Teaching a real lesson

Sometimes teaching English here at NPH I feel like I can’t get my point across. Either the kids don’t understand why they need to learn English (or pay attention or be respectful), or they don’t feel like listening, or on some days, they flat out just don’t like you. It happens.

Last Tuesday I was just having one of those days – the kind where you can’t help but feel like everything’s going wrong. I went to my fifth grade class and everything was more or less alright, but one of my best students, Rivaldo, was misbehaving. After class I asked to speak with him and he kept giving me the cold shoulder, wouldn’t listen, and walked away from me. After a little goading from his 5th grade teacher, he finally came outside to speak to me. I asked what was going on and how he was feeling and he immediately got defensive and said he didn’t do anything wrong. I said something to the effect of: “Rivaldo – you are a really smart boy and you are one of the best behaved students in the class. I would really like it if we could work together to improve your behavior,” and the like…this went on for a good 5-10 minutes…

Now, I’ve had this talk many times in the past few months with various students trying to get to the root of a certain problem…yet none of them has ever responded the way that Rivaldo did. He looked at me, almost with a tear in his eye, and told me that he was going to change his ways…and that he was a good student…and that he knew he could do better. And that was that.

A lot of kids here at NPH are completely unaffected. They don’t understand the impact that their words and actions have. They don’t understand that they are really good kids and that they can choose the way they act and the way that others perceive them. They don’t understand how they affect other people, and a lot of times, they don’t receive positive individualized attention when they’re having problems. A lot of times here I feel like I’m not making any sort of difference in these children’s lives. But then something like this happens, and I remember why I’m here.