Capitulo Cuatro: My Good Teacher

So yesterday I went grocery shopping and bought coated paperclips (the humidity makes things rust) and deodorant (the humidity makes things stinky) and a spray bottle (the humidity creates hopeless frizz) and my favorite platano chips and milk in a box and these round things that I'm currently eating with my coffee (a cross between chipitas and graham crackers) and... well maybe you are thinking that a shopping list is not momentous enough to be bloggable? Ahem. Then I went to my classroom to work on lesson planning and getting things ready for my 21st student to finally arrive on Monday. She’s been on vacation in Europe so now we’ll have to catch her up on everything that’s been taught the last week of school.


Today (Sunday) definitely made it to the “Top 3 Best Days in Honduras” list. I was going to go to a Calvary Chapel with a friend. But then more and more people wanted to go and so it ended up being about 12 of us- except that my friend got sick so we went without her and none of us knew the exact location of the church. So down the mountain we rode the rapidito that ironically was going about 5-10 mph. At the bottom we managed to miraculously stumble into the church and we weren’t even late! Many aspects of the church were very inviting. 1) The pastor was a North American so he spoke marvelously clear Spanish (and he had a beard!) 2) The church was tiny but full so we made up 1/3 of the congregation many who had no seats. 3) The worship was lovely and it was new songs with good words and no wailing lady flailing about. 4) The preaching was solid. All of these things were good signs and so I’m hoping I can stop church hopping and settle down.

Afterwards the group went back to the rapidito stop but Julie, Rachel, and I went to a coffee shop and then a plaza to wait for a lady named Jenny to pick us up. She took us to a place called Valle de los Angeles which is beautiful and touristy but thankfully we only ran into a couple of tourists. We ate incredible food for lunch and then walked around and I bought a Honduran soccer shirt and a sweet hammock. It was so relaxing to be with some of my favorite people and just not be a teacher for a day.

It's been a long week. The honeymoon is over with my kids. Of course I’m still madly in love but… it’s a lot of work. I haven’t gotten used to leaving my productivity switch on from 5:30am-10:30pm Monday through Friday. It's ridiculous how much time I spend outside of class just doing prep. But such is the life of a teacher and I still can’t imagine a better teaching job. I got to meet all the parents on Friday and practice my Spanish a lot. They are so supportive and personable. I left with my face smelling like someone else’s face because of all the heavily perfumed kisses planted on my cheek.

One last thing.

One thing that drives me crazy as a teacher is that I want so badly to be friends with my kids but I really can’t unless they have a healthy “fear” of the classroom rules and me their teacher. Let me explain. They must be afraid of the consequences for breaking rules or fearful of my displeasure, in order to obey the rules that make class function smoothly so we can have fun and I can enjoy my students. No matter how much I like my students, I can’t play games with them if they get out of control and I can’t even teach them if they aren’t following rules. We just spend all of our time practicing walking in straight lines and never get to actually do the fun and exciting things I have planned.

Is that like the fear of God? Maybe it’s the same with Him, our good Teacher. He most definitely can be our friend, our best and closest friend. But that friendship can’t function if we don’t fear Him enough to obey Him and follow His rules. In Psalm 25 there’s this crazy verse that says, “the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear Him.” Yes, God longs to be our friend the way I long to be friends with each of my kids, but they have to respect and obey me as their teacher first. It also says, “Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose.” I want to learn from Him but it’s the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of knowledge. So I want to be like Monolo who’s eyes fill with tears when he thinks his teacher is displeased or like Sergio who sits in the back of the room and yet his eyes are always fixed on the teacher and his hand is the first to shoot up. I want to learn to walk in straight lines so that I can get to the good stuff.

Whew this is long!! :) I'm done now. Please pray for me that I’ll be a good teacher. Thank you!