Starry Nights and Griping

Another Starry Night

Outside of my back door is the Milky Way, along with the rest of the Universe, spread, scattered, placed, what-have-you, in all its glory. Every night it’s there. Some nights I step outside and stare. Tonight was one of those nights. And is often the case in these situations, my lack of thoughts, and feelings of the sublime, inverted to thoughts of the sublime and lack of feelings. Luckily for me the former lasted much longer than the latter and even luckier for you, I don’t recall the latter.

But after that short jaunt into freshman year English had finished, I had some other thoughts. I thought about how difficult it is to learn a new profession. I thought about relationships and how fortunate I’ve been to have encountered people in my life who are willing to maintain them intercontinentally (it is nice to use that word and not have ‘ballistic missile’ following it). I thought about the conversations we have here, on huge topics, like developing a nation, and how remote those discussions are from my day to day in the classroom. I thought about how frustrated I get with students when they are unable to make even the smallest step in logic. I thought about how somewhere between a quarter and half of the students are orphans with a total lack of intellectual stimulation. And I thought about what a great adventure this is.

It’s nice to have these thoughts. Despite the early feelings of slowness and lack of anxiety, my personality has taken over and the year and a half I have left here already seems too short. There are days that I frantically try to figure out how to teach without x, y and z … and alpha, beta and gamma, and other days that I feel setup for failure by the students’ primary education, or HIV/AIDs, or the communication barrier, or other teachers or any number of huge obstacles. And so it is those nights, that I decide to step outside to look up at the stars, that are most useful. They help me to forget about the lack of materials and resources, and help me to remember that I am here to teach. I am here to inspire curiosity and questions. I’ll let you know when a student comes with that first big question.

Another Bleak Thursday

There is something about Thursdays that is really difficult. The recuperation that happened over the weekend has been depleted with four days of blank stares and near total lack of comprehension.

I’m going to try to get some long distance pity-love by giving you a little background to this melodrama. Last week I discovered some science kits that I had hitherto not known of. I spent the weekend getting them in order and taking stock of what was missing. There are probably 6 nearly complete kits that are very well thought and very cool. So, after last Friday’s lecture on electrical cells and discovering that students had absolutely no background in atomic theory (e.g. electrons, protons, neutrons) I decided I should get back to some basics. Due to my discovery of the science kits I decided to use the science lab for the first time this year (by any teacher).

I put together a quick measurement lab with 8 stations. They would measure temperature of water in a beaker as the water was heated by a candle, measure the sides of the building with a measuring tape, measure volume using a graduated cylinder, etc. All of the measurements were very simple and there was nothing more complicated than multiplication. Again, I overestimated the students’ background by assuming they had ever measured anything. A lab that was supposed to take up the double period on Tuesday and maybe run halfway into Wed. took up all of Thursday also. The students had never used any piece of the equipment before.

I had planned on focusing more on calculating volume from measurements of a box than on teaching students how to read a thermometer, which it seemed that none of them had ever actually seen before. Teaching 18 year old kids, who are in the 8th grade, to read thermometers was not in the agenda. In retrospect I feel pity for these kids. I wish it were empathy, but they don’t realize how far behind they are. I’m ashamed to say that at the time though, I felt bitterness towards them. Bitter that they didn’t know how to measure length using a ruler. Bitter that the concept of volume is totally lost. And mostly bitter that they don’t give a shit.

But I took a walk. And I reflected. I realized that my expectations of having a group of students who are eager to learn, to better themselves and who were curious needs to be thrown out. I am working with kids who have grown up in a culture that only newly is going through the Western style educational system, in a country without the wide and varied industries available in the US. The only money-making jobs that most of these students are aware of are teacher, pilot, policeman, taxi-driver, shop owner, nurse, doctor, thief or marijuana grower/smuggler. You can probably choose the three professions that are available to a kid here whose English is at a 3rd grade level. HIV/AIDs and death are oppressive and there is simply very little motivating these kids in a positive way. “The Rod” is the go to form of motivation, and is not particularly self-perpetuating.

So, I’m in a much different position than I expected. And it’s going to take a little while for me to take on the role of trying to put students in situations to discover measurement, the different between mass and weight and why -100 is less than -50. It was a long time ago that I discovered them for myself. This teaching thing is so hard, and dynamic, frustrating and exhilarating. But here it goes. Friday will surely be better.