You never know what might happen in any given day of ministry, and that’s doubly true where kids are involved. On Monday, my day started just like most other days in Honduras. Wake up at 5:30. Check. Catch the bus to school. Check. Walk into the principal’s office for class assignments. Check. And that’s where the day started to go off the rails.
Turns out, one of the 2nd grade teachers was not there that day, so my teammate Julia and I were told that we were their substitute teachers. Usually, we just help the teachers. I’m definitely not qualified for this, but okay.
So we walk into the classroom and find our children all there. I’m giving us an A+ so far. First up is reading class, that’s easy right? Wrong. That’s when we realize that we have no lesson plan and no idea where they are in any of their books. Houston, we have a problem.
Quickly, we grab a student’s book and find the next story that they are supposed to read. Brilliant, we’re back on track. We attempt to start the reading, but quickly realize that no one is listening. Three boys are playing a very strange version of tic tac toe. Most of the girls are making some sort of impromptu craft, one boy is laying on the floor making imaginary snow angels, and the little girl in the front of the room is sound asleep on her desk. And here’s where we encountered another problem.
Remember how I called this a bilingual school? Well, it’s true in that the students are all learning English, but none of this class was fluent or even conversational. Equally, Julia and I are very limited in our Spanish. Put this all together and you’ve got what’s known as a language barrier.
Finally, we get the room quiet enough to begin, but it turns out, their reading books are in English, and since they don’t really understand, they quickly resume their other activities, and all attempts at getting their attention back were futile. They were joking, running around, and doing whatever they wanted, and we were losing control.
After reading class, the students get a short break for breakfast. It was on the walk to the cafeteria that I first heard students using a word I hadn’t heard them use before. It took me awhile to understand. It sounded like Choggy. After awhile, I realized they were saying “shaggy.” After a few minutes, I began to suspect they were using this word to refer to me, and once someone asked me where Freddy was, there could be no doubt. I’m now a Scooby-Doo character.
Like, zoinks, man.
I guess I can’t blame them. I do have a pretty shaggy blonde mane going, and I’ve got about the right amount of fuzz on my chin too. Regardless, the majority of the school now refers to me as Shaggy, or if they’ve decided to follow school etiquette, Mr. Shaggy.
Anyway, we went back to class and limped our way through math class. I think I told children to sit down approximately 67 bazillion times. The snow angel kid from earlier suddenly needed to use the restroom every five minutes,and never stayed at his desk for more than 30 second. Another kid decided his pencil made a good weapon to use against his female classmates. I confiscated about 4 tic-tac-toe boards, and had to plead with the girls to stop making fortune tellers and start working with numbers. This was especially difficult, because, as it turns out, a couple of the students didn’t own books (parents have to buy them and they’re expensive) and others just forgot to bring them. We caught their interest a little bit by placing alligators in their classwork (by which I mean comparing the greater/less than symbols to alligator mouths). After repeating the phrase “alligators eat big numbers” about 74 times (and answering to “Mr. Shaggy” more than that) it was time for Spanish class.
Fortunately, we didn’t have to go through the awkward ordeal of trying to teach Spanish to kids who knew way more Spanish than we did. There was a teacher who went from classroom to classroom doing that. At this point, we didn’t even want to think about our upcoming Phonics class.
At this point, we were two hours into our day. We still had five more hours ahead. I realized we weren’t going to make it and told God so. And not ten minures later, we were told that there was a teacher’s meeting and the kids were going home early. Hallelujah!
So we still had to deal with kids dancing on tables, sneaking out of the classroom, demanding I bring Scooby to the classroom, and just generally being a rowdy pain, but we pushed through and made it to 11am.
“Adios, Mr. Shaggy!” Said basically everyone, as they hopped on the bus.
“Boy. Put me back in the kindergarten classrooms before I do that again!” I exclaimed.
Sometimes I forget God has a sense of humor. I didn’t know what I had asked for.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of The Adventures of Mr. Shaggy.
