should do and ended up lining the kids in the hall halfway through the period, against the wall, silently with referral cards in hand, putting them in their least obnoxious positions possible. Terrible.
Whereas the last period once again, was lovely.
A side note, I found out a few of my kids can't or struggle with reading. It broke my heart and explained a lot. Hopefully, we can change that.
