Do you ever have one of those moments where you realize you’re doing just enough to get by?
This is my sixth month in the field, and I caught myself in one of those moments the other day.
Our time in Laos has looked a lot different than the other months. The first couple of weeks were exciting, but also more challenging for us. I realized more and more how much the relationships I’d been able to build with contacts in other countries meant to me as I tried to get used to a month that wasn’t nearly as relational. I missed getting to invest in the same people week after week, getting to know more than their names and spending enough time with them to joke around and learn things about each other.
Our last week here we were asked to help teach English and vocational skills to Lao students. I was pretty excited to have something that felt a little more tangible to dig into. I’ve learned a lot this month, and enjoyed it a lot, but I was definitely ready to invest in something like this. We knew that it would be a long week, and that we’d be involved in several different classes and study sessions each day, but we didn’t know how much of a blessing it would be to us.
What followed was a week of teaching crafts, practicing skits, making the kids laugh with silly dance parties, and being completely won over by our students. I really don’t know how to explain why I loved these kids so much after just a few days with them. Well, okay, I can think of a few reasons:
- They are sweet. There’s no attitude in them, they are genuinely nice in a way I’ve never seen from a group of teenagers.
- They smile – ALL THE TIME.
- They are willing. Even if they didn’t understand us or thought our games were crazy, they were always willing to try. When we asked them to show off their favorite dance moves I thought we’d get blank stares. Instead, they not only participated enthusiastically but were literally rolling on the floor laughing with delight.
- They are eager. I’ve never met kids who thirst for knowledge like these ones do.
You get the picture – I was blown away by these kids. Even if I find teaching English to be challenging, even if I felt out of my element sometimes, it was always worth it to see those smiling faces and hear their infectious laughter.
I was completely filled-up and received a lot of joy this week, but that doesn’t mean every minute of it came naturally. Three-hour homework sessions can take their toll even with the best students in the world. During one of these sessions, I was working with one of the students who was a little harder to engage than the others, and I was feeling a little drained. It was hard to keep his attention at times, and I caught myself thinking, I just need to keep him busy until the session is over.
Keep him busy? I was instantly chastened. I was there to teach him, not keep him busy. And I loved spending time with these kids. I wanted them to get everything possible out of my time with them. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been teaching them well, I just realized that I could do more.
What was really convicting to me was the fact that these students were so eager to learn. They have seen the difference that education makes in their communities, and they’re willing to work hard for that knowledge. They practiced pronunciation over and over again, and wrote words out until they got them right. Most of them had the majority of their homework done before they even got to their homework session. These students were doing their best; they deserved my best, too. It made me think a lot about how I invest in my different projects this year. Have I really given my best, all the time? I have the opportunity this year to invest enough, or to invest it all. I know which I want it to be.
I realized that night that I had a room full of students who were eager to learn, and they deserved better than a teacher who was doing enough to get by. They deserved more than activities that kept them busy but didn’t necessarily challenge them. They’d already won my heart, so it was time for my heart to be fully engaged in what I was teaching them. Sure, I could just walk them through their homework, and that would definitely benefit them. But I could also find ways to make them really engage and learn.
The next night, I figured out a way to make a Bingo game out of the students’ homework. It took some creative planning to make it work, and a lot of laughter and charades to explain it without a Lao translator, but the end result was a game that had the students laughing and engaged, literally on the edge of their seats waiting to hear the next word I would call. And you know what? I wasn’t feeling drained anymore – seeing them learning and engaged filled me up completely. That’s my kind of English class.
