November 8

8th grade math, as of today, I am teaching no more. And I honestly have never felt so relieved. What's ironic is the students that made life the hardest were the ones who objected most to letting me go. And I've come to the conclusion, that anywhere in the world, middle school students are generally the same: lazy, apathetic, insecure, and overall misdirected. I can't deny that I passed through those stages in my adolescence, or that my friends and I didn't act stupid just to blend into what we thought was normalcy. Even though this particular class ranged from ages 14 to 23 (education is a little different in Cambodia, and those ages were more evenly dispersed than you'd think), they all act seemed to act just about the same. But it didn't help that Cambodia cultures a society that determines age (over actions or attitude) as the measure of respect (and growing old is not a bad thing, a perk, I guess), and with my personality (putting me at a disadvantage in this situation, and not that I'm trying to justify my shortcomings as inherited personality traits), it was incredibly hard, and almost impossible, to motivate them, to cure them of their laziness, to stop them from cheating in every requested effort, and to get them to take me seriously. Don't get me wrong, they can be fun, a few of the students did actually expend tremenous effort in their work, and many grew to be my friends, but overall, with my grips on the class, I found my nose barely above the water, realizing, in the nights of losing sleep, my hair, and youth, that really, at 19 I shouldn't be spending 50% of my time worrying about the 1 class I teach in 8th grade, and the other half about the 5 others I teach to the 1st grade. The Bible says, you can't plant a tree one day and expect to see fruit the next. Growth and fruit that means something, that is real and deepy rooted, takes much of your lifetime to develop, and honestly, I just don't think I had the strength or ability or experience in me. And so, I went to Sharon (principal of CAS), and told her, that, being a volunteer, I was trying my best in vain to teach both age groups for the first time of my life (because really, both motivating and disciplining the two are worlds apart) and it wasn't going well, and she was wonderfully understanding, saying, "I can't believe you didn't come to me sooner....", which was a pleasant surprise. So after a night of no sleep, and continual prayer, a voice in my head (God, thank God!) gave me the epiphany, that one small adjustment for the rest of my year (so instead I am teaching 1st grade one more class at this time), was what I needed, not only to make things smoother and more enjoyable, but bearable.

Nonetheless, it couldn't have come at a worse time. Monday, they had their chapter 3 test, and Tuesday I handed it back out to show them their scores, where they give it back to me for me to destroy. One student, whom I know struggles, and has adapted the easiest solution, cheating, told me he couldn't find his test, that one moment he had it on his desk, he got up to do something, and the next it was nowhere to be found. After a quick search, I left the room, and next period told Sharon that I hadn't collected his test because we couldn't find it. She was pretty upset, as she believes 90% of Cambodians cheat (direct quote), and said that the only reason we couldn't find the test was because he was keeping it, or that somebody else had taken it to keep to give to a friend to cheat. The 8th graders were punished and couldn't eat lunch until the last 10 minutes of lunch period, and Sharon, had told them, "I was a new teacher, and I didn't know what to do in such a situation, so they needed to be extra careful..." which in turn, made me look irresponsible and unprofessional, even though I had asked this student 3 seperate times for his test back, and was not like the time, she had previously told me about, where the teacher forgot to pick up the test, but easily retrieved a few days later after one simple ask. Anyways, that same day, they found out I was not going to be their teacher next quarter, and students came up to me, "Why is teacher Sharon taking you away from us? Because you lost that one test...?" In all honesty, those few seconds, I wanted to leave it at that, and say I never told them so, but they assumed the reason at that, not because it was beyond my ability to spend both the day with 30 seven year old children and then a class with hormonal pre-teens, 5 days a week, and that they had won, or that I didn't like them and thought my life an improvement without them in it. And while Phalkun cried a bit, and other students said they wished I would stay, which made me feel better, overall change seems to be for the best. I'm not doing less, just changing it up, and I think I'm much better suited teaching elementary anyways. But I guess we'll have to wait til' next week to know for sure.