Back on Track

The pre-exam week, exams, week of holiday, and subsequent teacher shortage and stint as a sub was definitely interrupted the flow of my work, and changed the nature of my mission.  It was frustrating to have everything change an to feel so inadequate for what the school suddenly needed, as I’m pretty sure my one or two dedicated readers out there could tell.

In the past week, I’ve mentally reframed this interruption as a reset.  I have less than 7 weeks left before I head home, and now, with a more normal rhythm and a looming expiration date on my incredible opportunity to do good here, I’m rededicating myself to a slightly reconfigured mission and using the numbered days as a motivating force, driving me to give it my all.

It was harder than anticipated to improvise a
lesson on the United States for a teacherless 6th grade class.

My class has shrunk.  Many of the girls that were coming to my class before exams, being the posse of seventh grade girls that they are (even though many are older, I think that there’s something universal in being a 7th grade girl. . . a weird paradoxical mix of defining your individual identity and having a bad case of groupthink, and insecurity laced with bravado), have decided not to come in the afternoons anymore.  During the school day, they said they would come, and then I ended up sitting in an empty classroom reading a Nigerian novel Sr. Betty loaned me.   I would go every day in the hopes of having just one student, and out of the fear of disappointing someone who legitimately wants to learn.  Like I keep saying in Arabic, “Wahid kifaya.  Sifr mish kifaya.”  (One is enough.  Zero is not enough).

So now, I’m still subbing a bit and helping in the library, but my work is concentrated on three girls of one family, ranging from 1st through 6th Grade, (sisters and cousins)  that returned recently from Khartoum. . . I work with them for a couple hours during the school day, and then they’ve become my only students in the afternoons as well.  That’s 3-4 hours of Laura time a day, but such is their commitment to learning English.

I’m going to try to profile one or two of them in greater detail for a future entry, but to give a quick idea one has finished 7th grade in Arabic-pattern schools only to be placed in 4th grade here, and even then, probably not grasping a lot of what’s going on in the class.  We work on phonics, handwriting, vocabulary, and conversation. . .  a very effective teaching aid has become conversations about “where is the bottle of water?” because I always have one on hand, and nothing teaches prepositions, personal pronouns, or vocabulary like repetition and physical demonstrations.

So for now (knock on wood!), it looks like I have a bit of a new groove going.   In many ways, these girls and I are meant for each other. They really, really, want to learn.  I desperately want to teach them.  I know their individual learning styles, strengths, weaknesses (such as a mental block on the letter y and occasional confusion between b and d).  And for once in my life, I’m engaging with someone such that my Arabic is better than their English.  When gesticulations, my rudimentary drawings, and simplified definitions fail, I can often come up with the Arabic definitions for phonetically simple, but conceptually challenging words like “try,” “hive,” and “brew,”

And there’s a concrete, manageable, but challenging goal: finish two phonics book and English textbooks from grades 1-3 (or 4!).   There’s a larger goal: at best, allow them to skip a grade that better matches their ages and previous educational attainment, and at worst, stop them from being held back a grade next year due to lagging English levels.  And with several hours a day, a few weeks might just be enough.   A friend recently advised me through my frustration not to let my preoccupation with data and measurable impacts prevent me from having faith in the unseen impact to my time here, but I hope that in this case, the impact might just be a tiny bit visible.

Stay tuned for (I’m sure they’re coming) new wrinkles and results on this front .

And for the rest of my time, and the rest of my interactions with the students and the local community, I’m trying to have it be guided by a line from one of the songs I’ve been having on repeat.

“Do I make myself a blessing to everyone I meet?” (“That Wasn’t Me,” by Brandi Carlile)

I can’t always live up to it, and I definitely can’t measure it.  But I can try my best, and leave the rest up to God to the redeeming powers of faith, hope, and love.