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 ;)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
