Our students are all mothers of at least two or three children, most of them crying or playing, begging for mom’s attention during our teaching time. On a good day, only three kids will be fussing as the rest of our team distracts them as I try and teach the lesson. As the lessons progress, we seem to have more and more people from the village interested in what we are teaching, even singing the songs with us when they know them!
We teach them basic English words and sentences like their colors, days of the week, and family members. They love writing in their notebooks and practicing their English. Every time I write a word, they write it down, point it towards me and say, “teacher?” making sure it looks nice and is spelled correctly. One of the funnest lessons we had was learning about the colors where they had to draw three things that were that color (red shoe, blue hat, etc.). They laughed and laughed at their own drawing, but they also were concentrating so hard on the pictures they were drawing. Afterwards, Dustin got up and read them a story, and if you’ve ever listened to Dustin tell a children’s story, it’s quite entertaining, so we all enjoyed listening.
When I graduated college and began teaching in Amarillo, I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to teach at all. I felt like it was just a job and when something better came around, I would do that instead. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed teaching, but didn’t know if that would be my future. After doing seven different ministries in seven different countries, I find myself coming alive when I teach. This month I remembered the joy of watching someone learn something I had the privilege of teaching them. I leave each English lesson going over all the new things that I could add to make what they are learning more fun. I don’t think all people have that same passion, but if you are a teacher, you know what I’m talking about. That moment when all your hard work pays off because they finally get it!! So yes, I have a teacher’s heart and have been used by God this month to share that love with others. We serve an awesome God and He is continuing to show us how much He loves us.
