If you know me, you know I am not a morning person.
I don’t like being talked to. I don’t like people asking me questions. I don’t like being touched. I really am not even a fan of people saying “Good Morning!” What the heck is good about a morning?
Mornings for me are meant to be peaceful. I like waking up and just laying in bed. When I wake up typically, I just lay in silence. I think. I often pick up my phone and scroll through social media. I like to get my mind moving slightly before I have to actually converse with real humans. When I finally make it out of bed, I need some time to just move in silence. Do my thing, get ready. Keep thinking, not speaking.
I guess a rule to describe my mornings would be, don’t speak to me unless I speak to you.
I got this “I am not a morning person” disease from my mom. I like to think it is heredity. I wish I could be a morning person, but it just runs in my family. There isn’t a cure. Although I must say since the race started, I have gotten much better at being semi sociable before 12pm.
The last week, all 3 teams of the infamous “Love Shack” began teaching in a primary school in a community near our home, while continuing on the after school program we started back during girls month. Two teams teach from 8 in the morning until 2pm and the other team runs the after school program from 3pm- 6pm.
Yes, I am now back in school. Yes, I am now back to waking up to alarm entitled “School.” Yes, I hit “Snooze” on that alarm at least 9 times before I actually make the slightest attempt to move for the day. Yes, I am still skipping breakfast cause I just don’t feel like making it. Yes, I am packing my lunch.
If you know me, you know not only am I NOT a morning person, that goes to a whole new level when I am waking up for school. I really hated waking up for school and here I am, out here in South Africa, in that same routine.
The first time I went to the school, I was in a classroom with 30 first graders. Yes, 30 children. In the first grade. How many teachers were there? There was one teacher at her wits end.
Understandable.
For there only being one of her, and 30 of them, I must say she had them in pretty decent shape. It didn’t take her entirely too long to get them quiet and when they were wrong, she was able to quickly rebuke them and get them to understand where they had went wrong, and get them to refocus.
However, there was a sense of emptiness around the classroom. There was a sense of it not being “home” like a classroom should be. Yes, it was colorfully decorated, but something was just missing.
Three occupational therapists came into the room to help the children work on their cutting skills, cutting out shapes to form a caterpillar. Then, they were told how to piece the caterpillar, how to glue it and how to color it.
Some of the kids understood, but a lot of them didn’t. The therapists walked around the room, and proceeded to just do things for the kids when they didn’t understand. They didn’t try explaining it a second time, or showing them again how to do it. They just picked it up and did it for them. And for the kids that were behind, well, that was just too bad. They were moving onto the next steps without them, apparently under the assumption these first grade children were just going to catch up and remembered the previous steps.
It was not hard to notice that a lot of the children in the class were behind. Not just in their caterpillar making, but genuinely behind in the skills a first grader should have.
My mind went back to the conversation we had with the teacher before starting:
“We really need your help here. There are so many of them, and only one of us. Their mommy’s and daddy’s do not help them at home. They do not do any extra work with them. We could really use your help.”
Here, you have a complete mess.
Each of these teachers want their children to succeed, but can only do so much because there are 30 of them to take care of throughout the day. Then, you have parents who aren’t pulling their weight, but expecting everything their child needs to learn, just be taught at school. Then you have a giant group of first graders who don’t even know what they’re lacking. Or even worse, they understand that they’re lacking and don’t even know what to do to not feel behind, or left out or worse, “dumb.”
Later in the afternoon, the teacher asked me to take a girl to the library and do an assessment with her. She instructed me to read the tests instructions out loud to her, and then have the girl write the answers.
I went down to the library with the girl. We got there and sat down, I tried just talking with her and couldn’t get a response. Ok, so I just figured that she is shy. Not a big deal.
I began reading the test to her. The first section was to count objects in the box, and write how many there were. I asked her to count them, and she just sat in silence. I asked her to write how many there were. She stayed silent. I let the silence follow, figuring maybe she just needed to warm up to me. After asking her to count again, and more silence following, I began to start her off with the counting— 1, 2,3 …. And her face lit up. She finished it off, no problem. The next box, I started counting, and she followed. We counted again and she did continued. Suddenly she was smiling when she could get the answers right, but whenever I got to the part where she had to write her answer, she stayed terribly quiet and looked down.
I just took her to the next section. The next section listed numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, ____, ____, 7, 8. She had to fill in the blanks. I explained it to her, and started the counting with her out loud and she said the answers. When I asked her to write it, the same silence followed.
This went on for literally 30 minutes. I just could not get her to write her answer, even though she could verbally process it. After pleading enough for her to write it, she finally looked up at me and said “I do not know how to write.” I said, “Come on, yes you do! You can do it!” And looking back down she said again, “I do not know how to write.”
Not wanting to go against what the teacher had asked of me, I walked back to class and said “Mrs, she is telling me that she can’t write.” The teacher looked at me and said, “Yes, she can’t. Speak the test out loud, have her answer and then write her answers for her.”
The teacher were so occupied with just wanting her to get the assessment out of the way, there was no time to take 10 steps back and teach the girl how to write. Instead, in order to have her keep up— the solution was simply to just do it for her so she can stay on track with all the other kids.
My heart at this point, was breaking.
As a kid who grow up in school with learning disabilities, I couldn’t imagine. I couldn’t imagine having to go to school and struggle through every lesson, and HAVE to keep up because there was only ONE teacher to help me. I couldn’t imagine having to keep up with the kids who were ahead of me and not being able to raise my hand and say, “Teacher, I don’t get it.”
In this education system here, these children do not have alternatives. They don’t have classrooms to go to when they get behind. They don’t have classrooms to get tutored. They don’t have classrooms to go to to work on behavioral issues. They don’t have classrooms for kids with disabilities. They don’t have specialists and teachers to walk the walk with the students and help them every step of their educational path. They just don’t have it.
Walk into any given classroom, and the fact of the matter is, is that it is randomly set up. There are kids in each classroom who each have their own individual struggles. There are kids in every classroom with behavioral issues who are not only hurting themselves, but distracting the other kids around them.
There is one teacher in every classroom, with 30 to 35 kids, and is responsible for each of these children and their individual paths and goals and needs. It is well beyond what any one teacher could physically do.
It really sucks to watch. It really bums me out to look at these kids and know how much MORE these kids could achieve if they just had that extra support. I know first hand what its like. I know the feeling of not wanting to go to class because I know I am behind. I know the feeling of just wanting to give up because I feel like no one wants to help me, and feeling like I am a burden because I don’t understand. And it bothers me so much knowing these first-graders, and so many other kids are probably experiencing that same feeling.
With just one day of being a teachers aid under my belt, Jesus has showed me real quick why its all worth it.
I am feeling so blessed to have gotten the education I have gotten and will continue to get. I am so thankful to have laws in place to be helped through and receive accommodations for my disability. Lord willing, I hope these laws become a world wide thing some day in the near future.
These children, are the children who are going to be doctors one day. They’re going to be the police officers, and the fireman and the political people. They might not think they’re capable of it, but they are and they deserve to have that confidence in knowing they are smart and they can do anything they want to in life.
Every class period, every homework assignment, every test, every project was not my favorite thing. But they should be my favorite thing because it isn’t an entitlement. A lot of people in this world, do not get the education they deserve and should have. Words do not explain how thankful I am to have gotten one, and how lucky I feel to have had so many outlets and support along the way.
I may not have truly understood it then, but do I ever so understand now.
All 12 years of those early mornings of getting up at the crack of dawn to go to a freezing cold school and missing my very warm bed? Worth it.
Those days of being tired and hungry and irritated, and wishing I had gotten just a few more hours of sleep the night before? Worth it.
Studying hours on an end for a test on the parts of an animal cell when I don’t even like animals? That was worth it.
Knowing that I would never use the quadratic formula again, but spending 2 hours of my life on a homework assignment all about it? Beyond worth it.
If I could tell anyone anything who is still in school right now, it is to simply appreciate it. There are people in this world who would kill to get the education you are, it’s all worth it.
