Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Disillusioned

Lately I find myself leaving school with a particular flavor of exhaustion. The more time I spend at Kitini School, the more I recognize that I cannot fix everything. Which might seem obvious, but if you have met me perhaps you will understand how this hurts me. I care deeply about my students wherever I am. It’s what motivates me and what makes me so emotionally vulnerable. I love what I do because teaching is such an intrinsic part of who I am. But that also means that when work is hard I feel it deep in my bones.
 
Right now, work is hard.

I want all of my students to be able to write their full names with js and gs and ys that drop below the line. And I know that if I had infinite time with each of them I could make it happen, but I don’t.

I want the tests to actually measure students’ ability to read, write, speak, and listen. Rather than whether or not they have memorized the questions and can regurgitate minute details from a story we read in October. And I just spent four years learning how to write appropriate and meaningful assessments; it’s one of the things that I love most about teaching because it creates a tangible way to go to a student and say “Wow! Look how much you’ve grown!” But I don’t make the exams; they come from a Nepali organization and go to all the schools in the district. Kind of like MEAP tests or PSSAs except they’re the only form of assessment.

I want to stop everything and work with my third grade girls who still don’t have any idea what sounds the letters make. But then what will the other students do? And what about all the other struggling students in all the other grades? Who will drop everything to tell them that they still matter even if they can’t read and that they’re not stupid and that they can learn to be just as good as everybody else?

I want the key to the library to stay on school grounds because I hate that if the teacher with the key is absent then no one can access the resources that other schools can only dream of.

I want my co-teachers to talk to me. To tell me what they like about the way I teach and what they think is silly and what they will never ever use after I leave. I want to ask them questions and I want them to ask me questions. I want them to come to class or not come to class, I just want to stop living in this strange limbo land where I never know how much to plan.

I want to know the words to say in Nepali when I walk into a classroom and find a student crumpled in his/her chair with tears dripping onto the floor. I want to know how to ask if they’re hurt or sad or hungry. I want to know enough to understand when they finally blubber out a response.

I want to be able to communicate to the kid, who hit the grade one student so hard, that his behavior is not okay without making him feel like he himself is horrible.

I want my girls to grow up in a world where their teachers and principals don’t hit them. Because if every male authority figure you encounter beats you, even once, why would it even occur to you that it’s not okay for your boyfriend or your husband to do that too.

I want the things that I learned in college to apply in this context. I want to have a team of colleagues, administrators, and specialists who I can call upon to cooperate and bring so-and-so up to grade level because I’d hate to see him/her drop out at the end of third grade.

It’s hard right now because I want all of these things from the most well-intentioned part me, but the more time I spend at Kitini School, the more I understand why things exist the way they do. And when you start to understand something it becomes harder to wish it away.

I now know how little teachers are paid; probably not enough to even compensate for the work they are doing let alone the work I think they should be doing. I now know that the decision to cancel school at 1:00 instead of 4:00 is far more complex than I could have ever imagined; weighing political factors, policy decisions, economics, and even physical safety threats. In America, the culture drives people to create change and make progress, and I now see the consequences (positive and negative) of a society with different priorities.

This casserole of wishes and realities, this complicated mess of life, is forcing me to let go of my illusions. Which is good because it means that I am beginning to grasp the arrogance of what I hoped to accomplish in eight months as an ETA. But it’s also deeply painful because letting go of what I want for myself includes letting go of things I want for my students. I want the world for them, but my time and my resources are so much smaller than the universe.

So where do I go from here? How do I choose where to invest what I do have to offer? Do I choose the student most likely to succeed in hopes that they’ll pay it forward one day? Do I choose the students who nobody thinks will succeed and swallow the reality that they still might drop out next month? Do I stick with the whole class just to be an example of an adult who follows through or do I drop my classes and switch to intensive small group work? Do I pursue the goals I originally set for creating sustainable change in teachers and administrators or do I focus on making my last six weeks unforgettable for my students?

The teacher voice in my head says “those are great questions!” But the actual me wishes I also had some really great answers. Fortunately winter break is fast approaching and with it comes my American family! Perhaps I’ll become enlightened somewhere between trekking to Poon Hill and riding elephants in the terai ;)

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