MOTA 1: Too Cool for School

Over
the course of the Race, I’ve come to realize how much I truly enjoy teaching.
It started in Ecuador when we had the opportunity to teach English two nights
every week. Adults, teenagers, kids, and even elders came in to the classroom
with a great enthusiasm to learn. It became one of my highlights of the week,
and I instantly began to think about how I could incorporate that into my life
post-race.

This
month I was asked to teach and be in charge of grade 5 at the El Shaddai
Primary School. The school, which instructs grades 1-7, was started by the
Children’s Home, but it is open to the community and partially owned by the
government. There are about 250 students total and about 30 of them are from
the home. In my class, there are 32 children, ranging from age 9 to 17.

We
lived with 3 teams this month, so each team decided to send a teacher to the
school. Our new friend Christal, a previous World Racer who has just recently
moved back to Swaziland to work with El Shaddai, also accompanied us.

When
initially asked to teach, I never could have imagined the challenges,
struggles, and cultural differences we would face. Nearly every day offered a
new story and experience, and it is amazing to look back and see how the Lord
worked through us and in us this past month. Eager to share some of these
stories with you, I have written a small collection of the few that truly stuck
out to me.  I like to call them,
“Memoirs of a Teacher Abroad”, or MOTA. Cheesy, yet clever, I know.