Last month, our team was been teaching English in a small village in Cambodia. And this month again, we are teaching English to college-level students in Phnom Penh.
The idea of teaching English had always been intimidating for me; I knew that it would probably come up somewhere along these 11 months, but I’d been able to avoid it for 6 months, so I thought I may be in the clear.
But I honestly can’t complain about the experience. Being raised in an American culture where education is seen more as an expectation than a privilege, it has been amazing to see the true thirst for knowledge that some of these young Khmer kids possess.
On the other side of the coin, this month has given me a deep appreciation for the education system, and the teachers that educated me throughout my years of public school. I see a lot of myself in some of these kids who lack a great passion for learning, and it makes me wish that I had shown my educators more of a desire to take in what they were trying to pass along.
For some of our classes, we have had to start with the basics of the English language. For two weeks straight, we went through the alphabet and days of the week. Even though they had an idea of the alphabet, these kids (11-14 year-olds) still had very little sense of the sounds and organization of the letters.
We drilled these 26 letters into them every day; we had them write them down, we would assign homework, we had games to help them remember the image of each letter… yet test day came and still roughly 25% of the kids could jot down about 8 letters in no particular order. And their days of the week looked like a feeble to simply throw together 9-10 letters in English, and hope that it happens to be a day of the week… that’s how we ended up with answers like “frutrydar”, or “urdustat”.
And as I graded these tests, I think I finally realized what my teachers must have felt when they saw a kid that had true potential, who would repeatedly refuse to apply himself to his work, despite laying it out in front of him on a silver platter… then I heard another analogy that this must be how God sees us as well.
God lays out his grace and his forgiveness for all of mankind every single day. He gives us a shot at the greatest reward in the universe: eternal life with Him. And yet some people still refuse to let themselves take hold of it.
Is there anything more that God could do for us that would finally force humanity to understand what a gift this truly is?
I can write the letters of the alphabet on the chalkboard all day, and I can make sure they write it down in their notebooks, but there’s nothing I can do to force their brains to accept the knowledge.
In the same way, God can present himself to us in different ways every day. He’s created an entire universe just for us, and He provided us with the Bible, in order to be guided directly to Him… but He can’t make us accept Him into our lives.
As teachers, all we can do is continue to press into these children for the time that we’re here, and hope that at some point the message gets through; that and we can continue to provide love and encouragement for those students who do choose to learn from what we say.
And God will do the same for us. He’s not going to give up on us, no matter how long we push Him aside. He’s going to keep loving us, and showing us the reality of His being until we finally get the picture.
And if someone doesn’t ever accept what God has planned for us… that’s a decision that can only fall back on themselves.
