There have been several times during the past few weeks when I wonder why I should care about teaching.

  • When I walk into class and a student yelled, “No Sir, please no lesson.”
  • When my class lied for fifteen minutes about not having notebooks that day
  • When I walk into class and my students are playing with henna, because their teacher did not show up
  • When classes are canceled erratically, without notice to me

Teaching is tough, regardless of where you are. Teaching is a lot tougher in one of the poorer cities of Sri Lanka. Why should I care? Because if I don’t than no one will.

Teaching is frustrating most of the time; but those few moments keep you coming back. I liken it to golf; I’m out of practice, so my game is atrocious. But once or twice during an 18 hole round I’ll get a perfect swing in, and its a swing like that which keeps me coming back. Once or twice a day, I find I really made a connection or drove a point home. And that is why I wake up the next morning to teach.

A few days ago I taught a poem by Shel Silverstein, No Difference:

Small as a peanut,
Big as a giant,
We’re all the same size
When we turn off the light.
Rich as a sultan,
Poor as a mite,
We’re all worth the same
When we turn off the light.
Red, black or orange,
Yellow or white,
We all look the same
When we turn off the light.
So maybe the way
To make everything right
Is for God to reach out
And turn off the light!

This poem was a bit of a reach for most of my students, but I’m glad I pushed them. I tried an activity called creative copying, and had my students try to make their own stanza to fit in with the poem. I spent too long trying to explain what I wanted out of them, and this lesson didn’t go great in my first two classes. But by my third, I had a stanza of my own

Allah, Buddha, Jesus, or Ganesh
Whatever God you worship is right
We’re all the same
When you turn off the light.

After showing this to my students, one of the girls in my class came up with a really great verse:

Old as a teacher,
Young as a student,
We’re all the same
When you turn off the light.

Explaining it was too hard with the language barrier, but by showing an example things went much better. It was a great lesson for teaching, and life in general.

And its amazing when you realize that you’ve been getting through to your students all along. I was really touched this week when my toughest class gave me a New Year present. I was touched when I opened it, and had to work hard to stop laughing. I don’t think they realized the gramatical errors in the plack. It is something that I will keep in my office forever. 

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