Real and Reality

On my only phone conversation with my wife two days ago (it is now Tuesday at 6am) she told me that I shouldn't write when I am tired. My hope is, that as you read my blogs,you get a real sense of where I am the real and reality of what I am going through, as I press through my time here. It is funny to read my blog in my current state of 'slightly more' coherence. After only 6 and half hours of sleep, I find myself taking time to blog about what has transpired thus far.

Thrust into a culture with the language skills of less than a toddler, mixed with the mental skills of an adult, I find myself drinking deeply of the culture, the politics, the environment and the lives of teachers here. It feels like being transported back in time 70-100 years ago to what I imagine education looked like in the states, chalk boards, small, I mean really small classrooms stuffed with students, and very little materials, other than books, paper and pencils.

And then, poof, for two classes of students, one 7th grade and one 8th grade, they are thrust forward, leaping into how I teach a century beyond where they are. For me, without language, without all the familiarities of my classroom, I find myself thinking, adjusting, and a bit frustrated that I was not prepared (no one could have prepared me) for what I experienced. It took every creative, entrepreneurial, classroom management skill I could muster, and, while mostly successful, was indeed nothing near the engineered classroom I run at home.

This being said, just as I am an anomaly here physically (you'd think I was an alien by the way young people look at and talk when they see me...blah, blah, blah Chinese! blah blah blah... or, while walking toward the school, class in session, the kids at the windows trying to get my attention by waving, distracting their classrooms) I am confident that these students had a taste of the future.

And today, I will embark on engaging many teachers in the same way, enlisting them and encouraging them to think differently, learning how to use some of the tools of hands-on, and graphic organizers to redefine methodology and pedagogy. What? That's like taking them gingerly 100 years forward? But something tells me, from what I saw in the teachers who attended yesterday's brain research presentation, they will be ready, these new young minds, to embark on just such a transformation.

As I sit here, I am amazed that God has placed me in a place, where just by being and high quality, ordinary teacher, I have extraordinary gifts that can be used to be a part of transforming education in a struggling third world country. For me, it is like my real reality is the expertise and college doctoral degree, crafted just for them. And here we go, my real and reality, will collide with their real and reality today, while you, my faithful friends at home, are sleeping (it will be midnight in Santee, when I present here).