I’m beginning to realize something about people. When you first meet them in the grocery store, on the sidewalk or at a party, you are only seeing about one percent of them – if that.
OK, OK, maybe there are moments where lightning strikes and you find yourself being sucked through a wormhole and you are suddenly in love or something. Maybe then you can see something like five percent of who someone is right off the bat — but I doubt that because you need time.
As I get older and older I see my parents as people just like me – not just as infallible beings of love, justice food and warmth.
I recognize that they are people too, with different aspects to their personality that I have never seen before. It is the same for my cousins, my siblings, my friends, and every teacher I have ever had and now it is true for my students.
I started out knowing about zero percent of them and maybe now I am at seven percent— but that’s iffy.
It is easy to never get to know people. There is a huge temptation to write people off with in moments of meeting them. You do it when you cross the street to avoid that group of teenage boys with bandanas and backwards hats. It happens when you decide which seat on the bus you want to take. It definitely happened to me with every single student who walked through the door to 6C.
Well, it happened shortly after I could tell them apart with some consistency as they all wore the same exact school uniforms.
However, right after I knew them by name I placed labels on their foreheads (not literally of course, just in my head).
JD, you who lit a candle in the middle of class, you are forever to be known as “6th Grade Flunkie With No Real Future.” Theodore, you who learned the word ‘loser’ from a movie and called me one behind my back in the first few weeks of school will be “Smart-Ass.” Rebecca, you who secretly listens to dirty rap songs on your CD player while I am giving instruction and then ask me with five minutes left in class what we we’re supposed to be doing, you are christened “The Attitude Kid.”
Well, you may think you know where this is going, some big-life lesson on how I have learned to do a better job of not judging people when I only know a small percentage of who they are, but that is not where I am going at all.
Well, maybe I am going there a little bit, because I do think that it is important not to judge people too harshly for what they may or may not seem to be in the first few moments of meeting them, but more of what I want to talk about it how I have begun to get to know my kids more and more.
JD has some sweet dance moves on top of that candle-lighting affinity, Theodore has not missed one spelling word the whole year so he is defiantly not a loser and Rebecca loves to help me clean up the classroom after school as she pumps herself up with some thick beats.
So, now that I am safely at, let’s say a 10 percent level with my kids, I am excited to get to know what else I have yet to discover about them.
Lets just hope it’s not some hatred for people pale and tall.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Sweet Friday
Well, today was a very good Friday because the kids were all stoked on learning, we laughed a lot, i saw some dance moves from Bryant and then we all chowed down on Valentines candy thanks to the Wilkensons!
Today was the day WorldTeach should have come in and shot promotional photos for their website.
Today was the day WorldTeach should have come in and shot promotional photos for their website.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Kind of a Big Deal
Well, there was a big happening this weekend in Majuro. A huge cruise ship, the likes of which have not been seen in this part of the world for the last five years, came and docked for a three-hour stay.
Majuro intended to capitalize on the opportunity and organized a market of local goods for the people who disembarked to get their land-legs back after the four-day journey from Hawaii. There was an article in the paper and a buzz in the air.
I walked down to the shindig at around nine in the morning and as I stepped outside I was surprised to see a cranky, grey day spread out against the sky. Big, bawdy clouds called thunder back and forth and threatened each other with rain; which was strange because it had not rained up until that point for three weeks. Some of the volunteers were actually running out of water.
I thought to myself, naw, there is no way that it is going to rain on the one day that Majuro gets a ship full of rich tourists.
It poured.
At the market everyone was out in full colors. Fresh fruit and baked goods were on display, tables laden with shells were propped up and rows of authentic Marshall Island tee-shirts were hung in rainbow spectrums of color that were clear contradictions to the black day.
When I stepped into the middle of the market, I could hardly believe my eyes. There were more white people crowded into this little place than I had seen cumulatively in the last six months that I have been here. They walked around in pairs and spoke a language I could understand! They were fascinated with the American presidential elections! They needed to wear sunscreen in the Micronesian sun (although not on this day).
My friend Ben and I giddily walked around with our eyes wide and our smiles stretched across our faces like hammocks. I was dying to talk to someone. I felt like I was at a middle school dance.
I talked to some people and some people talked to me. They spoke of a fear of leaving the market because they might get robbed. They talked about how they were eventually headed to Hong Kong. They said it was a shame about the weather.
I found myself bored. Whatever, who needs them?
Who were these people coming onto my island with gold jewelry and completely impractical clothing and talking like they had already written this place off? I wanted to tell them all about the people, how they were so nice and caring it made you feel guilty, I wanted to tell them about the sunsets, how this must be the place where God exhibits his best work, and I wanted to tell them about the dizzying underwater geography of the coral reefs.
Hold on a second. My island? Who did I think I was?
I guess that between touchdown in July and now this has become a little more than a place I work and a place I play. This has become a place I live, a place I have a home.
So even if the cruise ship was a big happening, if they were too snobby to give my home a chance, then good riddance.
I am glad it rained.
Maybe I am being too harsh. I too ere on the safe side when traveling. I know in Europe I had to dig my money out of a small purse-like thing I kept strapped to my bare chest. The Italians still laughed at me though.
I believe this is called localism.
Majuro intended to capitalize on the opportunity and organized a market of local goods for the people who disembarked to get their land-legs back after the four-day journey from Hawaii. There was an article in the paper and a buzz in the air.
I walked down to the shindig at around nine in the morning and as I stepped outside I was surprised to see a cranky, grey day spread out against the sky. Big, bawdy clouds called thunder back and forth and threatened each other with rain; which was strange because it had not rained up until that point for three weeks. Some of the volunteers were actually running out of water.
I thought to myself, naw, there is no way that it is going to rain on the one day that Majuro gets a ship full of rich tourists.
It poured.
At the market everyone was out in full colors. Fresh fruit and baked goods were on display, tables laden with shells were propped up and rows of authentic Marshall Island tee-shirts were hung in rainbow spectrums of color that were clear contradictions to the black day.
When I stepped into the middle of the market, I could hardly believe my eyes. There were more white people crowded into this little place than I had seen cumulatively in the last six months that I have been here. They walked around in pairs and spoke a language I could understand! They were fascinated with the American presidential elections! They needed to wear sunscreen in the Micronesian sun (although not on this day).
My friend Ben and I giddily walked around with our eyes wide and our smiles stretched across our faces like hammocks. I was dying to talk to someone. I felt like I was at a middle school dance.
I talked to some people and some people talked to me. They spoke of a fear of leaving the market because they might get robbed. They talked about how they were eventually headed to Hong Kong. They said it was a shame about the weather.
I found myself bored. Whatever, who needs them?
Who were these people coming onto my island with gold jewelry and completely impractical clothing and talking like they had already written this place off? I wanted to tell them all about the people, how they were so nice and caring it made you feel guilty, I wanted to tell them about the sunsets, how this must be the place where God exhibits his best work, and I wanted to tell them about the dizzying underwater geography of the coral reefs.
Hold on a second. My island? Who did I think I was?
I guess that between touchdown in July and now this has become a little more than a place I work and a place I play. This has become a place I live, a place I have a home.
So even if the cruise ship was a big happening, if they were too snobby to give my home a chance, then good riddance.
I am glad it rained.
Maybe I am being too harsh. I too ere on the safe side when traveling. I know in Europe I had to dig my money out of a small purse-like thing I kept strapped to my bare chest. The Italians still laughed at me though.
I believe this is called localism.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Salmon For All
A Columbia River salmon swam out into the Pacific near Astoria and on his way to the normal Alaskan hunting grounds of his ancestors he took a wrong turn, or got caught in a freak current, and was swept away from the cold waters he had known. Suddenly he found himself around the bright corals and clear waters of Micronesia. He blissfully darted around paradise before a hook yanked him back to reality – well, death really.
OK, so I know that didn’t happen, but how else can I explain the cold hard fact that I ate delicious, fire-toasted, pink and flaky, oh-so-succulent salmon on a Saturday evening on a coral atoll thousands of miles away from the Northwest?
It came from Oregon, and it was fresh, not frozen.
A week before my fortunate stumble into taste-bud heaven, my friend Dan and I had been talking about what our first meal would be when we stepped off the plane into the US again. Hamburgers? Indian food? Italian? Nope, strike all of those; we both said that our meal would have something to do with the Oregon specialty of top-notch salmon.
“I am going to go home, get a sweet cut of Chinook, and grill is up with some onions and a little salt and eat until I fall asleep,” Dan said. And I agreed, nothing sounded better than that.
Alas, our dream was at the very least four months off. That meant four months of ramen, expired Cheerios and 99-cent-a-pound potatoes. Enough to make you want to cut your taste buds out in other words.
Then, God, luck, random chance or whatever other greater power you hitch your life to, decided to step in.
Some friends and I spent the day down at the bridge surfing. I was on shore taking photos when some men came out to watch. We got to talking and they told me that after we were done, we should cross the street and join in a little barbeque they were having. When Dan and company exited the water, exhausted with arms like noodles from paddling so much, free food was the perfect cure.
At the house we were having a few beers when a man drove up with a huge big-eyed tuna in the back of his truck. The thing was every bit as long as 5’11” Dan and so heavy that he could only halfway pick it up.
“This is a Marshallese specialty,” the man said. “If you bought this in New York, you’d be paying big bucks.”
We ate the amazing sashimi that the man skillfully cut from beside the spine of the monstrous fish and thought our luck could not get much better; that is until the man took out his cooler carefully packed with cuts of salmon practically glowing in their sunset-pink hue.
Our jaws dropped.
“Brought this back with me from Portland last week,” the man said. “In a cooler. I would have had more, too, but they took about half from me in Hawaii.”
The rest of the night was spent in a food-induced delirium as we picked our way between two rare kinds of fish.
I had no idea you could check a cooler of fresh fish on a Continental flight. I guess I know now what one of my pieces of luggage will be on the way back.
A big-eyed tuna took a wrong turn East of the Marshall Islands, got caught in a fluke current and found himself swept away from the warm waters he’d known and into the silt-laden, muddy waters where the Columbia river meets the Pacific Ocean. He joyously used his superior speed to feed on the smelt before a hook yanked him back to reality – or death.
OK, so I know that didn’t happen, but how else can I explain the cold hard fact that I ate delicious, fire-toasted, pink and flaky, oh-so-succulent salmon on a Saturday evening on a coral atoll thousands of miles away from the Northwest?
It came from Oregon, and it was fresh, not frozen.
A week before my fortunate stumble into taste-bud heaven, my friend Dan and I had been talking about what our first meal would be when we stepped off the plane into the US again. Hamburgers? Indian food? Italian? Nope, strike all of those; we both said that our meal would have something to do with the Oregon specialty of top-notch salmon.
“I am going to go home, get a sweet cut of Chinook, and grill is up with some onions and a little salt and eat until I fall asleep,” Dan said. And I agreed, nothing sounded better than that.
Alas, our dream was at the very least four months off. That meant four months of ramen, expired Cheerios and 99-cent-a-pound potatoes. Enough to make you want to cut your taste buds out in other words.
Then, God, luck, random chance or whatever other greater power you hitch your life to, decided to step in.
Some friends and I spent the day down at the bridge surfing. I was on shore taking photos when some men came out to watch. We got to talking and they told me that after we were done, we should cross the street and join in a little barbeque they were having. When Dan and company exited the water, exhausted with arms like noodles from paddling so much, free food was the perfect cure.
At the house we were having a few beers when a man drove up with a huge big-eyed tuna in the back of his truck. The thing was every bit as long as 5’11” Dan and so heavy that he could only halfway pick it up.
“This is a Marshallese specialty,” the man said. “If you bought this in New York, you’d be paying big bucks.”
We ate the amazing sashimi that the man skillfully cut from beside the spine of the monstrous fish and thought our luck could not get much better; that is until the man took out his cooler carefully packed with cuts of salmon practically glowing in their sunset-pink hue.
Our jaws dropped.
“Brought this back with me from Portland last week,” the man said. “In a cooler. I would have had more, too, but they took about half from me in Hawaii.”
The rest of the night was spent in a food-induced delirium as we picked our way between two rare kinds of fish.
I had no idea you could check a cooler of fresh fish on a Continental flight. I guess I know now what one of my pieces of luggage will be on the way back.
A big-eyed tuna took a wrong turn East of the Marshall Islands, got caught in a fluke current and found himself swept away from the warm waters he’d known and into the silt-laden, muddy waters where the Columbia river meets the Pacific Ocean. He joyously used his superior speed to feed on the smelt before a hook yanked him back to reality – or death.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
I Am Waterman
Well yesterday I took up windsurfing. Add this to surfing, sailing, snorkeling and spear-fishing and I am really not sure what I will do with myself when I get back to the P-Town...
Sunday, February 3, 2008
To My Teachers (And for Aunt Laurie)
Dear every teacher I have ever had: I am sorry. I am sorry for any problem I ever caused. I am sorry for eating Doritos in Spanish class junior year of high school, for pushing down Sam Hudson in fifth grade and for sticking my gum to the bottom of my desk in seventh grade science. I shouldn’t have written my name on the wall, I took far too many bathroom passes and throwing wads of paper instead of listening to the lecture is not OK.
From the bottom of my heart, from the greatest depths of my soul and with every tiny cell in my body I apologize.
Teaching is hard – really hard.
I wish I had a better way of saying this. Teaching is like solving a math problem but every time you take your eyes away for a second all of the numbers change. Teaching is like getting to a party too early or telling someone about your favorite book at a basketball game. People nod, pretend that what you say makes sense and then want to get back to their lives already. They’ve got parties to prepare for and games to watch.
Some days are great, don’t get me wrong. Some days I am the funny teacher, and I get through to the kids and we all laugh and go home feeling fuzzy. A lot of times though, that just isn’t how it is. Kids cut class, trick you into saying cuss words in Marshallese and cheat on tests.
It can be very frustrating. For section D, getting to my class on time is a struggle. I am clueless as to why because I am literally right next door to the class they have the period before. They need only to stand up and walk next door. For many of them, mainly the boys, this proves too difficult because of the alluring pull of the stairwell.
Don’t ask me why the stairwell is appealing. It smells of urine, it is dark and I get the distinct feeling it is haunted.
On Thursday I got fed-up and I told my kids that if they came to my class late the next day, then I was not going to let them in. They didn’t believe me and the next day there was a group of six boys who knocked on my door 20 minutes after the bell had rung because they had been hanging in the stairwell.
“No,” I told them in my best impression of a no-BS voice.
“Mr. Tim, what about the spelling test?” they asked me.
“Sorry, I told you yesterday you need to be on time.”
For the next ten minutes the kids I would not let in for class exhibited all of the signs of a 60’s peace rally. They sang unifying songs against me, they rattled my windows and even went so far as to yell out how words were spelled during the test.
“Well, it looks likes the guys outside are giving you all free answers,” I told the class. “That is going to make their zeros seem even worse.”
The yelling of answers ceased.
When class ended the group of renegade students were waiting for me as I walked to lunch. Their leader, a boy named Kersey, told me he didn’t like me and then unleashed a fury of grammatically incorrect English cuss words.
I was shocked and taken aback. I wanted to shout back and show him how real English speakers cuss. Instead, I did the first thing that popped into my mind and I blew him kisses.
Kersey went home for lunch without cussing again.
I felt happy that I had won the battle, but exhausted and worn-out. I didn’t want it to be like this. I wanted to peruse stories at leisure with willing and eager students as we discovered the joys of English.
Now I know that it is not going to be like that. I am sorry, teachers, I know I could have behaved better for you all.
From the bottom of my heart, from the greatest depths of my soul and with every tiny cell in my body I apologize.
Teaching is hard – really hard.
I wish I had a better way of saying this. Teaching is like solving a math problem but every time you take your eyes away for a second all of the numbers change. Teaching is like getting to a party too early or telling someone about your favorite book at a basketball game. People nod, pretend that what you say makes sense and then want to get back to their lives already. They’ve got parties to prepare for and games to watch.
Some days are great, don’t get me wrong. Some days I am the funny teacher, and I get through to the kids and we all laugh and go home feeling fuzzy. A lot of times though, that just isn’t how it is. Kids cut class, trick you into saying cuss words in Marshallese and cheat on tests.
It can be very frustrating. For section D, getting to my class on time is a struggle. I am clueless as to why because I am literally right next door to the class they have the period before. They need only to stand up and walk next door. For many of them, mainly the boys, this proves too difficult because of the alluring pull of the stairwell.
Don’t ask me why the stairwell is appealing. It smells of urine, it is dark and I get the distinct feeling it is haunted.
On Thursday I got fed-up and I told my kids that if they came to my class late the next day, then I was not going to let them in. They didn’t believe me and the next day there was a group of six boys who knocked on my door 20 minutes after the bell had rung because they had been hanging in the stairwell.
“No,” I told them in my best impression of a no-BS voice.
“Mr. Tim, what about the spelling test?” they asked me.
“Sorry, I told you yesterday you need to be on time.”
For the next ten minutes the kids I would not let in for class exhibited all of the signs of a 60’s peace rally. They sang unifying songs against me, they rattled my windows and even went so far as to yell out how words were spelled during the test.
“Well, it looks likes the guys outside are giving you all free answers,” I told the class. “That is going to make their zeros seem even worse.”
The yelling of answers ceased.
When class ended the group of renegade students were waiting for me as I walked to lunch. Their leader, a boy named Kersey, told me he didn’t like me and then unleashed a fury of grammatically incorrect English cuss words.
I was shocked and taken aback. I wanted to shout back and show him how real English speakers cuss. Instead, I did the first thing that popped into my mind and I blew him kisses.
Kersey went home for lunch without cussing again.
I felt happy that I had won the battle, but exhausted and worn-out. I didn’t want it to be like this. I wanted to peruse stories at leisure with willing and eager students as we discovered the joys of English.
Now I know that it is not going to be like that. I am sorry, teachers, I know I could have behaved better for you all.
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