We should be more grateful...FOR MY STUDENTS!

Today I was standing outside waiting for school to start, sort of feeling bad for myself because I am fighting a small cold with violent sneezes, and this miracle bumps into me. This bright, beautiful, smiling face, located a few feet below mine, strikes up a conversation with me. I wish you could have heard her bubbly voice, her optimism, her giggle.

            “I told my mom,” she began, “I want to go to school. I really want to go to school. Why am I not in school, mom? My mother said, ‘What school do you want to go to, child?’ ‘I want to go to…to…(‘What’s the name of our school?’ she asked me. ‘King David,’ I reminded her.) Yesssss! King David! I want to go to King David School! And I am so happy since I came here. I love learning so much! I love learning everyday. My mother told me, ‘Child, then we will not have money for food.’ ‘As long as I am learning, that’s enough,’ I said.”

            “So you don’t eat lunch?” I asked the student.

            “Haha. No,” she smiled, though it seemed an odd response to me. “I haven’t even had a 50 ngwee coin these past two days. But I’ve been at school.”

            Wow. So all the times I go into my house and eat lunch, this child has gone hungry. And she feels school is more important than eating. School is more important than nourishment. She loves school more than food.

            Now I love school. I’ve always loved school. I love learning and being a student. I love school. But I’ve never, never ever had to choose between school and lunch. I’ve never had to beg my mother to send me to school.  

            A few weeks ago, I assigned a writing prompt to my grade 8 class. The task? Write a summary of your life. We have been working on choosing important points from a reading and writing them down in our own words. I was so humbled by my students’ stories. The common themes were parents dying and no money for school fees. One student stands out. After both his parents passed away, he stopped attending school for three years. Three years! No school! When he started attending King David School, he found that he actually loved the learning environment. He passed his grade 7 exams and now often has the best performance in my grade 8 class. He’s one of my best students and he missed three years of school. He wrote in his summary that he often advises his friends to go to school to that they can take responsibility for their own lives. Can you say, this kid should be president?

            Often times I get caught up in the obstacles of simply offering instruction here. I think, we need more books, better desks…I’m sick of writing on the chalkboard…I want to teach more creatively. These are real and certain injustices and must be corrected someday, but I often forget what King David School already has going on. It is a functioning school. Teachers show up. Students learn something. Many pass their exams, or return for a second try. It’s a school, and so many students are grateful and learning. It’s a miracle.

            I think about my own education as a child in the United States, I can’t believe all the times I grumbled about going to school. I want to say people in the United States need to be more grateful for what they have, but I know that’s been said a million times, and still so many Westerns aren’t truly grateful and we still haven’t made an equal world. Instead, of thinking, I should be more grateful for what I had, I think I need to keep the focus on my students and not myself.  What should I learn from their stories? My students are inspiration, that’s what. They are strong. They are smart. And they deserve better. Many inner city schools in the United States deserve better, too. Instead of focusing on being grateful personally, let me be grateful that the world is full of students who love learning even when there are so many obstacles to their education. Let’s be grateful that this world has an untapped resource in its optimistic children. Let’s be grateful and let’s do something to tap that resource. Let’s invest in a more equal world. Be grateful for my students.

Job update:

I realized I haven’t updated my blog with my job changes this term. This term I am focusing solely on grades 8 and 9. Each class had fewer than ten students on the first day of school, but now grade 8 has 20 students and grade 9 has almost twenty five! I am teaching English, Zambian/African History and Information Communication Technology (ICT).  My class schedule changes every day, but with six classes, I teach most periods of the day and always find schoolwork to do in my few hours of free time. This term I have new textbooks for ICT, History, and Grade 9 English. These extra resources have been a lifesaver, although I often come up with my own tasks, writing prompts, etc. This is the first year King David has offered ICT, spurred by the fact that grade 9 students will be tested on the subject starting this year. I try to include as much practical computer work as possible, but that is difficult with only my laptop for a computer. Today marks exactly half of our 13-week term being complete. We’ll have another break after the first week of April.