SCHOOL or Why I'm Here I Guess

So far, nothing in Rwanda has really turned out at all as I expected. Sometimes, I've expected doom and gloom and received sunshine and comfort, while other times what I expect will be painless turns out to be a giant and taxing ordeal. Surprisingly and thankfully, my first two weeks of school turned out to be a perfect example of the former.

I've never taught before, fullstop. My ESL experience in the United States consisted of me observing a slightly antiquated English class for adults in the Mission, just kind of sitting quietly off to the side and listening to a melancholy group of students repeat ridiculous sentences about their brothers looking for tomatoes but buying carrots instead in stilted English. Hardly rock solid prep for handling 27 hours per week of Rwandan teenaged girls in groups of 40 or more. We had some practice here during our teaching practicum in Nyanza, but there were three of us then for a class of less than 20, and we were teaching English, and there was no curriculum. Again, helpful, but not enough to erase my nerves about suddenly becoming a full-time high school Entrepreneurship teacher.

So I planned my lessons thoroughly. I didn't leave a single minute where I wasn't sure what I would do. I had topics to lecture on, work for the students to do in groups, ice-breaker exercises, writing work, reading work, reasoning work, problems for them to solve, tough semi-ambiguous questions for them to think about. I stuck with the curriculum and tried to measure out a reasonable amount of work for each class, and the more planning I did, the less nervous I became.

I showed up to school on the first day at 7:30am (which means I left my house at around 7:28am; huzzah for living inside the school walls!) and sat in the teachers' lounge, meeting my colleagues and going over my lesson plans one last time. School started on a Tuesday, which is one of my long days: all eight periods spent teaching, all four different classes represented. As 8am drew nearer, I was expecting some kind of extreme terror to take me over; I had been so nervous for so long about the first day of school; surely some kind of miserable sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach should be hitting right about now, yes? I held my hand in front of my face, like I usually do when I'm nervous, to see if it was shaking. Rock steady. Huh. I walked through the door of my first class at 8am on the dot, still waiting for the heavy weight of gloom and terror to paralyze me. I started in on my lesson. I explained class rules. I had them introduce themselves. I gave them an assignment. They handed it in. We had a discussion, they were a bit quiet, somewhat painfully so at first, but by the end of the short period, they had opened up considerably. The school secretary rang a bell to signal the end of period one. I checked my schedule and headed to my next class. Similar experience, except these kids were older and therefore more engaged, more feisty, more fun. The period passed quickly. Class number three. The rest of the day kind of whooshed by, with its fair share of awkward silences and embarrassing mistakes, but with one overwhelming theme: each class was taught with a complete absence of nervousness on my part, and shockingly, incomprehensibly, each class had at least a few moments that were fun to teach. This day that I had feared and fretted about since I began considering applying to this program back in February 2009, that I had dreaded for a year, was somewhat uneventful, and was even a little fun.

Weird.

Since then, there have been ups and downs; some periods have been rough, and others have been a blast, but there have been no disasters, and on the whole, the trend continues: teaching is not terrifying, and is actually pretty fun. I'm finding that it's a bit like acting. I get to go up in front of the class and be whoever I want to be. These kids have no idea that I'm nervous talking in front of groups; they don't know that I'm terrified of talking on the phone or of meeting with people one-on-one. They aren't aware that I've never taught before, and they sure as shit don't know that I'm actually younger than the oldest student in my class.

In coming to Rwanda, I found what I thought was a rare opportunity to reinvent myself. I'm generally and broadly ok with who I am, but like most people (I think?), there are some significant chunks of my personality that I wish were different. When I came here and found myself an anonymous stranger in a foreign land, where even my "friends" didn't really know me at all, I realized that this was my chance to break away from some of the personal ruts I'd allowed myself to slip into. I started thinking about some of the things that I had an almost crippling fear of back home, simple things like speaking in front of groups, dancing in public, playing sports. I hated to be watched for fear of being judged and of coming up short. But I knew other people who did these things freely and seemed unfazed. I wished so often that I could be like them, that I could break away from my fear, but I had already established myself as someone who couldn't let go in front of other people. Here, I hadn't established myself as anything. I was free to pretend to be whatever I wanted. So I pretended that I liked to dance, and I danced like an idiot until 3:30am, and it's on video somewhere, and I had an amazing time. I pretended that I liked to play group sports, and now I'm essentially leading a running troupe through the trails of my rural village most mornings. I pretended that, rather than being ready to throw up at the idea of speaking in front of a classroom, I was raring to go, and now I actually look forward to keeping my students on their toes, being unpredictable, having control of a class, lecturing, leading discussions, listening to what they have to say and responding, adapting, even teaching. Here in Rwanda, I've been pretending to be who I want to be. There are still big, ugly rough patches in my personality that I'd love to smooth out; I still can't seem to shake my inability to shut up (hello, blog post!) or my fear of being out of the loop, but I'm working on them, and that's alright for now I guess. But I'm relishing this chance to change, and starting to realize that I probably didn't have to wait for an intercontinental move to take it.

Before I left, I saw a documentary called Proceed and Be Bold! (which I recommend sans reservation) about a man who, in his mid-40's, junked his pleasant middle-class life and started making printing press posters full-time. Talk about jumping out of a rut. I don't think there's anything wrong with a pleasant middle-class life; I hope to enjoy one myself. But he wasn't all that happy doing what he was doing, so he struck out to change it. His words at the end of the film have been on my mind every day since I first heard them:

"Do you want my life? You can have my life. All you have to do is declare yourself crazy, then go out and do whatever you want."

So family, friends, here it is: I have gone crazy. I'm doing whatever I want over here. There's really nothing to stop me, and it's a pretty damned good time.

It's worth saying, in light of the whole idea of this blog: I am lucky and proud to come from a family that has already declared itself crazy, and is spread all over this world as we speak, doing whatever it wants. Keep it up, family. Keep building, keep flying, keep trekking. Thanks for the inspiration <3