Jaded

I don't know if it's realism or pessimism. I suppose some might just call it negativity. In any case, I feel like I'm pretty jaded by the lack of follow-through here. I was talking with my director, Marcia, yesterday about a project that I think would be cool to do, but how I feel like it can't come to fruition based on the circumstances. She was, appropriate, offering encouragement on how to make things happen. I was rebuttling that things don't work the same here, and that it's not just an easy change.

So many times and in so many places, I've heard people here say that changes need to happen. Whether they're talking about being punctual, getting an event or activity organized or trying to bring about a more permanent change to the way things happen, I simply no longer believe there's any chance there will be a change in the near future.

I used to believe people when they would say, for example, "Practice is starting at three. We're going to start on time, no matter how many people are there or not." Or "Starting this weekend, we're going to come to the church on Saturday morning to help clean up the property. Every weekend, we need to be here so it stays clean." Or "We need to have teachers' meetings once a week to make sure we are on the same page with the scheduling and to address anything that comes up."

I've gone through an evolution in my reaction to these situations. At first, if, for example, the suggested change wouldn't work with my schedule, I would voice my opposition and ask if anyone had similar conflicts. Once I realized that my dissent wouldn't matter too much since the proposed idea would likely not be followed through on, I started to scoff at the suggestions and have conversations with people who thought likewise. Now I just play along, help in the planning process or decision-making and just accept that it will likely not go anywhere.

So, I don't really know what to do about this. It's kind of a helpless feeling, because you know things aren't going to change, even though you want them to. I guess the upside is that if there's a suggestion or suggested change that doesn't jive with me, I don't have to put a whole lot of stock in it. I recognize that I'm coming off as negative and pessimistic, but at the same time it's kind of a realistic attitude. I guess the idea of sovereignty has been drilled into my head enough that I don't feel like I should come in and try to make changes where people have been living a certain way for such a long time. If people don't want to follow through, they don't want to follow through. Maybe they just like talking through things, and that's where it ends. Of course, everything I've known would label that as a waste of time. But maybe that's just another indication of how little I know.

Sometimes I get frustrated by the unpredictability of Escuela Maureen. There are days off for what I feel are extremely obscure holidays (i.e. Literacy Day, Principal's Day). When school is on, sometimes the day is cut short for unknown reasons. Some of the kids I tutor treat school like a bad Catholic treats Sunday mass, only going when they feel like it or for special celebrations. It can be overwhelming sometimes and make me feel like there's no point.

But recently, I've had some really enjoyable, uplifting experiences at Maureen that reminded me that I know I am where I'm supposed to be. They are not particularly life-changing, and I may not even remember these moments come five months from now. But for the present, they've offered me a good pick-me-up for moving forward.

I got to know Esteli at the end of the year last year. He has pretty significant learning delays, and he is very social. He likes asking questions and being in the know on whatever's going on. Unfortunately he hasn't been studying this schoolyear, but he's been hanging out at the school more often the last few weeks, in uniform and everything. I've often felt that my conversations with him would go in a loop. I would answer a question, we would talk about something else, and then he would come back to the previous question. I just kind of blew it off as him not being all with it. But now I'm starting to realize that the first question he brings up is just what he's most interested in. So in a recent conversation, he was interested in knowing about my non-existent girlfriend. So he asks, "Y tu novia?" (And your girlfriend?). I said I didn't have a girlfriend, and he of course carried the conversation to Kathryn and Susan, because I live with them, so obviously we're married. I explained again that I didn't have a girlfriend, and he seemed content with that. He asked me about the States, commented on and played with my hair...and then he switched back to the girlfriend. It was at this point that I realized I hadn't been making much eye contact with him, because I turned to give him the same speech of not having a girlfriend, and I noticed a mischievious grin on his face. I told him with a laugh to quit asking me if I had a girlfriend. He laughed along with me, and I knew then that he was just being facetious. It was a good moment. Esteli is good people.

Eli is one of several students I tutor at Maureen, and he has been by far the most difficult to make any progress with. There are good days where he remembers things he's learned, but often it is a challenge to get him to pay attention and take an interest in the tutoring session. There has been some progress as of late, and we've been practicing reading short sentences and trying to understand what they say, as opposed to just sounding out the syllables the make up the sentence and calling it a day. So we're working out of this book to help kids learn how to read, and he reads one of the sentences, kind of sounding out the syllables but not really seeming to understand. So I say "Que dice esa oracion?" (What does that sentence say?), and he kind of stares off, as he's been prone to do. Now, I always want him to look at the syllable I'm asking him to identify or look at the sentence he's trying to understand. But he starts reciting the sentence, having only looked at it the one time and now looking off into the distance, and he gets all five words out in the right order and everything. And I'm just like, "What was that?" I totally didn't expect him to get the sentence that quickly, and I definitely didn't think he would get it without looking at the thing. It was just kind of an eye-opener for me, and I need to allow him to stare off into the distance if that's what it takes for him to remember what he's reading.

Another one of my students is Yerson. I don't see Yerson as much, because he pretty much decides when he wants to come to class and when he doesn't want to. It's hard to keep his attention in tutoring as well, and I've had to have the "Do you really want me to keep taking you out of class or should I work with someone else" talk a few times. He likes working on math, so I mix that in sometimes, but he's super behind in reading so that's what we need to work on most often. He just isn't interested in working on it. So in a recent tutoring session, I was pleasantly surprised when he actually stayed on task and worked through nearly the whole tutoring session without major distractions. We finished reading a page out of the book we were using, and I checked my clock to see that there were two minutes until recess. So I told Yerson he could bring his stuff back to the classroom, go to the bathroom, whatever... He says "No podemos leer una pagina mas?" (Can't we read one more page?) Well, yeah! I was so shocked to hear the opposite of the normal "No, prof, ya no" (No, prof, no more), that I almost didn't know what to do. It was very refreshing to have him take an interest in the tutoring session again.

All three of these moments happened in the last week, and it's been very encouraging to have these positive interactions with the kids, especially the ones I've been working with on reading. It's refreshing, and hopefully there are more to come.