October 6, 2011
I am so tired, and yet I feel so refreshed. The week flew by so fast that I didn’t even realize it was gone until my kids were leaving at the end of the day. I went to Crossroads tonight, which is a small group from church, for single people who have come to Abu Dhabi. (I say small because that’s what THEY call it, but there were easily 35 people there tonight.) We ate dinner and hung out, and then we broke off into smaller groups of 5 or 6 to discuss the topic. They’re going through a book, which in turn goes through the psalms. My group was so dynamic! There was a CEO-type businesswoman, a guy with a small IT business, a woman who works for some defense agency, a teacher/mentor man who works with teens, and another woman. (I didn’t catch her job.) Different ages, genders, occupations, ethnicities, you name it. It was fantastic! I actually left feeling emotionally and spiritually nourished, a feeling that I haven’t had in quite some time. I haven’t received anything near that from the actual church services, but this group! What a group…
In answering the questions associated with the book’s chapter for the week, we detracted a little in conversation… Now, we were still on topic, but telling stories about how things related in our personal lives. Honestly, it gave me a lot to reflect on. One of the things I noticed is that people come here to rest. We all have jobs, but it is still a season of rest. The IT guy left Montreal after his high-stress job gave him a nervous breakdown, the businesswoman left DC because she felt overworked and underappreciated at her job, the teacher/mentor left Missouri to start with a clean slate after some mistakes. I came because I was burnt out from school and not ready to go to grad school, to take myself out of my comfort zone and try something new, and find out if my career goals are something that I really want, deep down. (It’s also the first time since high school that I’ve only had one job, and it’s one that allows me to play with kindergarteners all day… very low stress.)
While I was talking about my classes and my kids, it occurred to me that I really love them. Sure, they drive me crazy sometimes, and yes, I’ve only been their teacher for a few weeks, but I love these kids. There is so much untapped potential in the children here, especially in Emiratis. I tried to explain it to Petra like this:
In the States, every child grows up being told they can be whatever they want and do whatever they want when they grow up, and to some extent, that’s true. But if everybody can do anything, it’s like a buffet with too many good choices: there are so many good foods that you want, but you know you can’t have all of them. Since you can’t make up your mind about what you are going to choose and what you’ll ignore, you end up with nothing. Every new thing I did, or different class I took in college told me that there was a new occupation I could see myself in for the rest of my life. What it left me with was no entry into grad school, and more confusion than when I came into college!
Now I’ve already said that some of my kids are kind of clingy, but what I didn’t realize until now is that I have a lot of kids who are craving not only attention, but structure and discipline! I’m mainly talking about the kids who give me a lot of grief. There is SO much potential in them, and yet they grow up with the idea that they’re lazy and don’t have to answer to anyone, because that’s the culture and the government provides them with everything. Being a nanny culture, they don’t always get adequate attention at home from their parents, and nobody makes them do anything that they don’t want to, or that seems too hard. People don’t make them try. I work 6 hours per day, so I have each class roughly 15 hours per week (give or take a little for P.E. and music, etc.). Those 15 hours might actually be the only time in their entire week that they have a real authority figure. (This obviously isn’t true for all of them.) And they’re making major breakthroughs already! Some examples:
Khaled (the “I am Mario!” kid) wants to have a turn at the whiteboard every time I ask, “Who wants to try?” and he finishes his work and does a good job doing it! You just have to rein him in a little, or keep him busy.
Khalifa tries to get out of doing his work by saying he’ll do it at home, but I really think he just wants to see if he can get me to give up. Every time I say, “no, we need to do our work here”, he does a little bit more and then looks to see if I’m watching, so that I can tell him again. Like he needs to know that I’m not giving up on him. (Side note: 3 weeks into school, and today was the first time I met one of his parents. He’s at school by the time I get there, and he’s waiting to be picked up when I leave. His mom didn’t even know if I was his teacher or not. It breaks my heart.)
Mawada kind of bounces all over class, is always talking, and it’s like pulling teeth to get her to pay attention. But when they get their books out to practice writing their letters, she always asks me if I’m going to sit with her. Today she hardly got anything done for all her chattering until I pulled a chair up to my desk and told her to sit there instead. She worked but she’s so tiny that I could tell she wasn’t comfortable trying to see that high, so we both moved to an empty table (the class was filtering out at the end of the day). She was sitting quietly next to me doing her work when her mom came… Her mom was so shocked about her good behavior (at least, that’s the impression that I got) that she just watched from the window for a few minutes. I think she didn’t want to disrupt how well she was doing.
Or Marwan, the most difficult Emirati boy in my expat class: He didn’t get ANY work done today in his book, he was distracting to the other kids, and he refused to listen to me. I told him that if he didn’t finish his pages, he would have no recess. He didn’t believe me, and said, “yes I will.” So when it was time to take the class to recess, my assistant was at the front of the line leading, and I was at the back of the line, Marwan in tow. We followed long enough to make sure the whole class got to the gym, and then we went back to the classroom. I sat him down at the table with his book and a pencil, and what do you know! He finished ALL of his work in 20 minutes: half the time it took the rest of the class. We even got to the worksheets he missed when he was absent this week! He can’t write his name yet, so I wrote it for him and then told him to copy what I did as best as he could. He looked to me after every letter, to see if he had done it right. He just needs one-on-one time, a little bit of praise for good work, and someone to tell him no. Amazing!
Like I was saying, I love my kids and I want them to know without a doubt that they are capable of so much more than their society tells them. They are smart, and they are worth the time it takes to discipline them. They are valuable, and they deserve to know that.
I love my job! I can’t even put into words how thankful I am: for the breakthroughs in my kids, for a time of fellowship at Crossroads, and for all of my opportunities. I feel so incredibly blessed. J
