A Quarter Through

We officially wrapped our first quarter of school this past Wednesday.  The weeks my crawl by, but wow, a whole quarter of the year over and done with makes it seem like it’s flying by pretty quickly.  I’ve been quite busy working on lesson plans, curriculum guides, my AP syllabus, and various accreditation responsibilities throughout the quarter.  And then I’ve noticed that there must be some sort of magical enchantment that’s befallen my stacks of grading.  It’s bizarre; I finish one pile of essays or creative writing pieces or “Snap” quizzes (“Simple, Non-threatening Assessments of Progress...not quite as scary as it’s sister the “Pop”), and, miraculously, it’s like my desk grows another pile on its own.  I really must look into the possibilities of this strange phenomenon.  Curse of the English teacher, I suppose.

It’s not all a drag, though.  A recent highlight from my classroom lately included my senior AP students portraying characters from Hamlet on our own class version of “Jerry Springer.”  I don’t even know if most of the kids know who the actual Jerry Springer is, but, holy cow, what a hilarious hour of class.  If you’ve read Hamlet, you probably remember the strange little company of suicidal, insane, adulterous, masochistic, and just downright dumb characters that make up the cast.  Perfect fodder for Springer.  I think that if we’d had another five minutes of class, we could have had a real hair-pulling, name-calling fight.  The kids were seriously into it.  Later on, we addressed feminist and psychological criticisms of Ophelia, connections between Renaissance Humanism and Hamlet and other more “academic” topics of study, but when a crazy idea like that hits, I suppose you’ve just got to indulge it, right?  Definitely worth it.

In another borderline-out-of-control classroom moment (I like to keep my class discussion right on the edge between scholarly/focused and creative/unrestrained), we opened up our “Crisis of Conscience” thematic unit of To Kill a Mockingbird with a look at the power of language, in particular, “taboo” topics and pejorative terms associated with gender, race, religion, etc.  To Kill a Mockingbird is a favorite of mine, but it’s been banned from quite a few schools for its focus on rape and racism and particularly the use of the “N” word.  So with about a week of our class time, I had my tenth grade students begin by working in groups to create pieces of graffiti art on “Taboo” topics in our culture.  Some great follow-up discussion involved discussion about tribalism, things “we don’t tell our parents,” sex and dating (and rape, and pornography, and sexual immorality), politics, religion, and what we know about these things from a Biblical worldview and Christ-centered moral focus.  Great stuff.  As long as they were young adults and not immature in their discussion, I reminded them, anything was fair game.  From there, we moved into our focus on pejorative terms targeted at groups and individuals.  The kids initially got a kick out of the fact that their teacher wasn’t afraid to use “cuss words” in front of them and that she didn’t discipline them when they used them, either.  But the class remained focused and was generally able to engage in some pretty mature dialogues.  Now that we’ve begun the novel itself, they’ve laid the foundation for understanding the nature of our human conscience and are prepared to have it come to crisis.  I’m excited for what’s to come.  A couple of students in the English 10 class last year even said that this particular book changed their life in some small way. 

The Challenges/Joys of Life on One Foot in Nairobi, Kenya

If you read my last blog entry, you’ll remember that about three weeks ago, I had a fateful encounter with my staircase which resulted in a broken bone in my foot, and, consequently, I’ve been poking around on crutches with my foot in a homemade cast.  I’ve never broken anything before, but I’m thinking that there are some situational differences between breaking something in Kenya versus the States.  Here are some “highlights” from the past few weeks:

• Dr. Joe: A pleasant, smiling Aussie, I’ve found that Dr. Joe has a generally bizarre bedside manner.  I’ve been unbelievably grateful to Joe and his family who took care of me after my incident, helping me get my x-ray and making my plaster cast in the backyard.  But Dr. Joe is also a bit of a jokester, and quite sarcastic.  I called him a couple of weeks ago after several people expressed grave concern about the dark, ashen-purple-colored toes that poked out of my cast.  Joe offered to make a house call to check my foot out.  When he arrived, with his daughter in tow, he assessed the problem as being merely a hygiene issue.  I insisted that Kenyan dirt is red, not purple.  This past week, he came to check again on the structural integrity of the disintegrating plaster, working to give me a guess on when we can take the cast off.  As he poked and prodded my foot and toes to see whether the break was healing, I swear he was trying to make me cry again.  Then I reminded him that it’s not the pain that’s unpleasant for me, but doctors in general, he had a good laugh.

• The many “Pole sana’s:” I must look either truly pathetic or else completely ridiculous, because, inevitably, when we’re out and about in Nairobi, I receive quite a few offerings of the Swahili phrase “Pole sana,” which means “So sorry.”  Sometimes the phrase is accompanied by a  sad furrow between peoples’ eyes and some fairly sincere concern.  Others, it comes with a bit of a chuckle and even a little pat on my shoulder or back.  Either way, I return their sympathetic message with my own “Asante” (thank you) and a smile and continue on my way.  Honestly, it’s got to be kind of funny for a Kenyan to see a little mzungu in my situation.  We already stand out around here, so it certainly doesn’t make me any more inconspicuous.  

• Signatures: The first day of school after my accident, the kids were all either very entertained by my condition or else very concerned for me.  Some of them immediately set about making their mark on my cast.  The first signature was from a student named Kate who wrote her name in huge block letters right above my toes.  I’ve since realized that Kenyans think that I’ve written my own name on my cast, and so complete strangers have approached me and said, “Pole sana, Kate.”  At least it wasn’t “Muthoni” or “Shiku” or another very Kenyan name in that spot, I suppose.  I’d be getting even stranger looks, I’d bet.  Among other favorite signatures: My Sudanese student wrote, “Get quick heal” alongside her name and a Korean senior wrote, “Get better soon” in Korean characters.  

• A Vertical Campus: Becca and I switched classrooms so that I wouldn’t have to make it up two flights of stairs to my usual classroom, which is really helpful, but our WNS campus is just about the hilliest, least handicapped-friendly campus I could imagine.  To come down from the parking lot in the morning, I have to carefully make my way down a fairly large concrete staircase (I’ve slipped twice), across a paved area, into the office.  Our office is a labyrinth of tiny rooms and hallways, each of them connected at a doorway where there is either a small step up or down into the next room.  Narrow doorways, spilled water in the kitchen, a coffee table, and a treacherous little rug all present particular challenges.  To get from the office to the high school side of campus, I make my way across concrete pavers that get pretty slick when wet, an unpaved gravel driveway, and a couple of drainage grates.  Poor Becca each day goes down to the bandas to get my lunch, because the only ways to get down there are either a steep staircase or a steep gravel driveway.  I’ve been missing our Tuesday morning staff devotions because it’s just too much work and, frankly, too dangerous, to get myself down there and then back up again.  And if that doesn’t present enough of a challenge already, here’s the kicker: rainy season has officially begun.  

...But then again, it’s raining in Kenya.  Praise the Lord, right?  He’s good.