There are things that I want to remember from these days of teaching. I try to grasp them in my mind as if this won't always be the life that I have, -- though I can't really see anything else for me -- as if by holding onto them tightly, they can shield me against the cold, hard days.
Yesterday during Nepali club, we tried to run an organized meeting with an agenda where we DECIDED THINGS. No one was interested and you could hear it in the fading pleads for attention from my leader. I could feel it in the weariness of my own looks around the room.
So, a small group huddled around me -- I was sitting on top of a desk in the back of the room -- and we discussed what she had wanted to discuss. It was productive while the others did homework or played on their ipads.
A student sat next to me on top of the desk as I teased another about a music video that he starred in with a certain girl, which premiered at a Deepawali celebration on Saturday. It opened the door to tease him a little bit more as he told me who his actual girlfriend was -- a different girl who was in the room, but about as far way from him as she could get. Then we talked about why I didn't take a seat of honor at the celebration -- reasons that were as much from embarrassment as they were from not wanting to make another thing about me, a white person. That, too, involved a little teasing as there was miscommunication that caused me to not understand what was happening at the celebration.
Then I asked questions -- mostly about how it was that they came to be refugees and if they considered themselves Nepali or Bhutan and what all of that means. There would be an explosion of language flying around me, and maybe eventually an answer came my way.
More than most other things we have tried to do in the club, this felt worthwhile -- they have stories that are worth knowing and are beautifully complicated and take time to unravel. I see them once every other week for an hour and often it can feel like just another thing to do on my overwhelming list. But, they don't have a lot of other adults in the building to support them the way that other groups have leaders or liasons -- as the advisor of their club, though most of the time I feel a little lost and very humbled, I have the special privilege of listening to them, of being a connection that makes the school feel a little less big.
It was a simple string of moments, sitting on a desk, surrounded by a huddle of students.
It was probably insignificant to the students
involved, but for me, they put so much of the humanity into teaching. It
reminds me that we're not work-producing machines -- any of us, and
that sometimes a moment to breathe is all that really matters.
These are the moments to live for, to celebrate, to cultivate.
