This year has definitely challenged me in ways other years haven't. There are only ten of them and yet at the end of each day, I feel more exhausted than teaching double that amount.
The students remind me of angry bees, constantly up and buzzing around each other, stinging each other with words I would never dare say out loud. Learning seems to be simply the secondary reason to go to school, the commercial break so to speak between amusing themselves in other ways from ruler fights, to cutting paper to even flipping a water bottle and making it land on its base...over and over and over and over again. Like Dominican traffic laws, they take directions as a mere suggestion and not until the threat of a "fine" or an "infraction" will they finally find their seat. Sometimes I feel like the teacher in Charlie Brown who talks in a garbled fashion where no one is really listening.
Today started out similarly. and after Spanish class two of my girls were in tears and mad at the world because they had lost a game and my boys being the great gentlemen that they are, had insulted them. During spelling, they seemed to exaggerate their sadness/anger and tried to form a little pity party where they would look at each other and cry and refuse to do any work...throwing anything off their desk. When the other students went to break, I held them back to talk to them about their behavior. That it is okay to be angry and sad and upset, but to keep fueling it, is not healthy.
I talked with them and it actually humbled me.... One girl began "I became bad when my parents started fighting...everyone is fighting at my house." The other one said "I became bad when I lost my mom." Their responses floored me....that they thought somehow they were bad people and that they had suffered great losses in their early lives that I still haven't experienced. Instead of reprimanding them, I held them while they cried and told them I loved them and that God loved them and that they were beautiful people who made mistakes.
I love how God keeps humbling me. When I get frustrated and angry, he reminds me in quiet ways that the surface issue, isn't always the real issue. That hurting people hurt others and that even though our basic response is to punish and reprimand, the best response is to be vulnerable, to love especially during the times we feel like hating. As Martin Luther said, "Hate cannot drive out hate....only love can do that." So if you feel inclined to pray...please pray for my students and also for me...that I learn to teach with God's wisdom and patience and that I open my arms and my heart more often than I open the discipline chart.
