My Teaching Secret

Want to know my teacher secret for engaged, happy, attentive kids?

I remembered it again last Saturday.

The 11th grade class was having their college planning retreat. It was a hot morning, and the kids had slept in tents the night before. At least five had not slept a wink. We tried to hold an outdoor educational session, fighting valiantly all the while against heat, mosquitos, noise, and sleep deprivation while discussing FAFSA and TOEFL and...... ok, I get why they were bored.

Bored, and getting an attitude. 

Then, all of a sudden, five minutes later, this was happening.
Look at these faces.
Can you guess what magical ingredient was sprinkled in to produce such sweet joy?

It wasn't a Powerpoint, a pep talk, a group discussion, or anything of that ilk.

It was love.

Love! Affection. Affirmation. Silly, sweet, kind.

I told the kids to open their bags of "love notes" from their classmates. I had assigned each student to write a note to every other junior. You can't know this, but some of the pairs beaming at each other above have relationships that might be best described as "semi-hostile toleration". But love notes... love notes do something special.

In my elementary and teenage years, I went to summer sleep-away church camps led by two people who knew the power of what we called "affirmation cards". We spent hours at camp writing hundreds of aff cards to our friends. In fact, I have every one I ever received. Including one swoon-inducing note from a very cute 9th grader named Ben Kilpatrick.

Love makes bored kids bloom. Love makes everybody bloom.

Katie

Retreat, and Being Institutionalized

This weekend five fellow teachers and I took 19 11th graders to the beach for a class retreat centered on the topic of college planning.

We are very lucky that one of the 11th graders' families owns a beach house and invited us out. Last year we went to Ranch le Montcel, which, strangely, has become the most-read post on this blog ever. Not sure how that happened.

The adults slept in the house, while the kids slept in tents on the beach.

Robbie was in charge of games, Irene and I split the college sessions, Ben did the devotions, and Tara and Jim soaked it all in as they will be the main college advisers next year since I am moving and Irene will be home with a wee baby.

Does NOT look like the college planning sessions I attended in my high school cafeteria!

A heated moment during a class game.

These two besties are in my discipleship group. I rode in the car with them to the beach, and they were really sweet to me when we had to stop by the side of the road... for me to spend some alone time puking in the weeds.

When I got back in the car they said, "Miss, are you pregnant?!" and "Miss, we found you a cough drop. It's a little minty- want it?"

Ben made a new best friend in the host family's five-year-old daughter Bella.

Beautiful Virgloty!

One game involved rushing to give someone a high five. The boys took this quite seriously.

Beautiful Bella. She's like some sort of cross between a mermaid, angel, and wood nymph.

Free time card game. There are two popular games in Haiti: Prezidan and Cazino.

Freshly-hacked coconut milk.

The father of the house put in an order for several lobster at 1 pm. The fishermen went in a little wooden boat, right off the dock of the family's house. When they returned, the fishermen cooked them right on the beach in front of us, and they were on the dinner table by 7.

Friends. The diversity of Quisqueya families is one of my favorite things, and by diversity I mean the myriad ethnicities and professions that mix together in our study body. In this class we have a missionary kid with a Dutch reformed background, the daughter of the Minister of Agriculture, a Nigerian boy adopted by German missionaries, the son of an elite Haitian table tennis player, and about everything else in between.

Me, Irene, and Tara.

Irene leaves on Wednesday. She's headed home to Virginia to prepare for the birth of their daughter in late June. I am resisting that goodbye with my whole heart! I refuse! I'm hiding her passport!

Another of my discipleship chicks with little Bella.

The Pruitts enjoying a truly incredible dinner. This host family could not have been more hospitable and gracious. It was such a treat for me to eat things that should be simple, but that I avoid preparing on a regular basis due to how labor-intensive they can be in Haiti: fresh-squeezed local juice, salad, banan peze (fried, squashed plantain chips).

 Ben revels in taste bud nirvana.

 Late night hanging out before Ben's devotion.

We had spent time studying personality inventories like the Holland career code and the Myers-Briggs. The point was to help the kids see their unique and special traits, and begin to explore how those might fit into certain careers or majors. There were many sweet "a-ha!" moments, such as when one introverted boy received "computer programmer" on both of his assessments; he had never considered that path but was now very excited about it.

Ben's devotion shared about how those unique traits are God-given and meant for us to use not only for our own enrichment, pleasure, and provision, but also to bless others.

 Saturday breakfast. Haitian mangoes are in a class of their own, and the bananas were chopped right off the trees above us.

Ben's second devotion, this time on servant leadership. He said he had seen many senior classes adopt an entitled, "it's all about me now" attitude. He challenged them to look to give back and be servant leaders in their 12th grade year.

As you can see, every single one of them is attentive and energized. The one in the black shirt even appears to have been moved to tears, or perhaps repentant prayer!

(at least five kids bragged that they did not sleep a wink Friday night)

 Irene leads the final college session.

We taught about types of financial aid, FAFSA, how to find scholarships, early decision, early action, the TOEFL, and more.

I gave the kids a script to fill out that would lead them in having a preliminary college conversation with their parents.

Our kids have so many more options and challenges than the average Texas senior, because they are often deciding between not just the local state schools but also a bevy of options in Canada, France, Britain, or the Dominican. They often have a confusing mix of citizenship(s), residency(ies), and Florida pre-paid tuition issues.

It was a huge treat. This is NOT what my average day looks like in Haiti, but these are the faces that fill my average days.

This is the class I've invested in the most. I've been their only English teacher for 3.5 years. Seven of my eight discipleship girls are juniors. It will be very painful to leave them in particular.

This was my last time at the Haitian beach. My last time to drive the two hours from our apartment to the coast, lurching forward in the traffic and bouncing with the potholes.

On that drive you see a fairly accurate snapshot of Haiti: bone-skinny donkeys roped to scrub-brush, hand-painted signs for tiny scratch-out-a-living stores, and huge white scars in the hills where sand is being mined to make concrete. If cotton is "the fabric of our lives" in America, the Haitian equivalent is concrete. The beach road is freshly paved, an enormous improvement, and you zip quickly by the Canaan fields where thousands of families were relocated from tent cities and promised a factory would soon be opened, only to find this was false and they were stuck living in homemade blue tarp-tents in a giant empty field miles north of employment opportunities.

You skirt the Cite Soleil waterfront slum, once called the world's most dangerous. You inch along the nation's largest thoroughfares near downtown, passing the largest French Catholic boys' school and the largest car dealership. Everywhere, people, vendors, piles of vegetables on the sort-of-sidewalks and the ubiquitous pre-teen boys wiping windshields with dirty rags in hope (or demand) of a coin.

All of it is normal to me now. Ben says we've become institutionalized.

It's all deep in my heart, and back home nobody will ever understand except Ben.

But deeper still in my heart are these kids, and I was very happy to have one last weekend chock-full of minutes with these 11th graders.

Katie

Cinco de Jefe

As an adoptive mother of a Latino son, I must say I hope everyone had a happy Cinco de Mayo. Here at our house, we truly believe in connecting our son to his home culture, and celebrating its special traditions.

Especially ones involving margaritas, salsa, cilantro, and classical guitar.

Date Night

Projects in Haiti are a lesson in logistics. Any endeavor, whether short-term trip, class outing, errand to the grocery store, moving here, or setting up a long term mission, revolves around traffic, transportation, gas, and the finances to make it happen.

Katie and I have lived in Haiti for almost three and a half years. In that time we have gone on a date, by ourselves, outside of our apartment exactly..... twice. The reason? Logistics.

I realized this terrible shortcoming of our relationship in February. I sought to make good and fix it in our time left. One nice date a month, starting in March, until we left the first week of June.

March went well. Quartier Latin had only a few other patrons. We sat outisde near the Cuban jazz musican and had a great meal. We drove home. No drama.

This month we chose Papaye. Murphy and his law decided to tag along.

Katie wore a dress that kills me. It is simply a long cotton sundress, but she wears it well. I was in some rags that made me look respectable. Barely. We started up the mountain late, hoping to avoid traffic. Once we turned into Petionville, Murphy's law attacked the workings of our car.

It would not idle. If I was not pressing down on the accelerator, the car would stall and die. Even when I was pressing the accelerator to the floorboard, the RPMs rarely were enough to keep from stalling. This, combined with the fact that we were driving up a hill, meant our forward progress was laughable. Traffic piled up behind us. A man pushing a wheelbarrow full of goods passed us on the sidewalk. I swore. A lot.

I sweat when under pressure. I was under pressure to not block one (of the two) lanes of the city's major thoroughfare, pressure to not hit a pedestrian, and pressure to actually be a good husband to my wife. I was trying to take her and that sundress out someplace nice, for crying out loud! Finally, even at 7:30 is was hot in Haiti. I was sweating a lot.

I rolled into a well-lit area to park and made some calls. We sat in the car, waiting and sweating. A drunk, possibly crazy man approached our car with a stagger. Normally, I feel fine engaging those who beg in conversation. I believe it is humanizing. This was not a normal time. I shook my head and said "no" as soon as he waked up to the car. He mumbled and gestured. I couldn't hear him through the window, but "ban mwen" was his lead-off phrase: give me.

Me: More head shaking.
Him: Mumbles and wild gestures.
Me: A shrug. A head shake. An emphatic "no".
Him: A suggestion that I get my mother. (Kreyol speakers will understand that turn of phrase.)

He walked away, not in a straight line, taking the time to turn back, mumble, and gesture. I breathed a little easier.

We sweated. We scanned the sidewalk on all sides of the car. Sweated. Scanned. Dozens of Friday-evening groups walked by. A drizzle began. Sweated.   

Our help arrived about thirty minutes later in the form of Dan, our mechanic friend (and Miquette's brother). He swapped cars with us and we realized we could continue our date.

When we walked into Papaye, it was like another world. In a lush back yard with all-white decor, Katie and I sat down amongst bourgeoisie Haitians, diplomats in town for the ACS conference, and expat aid workers. We took a deep breath and laughed, the tension of the last 30 minutes gone.

We have made no plans for May's date...

-B

DC 2013! Part Two

To continue from part one, we also visited the Library of Congress with a dozen Haitian ducklings in tow.

Ben adopted what he called the "sorority pose".

An iconic building, a freezing day.

I  waited sneakily by the entrance to the Rotunda to capture this next one. I've always loved the faces of my students as they first walk into this enormous room, eyes immediately skyward. I got LD just as the "wow" was forming.

After the government buildings we made out way to my favorite meal of the trip, where we introduce our kids to the best food ever made: Tex-Mex.

This year, an adventurous eater ordered seafood fajitas. Unbeknownst to her, this came with a least one teeny octopus! Mr. K disgusted everyone by popping it straight off her fork and into his mouth.

Next, the zoo.

John Ackerman, this photo is for you.

This is the closest I've ever seen the pandas!

Meerkats.

 

Last but not least, part three coming tomorrow!

Katie