I'm sorry that I fail at keeping this updated. I have started to write so many times but am constantly pulled away before I have been able to perfect my words or express my stories in the ways that they need to be shared. So I delete the post, vowing to try again soon but knowing that I won't really. So this blog will be my very raw, unedited word vomit because I need to press "publish post".
I was in a pretty dark place the last time that I wrote, and am glad to say that I have come a very long way in the last 3 months, and so have my students! I'm at the place now where I genuinely like and enjoy my job. Despite the challenges, tears, failures, frustrations, spit wads and all, I am very grateful to be in this place doing this work.
My kids are not easy to like because they're not trying to be. They have each learned to be very independent and not to trust anyone, especially anyone new. At the beginning of the year, their goal was to drive all of us away. And on some levels, it has worked. We have had a teacher quit at our school about once every other week (give or take a couple weeks) since October. The kids want to remain unlikeable so that we will leave and they can win their game, so it seems on the surface. However, I think they have finally learned that I am not going anywhere. Period. No matter what. The semester progressed from students saying "we don't like you cuz you're white. We'd get along with a black teacher. You don't like black people." and by the end of the semester I received cards from those same students saying things like "ms. Hood, you're the best teacher I ever had. I'll try to do better next semester."
With all that said, I am at a place now where I really like my students. I am very attached to them. They challenge me and call me out on my mistakes. They break my heart with family situations and cultural and inner struggles that I cannot even fathom. Despite all of our differences, our hearts are slowly being stitched together, and I really like it. That does not mean that it is easy or that there aren't times when I want to run back to California because this life and this work and this mission is still really really hard. Yet it is the type of hard that I signed up for and this is the life that I would choose again.
Tuesday will start the 3rd week of the 2nd semester. I will never again have a first semester of my first year of teaching. And that feels really good. I love fresh starts and new beginnings and that fact that all of that comes at the start of a new semester. I am still a horrible teacher. I am still making it up as I go and trying not to drown. But there is a big weight that has been lifted off of my shoulders in this new semester. I feel lighter and slightly more confident and much more passionate. This life and the mission field at this school has too many deeply rooted problems for one girl to fix. But I no longer feel like that is my purpose. I am not here to fix these kids or this school or the system. I am here to work alongside those who are already work and already a part of this ministry of reconciliation. And I pray that my presence, work, and love would be enough. Enough to say that we trust our God who makes everything beautiful in His time.
