Stepping off the Pedestal

"Identity is gradual, cumulative; because there is no need for it to manifest itself, it shows itself intermittently, the way a start hints at the pulse of its being by means of its flickering light.  But at what moment in this oscillation is our true self manifested?  In the darkness or the twinkle?" --Sergio Chejfec, The Planets

The last thing that I want is for my blog to be an inaccurate portrayal of what I'm really like.  So, I'm going to attempt to write a difficult post and hope that I don't crush all your images of me dressed in long skirts gently lifting kids up out of the dirt and "saving the world one kid at a time".

Oh, where to begin?  I love Haiti, but I honestly also hate it, too.  Forgive me, oh please forgive me, but this place really kinda sucks.  Its stinky, full of trash and loud people, dirty, dusty, and lacking in plant life.  Yes, I occasionally go to a beautiful beach or on a long motorcycle ride.  But, those trips are few and far between.  This is where I work everyday.  This is what I see.....

Yes, it is beautiful in its own way.  Yes, I do love it.  But, gosh I get sick of people pooping everywhere, burning trash, and only seeing dirt.  I miss plants and trees, fresh air, and clean things.

My students make my heart melt with the knowledge that they have gained and sweet things that they say and do.  But, there are many...let me say that again MANY days when school ends and I can't get out of there fast enough because my head hurts,  or I have diarrhea for the millionth time, or I'm a sweaty mess, or I'm just plain sick of my students.  There are quite a few weekends when I stay home and avoid going out to Jubilee all together because I'm worn out and sick of it.  There have been more than a few times that I have wanted to give up and just say "peace out" to all these people and go back to good old 'Merica.  Do you still have the same image of me in your head?  Hopefully not, but if you do keep reading.

More than a few times people in the states have said to me, "You are just such a blessing to that country.  People must be so grateful for everything you've given up and everything you do." HA.  Hahahahaha! Uh, no....not so much.

It is not unusual for me to be cussed out by Haitians multiple in a day...for no reason, simply because I'm white and I'm in their country.  Having men look me up and down and shout very vulgar comments at me as I pass by is part of my everyday life.  Having women in the market cuss at me and tell me I'm selfish because I didn't give them food (when they are selling food, mind you) happens every time I go to the market.  Multiple times in a week people shout at me saying, "Look at that white girl so comfortable in our country.  LEAVE.  Get out of our country!"

Based on the images that you probably have of me conjured up in your heads, I would handle each of these situations with grace and dignity.  I probably stop and become friends with them and talk to them about Jesus.  That might happen once in every 30 times.  But, no, that is not usually how it pans out.  Usually, I get angry inside and even though they don't know me at all...it hurts.  Most times I chose to ignore them.  A few times I have had the urge to cuss back at them.  Granted, I never have, but wanting to is almost as bad as actually doing it.  Many times in my head I am thinking very unpleasant thoughts.  There are days when my patience is more abundant than usual and I talk to them and make friends.  But, let's be real most days it just makes me grumpy.  Honestly, I should probably thank them because they are really good at reminding me just how much of a sinner I am and just how badly I need the grace of God.

Now, that is just a description of interactions with people that don't personally know me.  Then, there is everyone else...

In Jubilee, I have people beg from me roughly 15 times a day.  Including while I am teaching.  You see, people like to stand at the fence right outside of my classroom door and call out, "White!  Hey, white! Come here".  Each time when I go see what they want, they hold out their hand for a hand out.  My response?  "I'm working please stop bothering me and go away."  I'm so Christ-like, I know.  But, when it is constant and I'm in the middle of teaching, and they are interrupting my class, what is the best way to handle it?  I certainly don't know.

In my life, it is normal to have parents offer to give their children to me once or twice a week.  Somedays I take the time to chat with them about how children are a gift from the Lord and they need to cherish their child and take care of him/her.  But, then there are days like yesterday when I was sick, exhausted, grumpy, and trying to keep track of 20+ children during a hectic field day.  A young mama held out her little baby to me and just said, "Hey white person, take her.  I don't want her."  In my annoyance and frustration I looked at her and just said, "I don't want children yet so I don't have sex.  If you don't want kids, then don't have sex." And then I walked away.  What can I say?  I am one gentle and holy missionary.  So, I'll ask again.  Do you still have the same image of me?

Then, there are the children in Jubilee.  Oh, those blessed little children.  Those blessed little liars, manipulators, thieves, and beggars.  Really, they are not so different from all of us except they aren't afraid to show their true selves instead of covering it up with money, jobs, and fancy clothes.  They aren't afraid to say how they are feeling.  They let the air out of my motorcycle tires when they are mad at me.  They steal from me when I'm not looking, throw rocks at me, write graffiti on our school walls, tell me I'm fat and ugly, tell me I'm selfish.  They beg for money and food constantly and cuss me out for no reason.  Last week two kids got mad at me for some reason or another and so for 20 minutes they walked all around Jubilee screaming, "KATIE BITCH" at the top of their lungs in English.  Before moving to this country, I never had such a strong desire to "give a child a whopping" (said with my best southern accent).  If I were a good missionary, the way they act should have no bearing on how I love them or think about them.  But let's face it, I'm a terrible missionary.

I'm sometimes envious of people who can't speak Creole.  They can just simply take things as they appear without actually hearing or understanding the hurtful things that are being said.  Obviously, I have lots of beautiful interactions, too.  My intention is not to downplay the good things that I see everyday.  I love the people in Jubilee.  If I didn't, there would be absolutely no reason for me to live here.  Like I said before, I love Haiti, but I also hate it.  I do need to give Haiti credit where credit is due.  It has helped me realize where the weak parts are in my life, the ugly parts.  I am most definitely in need of more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  It turns out, I'm not nearly as good a person as I thought I was when I moved here three years ago.  I need a whole lot more Jesus in my life that is for sure.

While everything else that I've shared on my blog was all true, I thought it only fair that I show you some of the ugly parts of me, too.  I don't always show God's love.  I mess up all the stinkin' time.  So, this is the real me: the terrible teacher/missionary that I am.  Hopefully that pedestal that I appear to be on is starting to crumble, and if it isn't consider this post my way of attempting to step down off of it.

We all have ugly things in our hearts and lives.  Are you working too hard to keep them hidden?  What is getting in the way of letting people know the real you (faults included)?

Reading, reading, reading!

This year my students have learned to love books.  They literally fight over them.  Each time I see them race to get their favorite books during reading time, I smile to myself.

I'm trying to foster their creativity and encourage them to write stories.  I love reading what they write and seeing them beam with pride as I share their stories with the class.

They absolutely LOVE reading groups!

“I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” 

-Albert Einstein

Survival Tools

As winter fades away, the temperatures here are going from comfortable lovely 80's back up to high 90's.  Winter was wonderful for so many reasons.  I could wear capris and jeans.  I could teach without dripping in sweat.  I could sleep at night with sheets and even a comforter at times.  It wasn't hard to stay hydrated.  Mosquitos were not too bad.  Flies did not infest my classroom by the hundreds.

Sadly, that season has seemingly come to an end.  Two of the best survival tools?  My mosquito net (hanging above my head in the picture below) and my roommate's hand held bug zapper.  Yeah, it is as awesome as it sounds/looks.  They make my evenings tolerable.

What survival tools do you have to help you get through your day?

Habitats

One of the classes that I teach two hours a week is 2nd grade science.  I do not have any curriculum for this subject so I've been coming up with my own units and lessons.  Since January, we've been learning about habitats and different animals.

As an end of the unit project, I required my students to create a habitat diorama.  They were incredibly excited to get to work with their partners.  Each group had to read information about their specific animal then what it eats, where it lives, and one adaptation that it has.

I loved watching their excitement and teamwork as they planned, colored, cut, pasted, and drew everything they needed to make their habitats complete.

While projects like these are very common in the US, they are not here.  It was an entirely new concept for my students and the other teachers at our school.

To complete the project my students had to use lots of high level thinking skills and creativity.

After they finished their habitats, each group presented their project to the class.

During the presentations, the other students in the class graded them using a simple checklist.

Rainforest

Desert

Ocean

They were very proud of their work and are very anxious to take their projects home with them.  Once again, they have made me a proud teacher!

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.” 

-Haim G. Ginott

Critical Thinking

One thing that is severely lacking in Haitian education is critical thinking.  Schools in Haiti only ask knowledge level questions.  Students are simply required to hear information and then recite it back to the teacher without any demonstration of understanding or application to their life.  Schools/teachers here don't understand how to ask students to create, hypothesize, invent, classify, infer, compare, contrast, criticize, question, or critique.

Most classes look like this:  The teacher stands in front of the class.  Some students might be sleeping while others are talking.  If they don't want to pay attention, the teacher doesn't make them.  The teacher reads from a little book or lectures.  Then, the students recite over and over again exactly what the book says until is it memorized.  Classroom walls are bare.  No student work is visible within in the room.  Sounds terrible right?

At our school, we are trying to change the standard for education.  It is no simple task.  The problem is, everyone in Haiti was educated in the system described above.  Our teachers don't understand the value of projects because they were never asked to do them.  They don't understand that lecturing is not the best thing for the students.  They don't understand that they can control the students' behavior.  They don't believe that they have the ability to either inspire or bore the students.  To most Haitian teachers, if a student can say the correct answer, it doesn't matter whether or not the student actually understands it in a different context.

Being a teacher is not a job that is desired by many people.  Instead, it is a job that most people do only for the money.  So, asking our teachers to go above and beyond and teach in a way that makes no sense to them is not easy.

In my classroom, I try to model good teaching and creativity.  To give you an idea of how far my students have come:  In the beginning of the school year, I read a story to one of my classes.  After the story I asked them to tell me ONE thing they could remember from the story.  They could not tell me a single detail....not a character's name or what the story was about.  They simply stared at me with blank stares.  I thought they were all brain dead.

Fast forward six months.  (Skipping lots of details involving hard work and frustration)

My students have now started writing stories as a class and illustrating them!!!

As we write the stories, they use both Creole and English.  They are not the best stories ever written by any means.  But, I never imagined that they would be able to do this.  I am one proud teacher.  

Its hard for me to explain just how much these students have had to learn and overcome to get to this point.  If they can do this, they can do anything.  These kids of mine are going to be world changers.  With each book that they read, with each sentence they write, with each idea they formulate, Satan shudders with fear.

“True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their

own.” 

-Nikos Kazantzakis