Thank you

1. For your sea of fierce hugs that first afternoon—before you even knew my name
2. For duck-duck goose
3. For awing (exhausting) me with your endless energy
4. For sharing your families with me while we colored on the floor
5. For Danae’s memory—for learning English when no one else did
6. For eating yogurt together on the stairs
7. For climbing up the hill to Eloy Alfaro when classes ended
8. For sticking around when you could—when we stuck around
9. For contributing good-naturedly to my interview with Carmen
10. For coloring our emotions and funny hair
11. For folding paper airplanes
12. For the fiesta with the students from New York and halving bananas with our bare hands
13. For dancing together in pairs one afternoon
14. For painting our faces
15. For helping me find myself

... Thank you ...

somewhere (a sestina)

It always takes two buses—

some 50 cents fare one way.

When I disembark I always walk

slowly, stumble down the still-moving steps onto uneven

cement, dry, iceburg-cracked sidewalks of the road,

inching downward, as though descending gingerly—reluctantly—into hell.

Not that its hell,

really, but the bus

isalwayscrowded,andIrarelygetaseatandtheroad

isalways,alwaysupwardandtheway

isalwayswindingandIalwaystopple,uneven

heavy steps, landing on heavy legs, learning to walk.

In circles, learning to walk

but crookedly, driven hell-bent for hell,

because I never learned the difference between even and uneven,

(whatever that means); and so I board the bus

heedless of direction, and whichever way

it goes, I go. And whichever road

it takes, I take. And now I’m going north; this road

I thought was going nowhere, this aimless walk

south, down; this underbelly, this descent, this damned, unholy way

this body bent for hell

this disrepair, this bus

bouncing north unevenly,

bouncing me unevenly,

and be it wandering—however wandering—this road

is going home. And so I take the bus,

and then, for a while, I walk.

I pass through hell

—but briefly—(hell is on the way … )

And finally, I know I'm going right, my way.

Because of you: because of your uneven

scrambling, your demands, my children; because you sometimes gave me hell.

Because you were the road;

and because you made me walk

the plank, your waxy yellow fingers scorched my burning feet. And I wanted to take the bus

to nowhere, but I didn’t. I took it to you.

Face paint

                 During the last four months, I’ve rarely (let’s be honest, never) looked forward to Monday and Wednesday afternoons. Mondays and Wednesdays after class have meant an hours’ trip to the margins of north Quito and an exhausting hour with twenty or so kindergarteners who try to climb my arms and legs like tree limbs. (Let’s be real: I don’t make a very tall tree.)

            I am, however, going to be a teacher. Understandably, I feel a little guilty about dreading my volunteer-placement twice-a-week, especially considering I only spend an hour with the students during each visit (hence the confession). But although I often find myself preparing for classes rather last-minute and always somewhat reluctantly, I always—or nearly always—enjoy giving classes.

            I’ve had my fair share—more than my fair share, I could argue—of challenges. Just a few weeks ago, I walked out of the foundation nearly crying. And sometimes I’ve felt like the children scratch at my patience like starved Michigan deer stripping winter tree-bark, leaving me naked, oddly ashamed. Somehow, twenty crazy kindergartners have peeled away my false image of myself: patient, immovable, un-provocable.

            And then, my last day with the students. I can’t say I anticipated the placement’s conclusion with any degree of extreme regret. (Translation: I looked forward to it.) During nearly every visit, I give the students brief lessons in English: we've learned the English alfabet, our colors, the family, expressions and emotions ... (As an aside, I think I have only one student who has retained anything I’ve taught. Oh well.) I wanted our last lesson, however, to be fun, creative. 

            I decided to make our theme world-citizenship: local and global belonging. “Somos el mundo” I told my students, which we wrote at the top of our cardstock world-maps. Bordering each edge the students wrote “local” and “global,” and at the bottom of their papers we printed our ascending place-belonging: Comiterio del Pueblo (their barrio), Quito (their city), Ecuador (their country), América del Sur (their continent), el mundo (their world). Then, with the students sitting knees-on-benches around square tables with one volunteer directing each table’s activities, we used our fingers to paint the seven continents.

             My pointer-finger coated in white paint like packaged ice-cream, I made to paint a child’s nose. She squealed and turned away. I knew, of course, that face-painting would inevitably result in chaos, but for some reason I welcomed the chaos, I wanted it. “No one leaves Ñeque without a dot on their nose!” I told the students playfully; for the first time in four months, they executed my directions without protest.

            And as we were playing with paint—as students were finishing their finger-painted maps, flying in and out of the classroom, squealing, grabbing my shirt and rising on tiptoes to reach my face with their multi-colored fingers—I realized I loved it. I realized I loved them.

            And perhaps that’s why I’ve struggled during these four months, why I’ve dreaded every placement even while I’ve often enjoyed the brief hour I've spent with them each time. Because I didn’t love them. Oh I liked them—I'm not entirely heartless—I thought they were sweet, and funny, and enormously mischievous, but I didn’t love them; I didn’t know them.

            And now, four months later, I am only grateful. Climbing my body like trees, pulling at my clothes like Michigan does in winter, they peeled away my layers, they reached me: Nina the fallible, the vincible, the sometimes-defeated. And they awakened me to wonder: nothing more than face-paint on a Wednesday afternoon. 

             And because of them, I think I am discovering what it means to be a good teacher:

            Choosing to love. Merely to love. Only to love.

Entrevista

Entrevistadora: Nina

Entrevistada: Carmen Cardenas Salazar, maestro de Fundación Ñeque

Q: Mayormente, los ninos de la Fundación asisten escuelas públicas?

A: Sí

Q: Piensa que reciben una buena educación? ¿Porqué sí o porqué no?

A: No; por la maltrata de la parte de los profesores, abusos físicas … agarran las orejas, ponen masking en las bocas.

Q: Existe una brecha de calidad educacional entre las escuelas públicas?

A: Si; el gobierno no tiene igualdad de dinero … Todos deben ser pagados por igual.

Q: ¿Cómo deciden como repartir los fondos?

A: Reciben los por nombramiento más, y los que no tienen reciben menos.

Q: ¿Cuántos alumnus hay en cada aula? ¿Crea problemas?

A: de 30-40; sí, el sonido, la bulla … la falta de atención

Q: ¿Y cómo son las tareas? ¿Eficaces?

A: No; no deben mandar no cantidad sino calidad. Son muy repetitivas y de no razonamiento. Por ejemplo: la lectura debe ser atractiva, pero no les llama la atención.

Q: ¿Cree que los estudiantes de la Fundación son atrasados en sus estudios?

A: Si; sobre todo en inglés y matemáticas

Q: ¿Si pudiera hacer un cambio en el Sistema educative pública, que haría primero?

A: Que no haya maltrata; que deje de existir el bullying

Patience

 Patience is a virtue, I suppose.

A week ago, this admission would have seemed almost irrelevant—a mere cliché. But a week ago was before last Monday. A week ago was before I learned that patience is hard, harder than waiting through a dull class, or out-lasting the mischief of bothersome younger siblings, or any number of other things I mistook for patience during some twenty-or-so odd years.

A week ago, that is, I lost my patience.  A week ago I brought an activity for the children at Fundación Ñeque that I knew would be challenging—perhaps, even, I precipitated its certain failure—but I went for it anyway. It was a game, after all … it seemed fun. Furthermore, I had played Memory with my five-year-old host brother just months before and thought perhaps the children at the foundation (although somewhat less well-behaved) would understand and enjoy it. I had no illusions, really, but even the small expectation that it wouldn't end in complete disaster was, apparently, a little too much.

Everything went wrong. First, I spent $7.30 printing the game in color. (Apparently color copies cost 1100 percent the cost of ordinary black-and-white. Talk about inflation.) Later, after I had already arrived at the foundation and was helping a student with her homework, the teacher interrupted our work and ordered—yes ordered, not asked—me to begin the English lesson. Which means that before I even found myself in front of their many expectant faces I was already feeling extraordinarily out-of-sorts. (Teaching while grumpy is something that, with my limited experience in the classroom, I have not yet mastered. Few teachers, I would add—even with lots of experience—ever master that one.)

And then, then: the children. Some ten or twenty kindergarten and first-graders and all wonderfully affectionate. Unfortunately for me, they match their degree of affection with an equal degree of disrespect, disobedience, and an impressive ability to defy instruction. Needless to say, the game was a royal fracaso.  The children couldn’t sit still, couldn’t wait their turn, couldn’t listen to my explanation without touching the Memory cards, couldn’t wait for me to give instruction without interrupting with something totally irrevelant, needed constant contact … in short, the children just couldn’t do it.

And that’s when I lost my patience. That’s when I yelled, and clapped my hands, and my voice became oddly metallic, and I didn’t like the hard-water taste of it in my mouth. That’s when I frightened myself a little bit, and I nearly walked out of the foundation crying.

And frankly, I’m still not sure whether I was in the wrong, or oddly in-the-right. (I did apologize to the students the next time I came in.) But I wonder, when is patience passivity? When is patience merely enabling their disrespect? (Because frankly, that’s what it is). When is caring gentle, and when is caring firm? And how, how do I get through to them?

In the three or so months that I spend here, is it even worth it? (Because it’s certainly not viable…)

Or is that merely giving up?

Portraits

Danae ... sky blue

Estafania ... pink sweats and a lisp

Doménica ... little fighter

Poleth ... everyone's flirt (I fear her teenage years)

Christopher ... most lovely rotten-toothed smile

Marly ... dulce, everything whispered

Kelly ... teddy-bear cheeks

Edwin ... ear-to-ear

Roberta ... fierce hugs from a beanpole frame

Doménica ... teacher's pet

Judy ... mischief-maker

Naomi ... round eyes and giggles

Peacock

Nina will work with the older students, we—… they?—reasoned diplomatically. (Notice: I did not say “democratically.” One of the foundation’s many challenges is that it operates according to the competing laws of monarchy and anarchy. I didn’t catch the irony of the moment until sometime later.)

Either way, I nodded agreeably when they assigned me to the older group.

However, when I rang the bell a week later and opened the door to the immediate affection of twenty laughing five- and six-year-olds, I was glad when they later reassigned me to the younger students.

Glad for about twelve-and-a-half minutes, that is.

Indeed, after twelve-and-a-half minutes of absolute anarchy—children crawling all over me like ants, pushing each other from behind , scurrying, hurrying—after twelve-and-a-half minutes of savage lawlessness, I half-wondered if I would survive the afternoon, let alone the four-month placement. 

Still, by the prodding of some higher power, by the nature of my commitment, or merely by a parent-ingrained ethic of giving everything more than one shot, I showed up again some two days later. I was, to say the least, more wary, but also more prepared, determined to impose if not order, than at least to organize the inevitable chaos.

Although I’ve only been with the program for three weeks, each day I spend with the children at Fundación Ñeque is a little better than the last. Last Monday, I taught them an English lesson on “the family.” While I have little experience teaching such young students (more experience with older middle and high school students), the premise is ultimately the same. That is, patterns of demonstration and participation. After we repeated the names of each family member, I sat down with the students on the classroom floor—colored pencils fanned haphazardly like the tail-feathers of a peacock—for an activity in family-portraits. As I had been told many of the students in the after-school program came from broken homes, I approached the topic gingerly. 

So we sat down together on the floor, and drew our fragmented families. Families without fathers or grandparents, families with uncles or cousins living at home, families of only two or three. Some of the children’s questions demonstrated obvious doubt—“I don’t have a grandpa,” they might whisper to me in evident embarrassment—but I reassured them that whatever they had was good. 

As the students were finishing up, I decided spontaneously to let them present their families to their classmates. And together we validated and affirmed whatever each student had to offer—whatever mismatched mosaic of colors, whatever half-broken tail-feathers their families presented.