a week of learning

My usual school schedule is teaching something English-related between 7:30-9:30, rotating between the classes throughout the week. Mondays are a little different – I work with kindy and 1st grade, both classes that don’t speak Bislama (much less English) so we throw that out the window and play games, make musical instruments and bang on them, and do arts and crafts. This is always fun because, frankly, teaching English isn’t my forte and I enjoy playing games, making musical instruments and banging on them, and doing arts and crafts as much as any other kid! Mondays are no doubt made possible because of the class teacher, serving as the Bislama/local language translator and my partner in managing wild little kiddies. One Saturday in May, the class 1 teacher Mrs. Aru was informed that the next day she’d be hopping a boat over to West Ambae for a workshop. I offered to look after her class for the week, clearly having no idea what that entailed. 

It was a very long week! I’ve already expressed on here my deep gratitude for teachers. What an exhausting profession, successful only with a certain type of both patience and passion. And the understanding that your work, serving as a foundation, may or may not be effective, and the fruits of your labor won’t fully flourish until long after that school year has ended and another (and another and then another) flock arrives. Teachers know the balance of the classroom: each student has his or her individual needs that deserve unique attention while the class as a unit needs its flow through the lessons. Its richest rewards are internal as you see the changes in the students that you know intimately through daily challenges and failures and successes. These are all qualities I can’t help but sincerely admire, and these are all qualities I have to admit I don’t necessarily have. Which is okay! I love children and I enjoy teaching and sharing, but I am not a school teacher. I never really thought I was, but now it has been tested and can be confirmed. Which means I’m something else – I’ll have to figure that out at some point or another! 

Class 1 is taught in local language, so my Bislama is only faintly familiar to them. This just doesn’t make sense to first graders. In fact, my mama taught me the phrase “I don’t understand local language” in local language because kids would just blabber to me, tattle-taling or just rambling about first grader topics, and I wouldn’t understand a lick of it. Usually I’d just respond in gibberish and laugh with them at our mutual confusion. Teaching is hard, but trying to teach students who you don’t share a language with you is a challenge. A challenge you must get creative with! We spent the week drawing and coloring lots of things, singing songs and playing games. We started each day with yoga, meowing and mooing during cat/cow and naming trees of Ambae while wobbling in tree pose. 

We sat around and told plenty of kastom stories — “we” really meaning “them” because I’m clueless to the language, but still equally entertained by their dramatic storytelling. The first student Braunia said “dom dom,” which I thought was the title, and then everyone responded with a phrase. It happened again when Flexson started the second story. I interrupted, oblivious to how little I knew, and said that Braunia has already shared that story, choose another. Flexson looked at me in confusion and again said “dom dom” and so it went again and again. After class I told my parents how the kids kept telling the same kastom story called “dom dom” and they cracked up. Turns out “dom dom” is what the leader sings out, asking permission to tell a story. Only when everyone responds with “sige gom gale” you can begin. Ha! I can only imagine what the students thought of this tuturani telling them they were the crazy ones.. 

One day I arrived to a room full of argument and, with my mama’s help, discovered someone hit someone who had kicked someone who had yelled at someone who had teased someone etc. We had a whole sorry chain going and spent the morning doing a sunshine circle, an activity I learned during an alternative spring break where you pass on a compliment (aka sunshine) to the person next to you. 

nap time

And when all else failed, we took naps. Lots of whispers and giggles at first, your classic naptime behavior, but eventually everyone surrenders to the mat and enjoys a good rest. Including Miss Alison! It brought me back to my own kindergarten naptime where we got to choose our teddy bear and lay out on those silly cots. And I hadn’t thought about those rolled up pads we used in preschool (and the pattern of my own, lambs in a meadow) which I can’t remember ever thinking about before now. It’s lovely how the strange situations we find ourselves in evoke the most distant of memories to show back up in the confines of our headspaces. The past year and a half have been filled with times like this and I’ve come to relish in the trails my brain wanders down. Jessie Rae pointed out once that both of us love reminiscing. I can’t believe it took so long for me to come to this realization! I love thinking about good times, basking in the laughs and smiles that accompany them. Spending so much time here in my own company has allowed me to venture deep in nostalgia and because of this, has reminded me how lucky I am to have so many good memories to linger on, while creating a whole new set of ones to return back to in the future. The continuous cycle of life pleasures sustains itself. What a beautiful thing!  The week of class 1 ended up being a great time, but I think I did more learning than the class did.

even cows want to come to school

wala, my favorite pig in a tree