I think the best glimpse into part of my life the past month is this little piece I wrote one night, frustrated and tired:
“I’m starting to realize that every teacher has those moments. The moments when you would sell your soul if all your kids would just SHUT UP for five minutes and listen to the lesson. The moments when you dread the arrival of certain kids and pray (half-jokingly half seriously) for them to be absent. The moments when all the things you planned for that day go crashing down in a heap.
These are the moments that make you long for the Little House on the Prairie days when the teacher could give kids a spanking. Where you’re almost convinced that every single kid in one class is plotting how to make your life miserable.
And it’s easy to get wrapped up in a cloud of self-righteous fury. How DARE these little brats talk while I talk! I’m the TEACHER! How dare they not listen? How dare they play around with pencils and erasers?! How dare they roll around on the mat!
And yes, some things are behavior issues to work out.
But then I make myself stop. Or more accurately, God does.
And I remember that I know very little about what my kids go home to. I don’t know all their deepest fears or worries. I don’t know if they get any or much attention from Mom and Dad. I don’t know what sets them off.
There’s a lot of whys I don’t know.
There are days I have to fight to remember what it was like to be a student.
There are days I have to fight to be gracious.
There are days where teaching is hard.
And these are the days that turn me, little by little, into the teacher that God wants me to be. One with experience and persistence and the wherewithal to wake up every morning and do everything all over again.
Because if these kids matter to Him, they HAVE to matter to me.
Bottom line, teaching is hard. Teaching is annoying. Teaching is stressful.
But so is climbing a mountain, and finishing a project, and learning to play piano.
God doesn’t let us have things easy in life all the time. Because then how would we learn to trust him? How would we learn perseverance?
How would we ever grow?”
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I wrote this about 2 weeks back, and it’s still accurate. There are days when I get to the end of my lessons and am smiling and chuckling as I grade papers and straighten the low-key carnage of fallen pencils and scattered books. And there are other days where I am wondering what the heck my students all ingested with their lunch, and if they learned anything at all during the lesson.
The bad pollution Bangkok has been experiencing hasn’t helped, either. The kids haven’t been able to get out and run as much. Even my better behaved kids have had some rough days.
But every day starts over the next day, and every day has some good thing.
Pollution is less terrible as of now, although the city government had to cancel school for this past Thursday and Friday, due to the bad air quality. It’s now only in the “unhealthy for sensitive individuals” range, as opposed to the “unhealthy for everyone at large” range. But still not great, so be in prayer for that.
On the fun end of things, I went to the grand opening of the first Taco Bell in Thailand, saw the new How To Train Your Dragon 3 (out very early here…), and finally bought a microwave!
There are definitely still moments where the “I am a foreigner” bit hits hard. Like going to immigration to deal with (YET MORE) visa stuff, and having my translator/escort talking to the official in Thai, while I have NO EARTHLY CLUE what they are saying. (It turns out they were discussing another teacher’s situation entirely, but STILL!)
And then, there are times when I feel like this is okay. I live here now. I can ask for food to-go and navigate crossing the street and be polite.
I’m a person. They’re people. I was in the grocery store today and I didn’t feel that wave of nervousness and tension I’d usually been getting, especially in big stores. It felt normal.
This is where I live now. I may be a farang (foreigner) but I’m here to stay for a bit. And I am thankful for the ways that this country has taken me in.
Teach; Think; Write. 