Week 3

We are three weeks in, with 57 students, one quarter of which have actually paid. Compared to 28 students at the end of the first week and only four paying, I say we are making progress. With the schedule that Myles and I have implemented now for the five teachers, some semblance of order is settling in (although one teacher can’t tell time so I have to tell him when it’s time to switch).

But at some point last week when I was attempting to teach a classroom of 10-12 year-olds how to read, with only five books to share—and even those missing several pages—dealing with constant interruptions from a child with serious ADHD that had, until recently, been treated with the cane to beat the “demons” out of him, realizing that but a handful of these kids even knew the alphabet, beginning to teach the alphabet only to be totally interrupted by the commotion of fighting children in the next classroom where I found the teacher had left for no particular reason, noticing the headmaster doodling on scratch paper in his office in the following room entirely oblivious to the chaos…I nearly decided this whole thing was a farce, and I should throw in the towel. But then there was today: I was teaching these same children, and we were finishing the alphabet and moving on to long and short vowels…and they were standing elated, shouting the vowels at the top of their lungs…. In the classroom next door, the previously-absent teacher was lecturing in a deep voice on climbing vs. creeping plants, now re-motivated with a well-received discussion about actually having a schedule….At the furthest end, I could hear toddlers giggling in the nursery classroom, and I thought about how, without this school, they would otherwise be tightly strapped onto the backs of their mothers as they were selling goods in the market all day or, at best, sitting at home unattended with nothing to do. All of this together, I felt almost gleeful, and I laughed out how drastically your spirits can change when you feel the fate of 60 kids is—at least partially—in  your hands. I always admired teachers, I think, but now I understand why.