In Remembrance

I opened my eyelids slowly at the sound of my watch beeping.

6:00 AM, May 14.

I sat up in bed.  Today is the last day of school.

I lumbered into the kitchen and put a pot of water on the stove.  Daylight was just beginning to seep through our windows as I scooped coffee grounds into the french press.  

The last day of school.

Sitting down with my mug of coffee, I produced a very skillful and convincing "faraway look" and reminisced back to the start of the year that seemed like an eternity ago.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

The pastor led us along the chipped-up sidewalk towards the library.  "Here is our library, you should be able to find some textbooks in here," he suggested.  I peered in.  Stacks and stacks of unorganized books cluttered the dank room, and the air smelled like mold and wet paper.  He then led us to our respective classrooms, and gave us a key.  "Let me know if you need anything else boys!" he said cheerfully as he walked back to his house.  I wanted to say 'can you quick tell me how to be a teacher and stuff before we teach tomorrow?' but I feel like that wasn't appropriate at the moment.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Nervous.  I opened my classroom at 7:00 AM and tried to pound together a lesson plan for the day.  Charades for bible?  Maybe.  How about math?  What do 3rd and 4th graders learn in math? Times tables?  Not yet.  Telling time?  Let's try it.  How about English?  Do they even speak English?  Will they even understand me?  And reading.  How can they read English of they barely speak it?  I know.  I will read to them.  But for 45 minutes?  And we have no books.  How do I teach a classroom without any books?  How do I teach a classroom in general??

Here is my journal entry from the first day of school.

I hear the rumbling of a bus.  My heart rate speeds up.  This is it.  This is the next year of my life.  Pretty soon, 15 local kids tumble into my classroom, each taking a desk.  Its eerily quiet as they lock their dark, beady eyes on their new white teacher.  I "confidentially" take a stand in front of the class and write my name on the board in big letters (that's how they do it in movies I guess) and I introduce myself as Mr. Davis.  This title instantly goes under the rug and I am unwittingly dubbed "Teecha".  My plan for charades fell apart as the kids were unwilling to leave their seats, and I resorted to basically acting stories out for them.  Finally, the bell rang.  Phew.  Then math class came.  I decided to teach them how to tell time, but apparently time doesn't really matter on a tiny island where there is nowhere to be.  I struggled through a grueling 45 minutes on the concept of time and yielded no progress.  Finally, after 7 long classes, the bus comes and takes all the students home.  I march upstairs and collapse on my hot, sticky bed.  There is no way I can do this for a whole school year.  There is literally no way.  There must be a mistake, I am not qualified to do this.  I don't even know what I am doing!  I am a con teacher!  What if the parents find out?  Maybe I'm not meant to do this.

I took a sip of coffee as a cool breeze came through the window.  The bus would soon come and drop off my students for the last time.  I chuckled in remembrance of those first few days.  

Somehow this impossible task became possible, and I can only think of one way that happens.  I shot up a silent prayer with a feeling of overwhelming gratitude, because I know I would have never been able to do this without Him.  

This is it.  We did it.  

We marched down our steps like we always had, nalgene and notebook in hand, and as my classroom became flooded with my kids carrying cookies and cake and soda for the party I checked off the final day in my calendar hanging in my classroom.  

And just like that, the giant has been conquered.  I wonder how the world will treat these kids when they get older. 

Holter, Annesha, Awee, Pertha, Natalie, Mitchigo, Webster, Hudson, Fumie, Jenelly, Murson, Vilana, Heather, and Nelly.

I know it sounds corny, but they all have a little part of my heart now, and I know someday I'll be sitting in a cold library at nursing school and I'll wonder how Awee is doing.  Or if Nelly is going swimming today.  Or if Holter ever found out that Fumie likes him.  

Its a two-week sprint now until our plane takes off from the island of Kosrae and carries us back home.

Peace from the tropics,

River