mana grace

My little family of students and I are becoming close now that it is just us. I’m a single mom now. I am very protective of them and am adamant about spending our time in the classroom wisely. They walk very far to be there and I want to teach them something valuable while they are with me. Occasionally we have visitors come to volunteer. I very much want visitors there as they are vital to what we do. But I find that we Westerners often don’t have a clue. Last week I had three guests in the classroom and earlier had felt so threatened and judged by them. They came in asking tons of questions on how I do things and what types of books do I use and what curriculum and what types of programs do I do and even offered suggestions. They had been there 30 minutes and were trying to tell me what to do. They came in using all their English words and phrases and my students just looked at them all wide-eyed. They could not understand them. 

Now I am certain it was never the intent of the visitors to attack the work that I am doing and perhaps they thought I wanted their constructive criticism, but they haven’t a clue how things work around here and how none of their ideas even apply to this culture. Our most recent technology is a dry erase board. So I am sitting in my plastic chair trying to love and work that out all in my heart and see where they are coming from and trying to understand Westerners in spite of being one. I instruct them all to sit in a circle so that the visitors can hear from the students and listen to their English and try to understand each other. I am so, so protective of these kids. The westerners start telling the kids how “they” do things. My kids are already insecure in so many ways, I don’t want them to feel different or inferior by pointing out all the ways they are different. I work hard to try to tell them that we are the same. A visitor finally compliments them on their English after some pretty decent back and forth conversation. She asks where they learned to speak like that. Then Cesar, precious, adorable Cesar doesn’t miss a beat and says, “Of course, I learned my English from Mana Grace”. I was radiating. That’s my boy! The visitors walked away impressed and gave me a nod of approval.