So this is what it's like to be a kindergarten teacher!

Melissa has had her surgery and we are back at Immanuel Mission and I am working on my second week of actual teaching.  There was a Spring Break in between Week One and Week Two so I had a whole week to recuperate and decide whether to escape into the desert or stay here at Mel's house and try again.  I thought the desert was  riskier.   I did say I wanted to be a teacher so this little taste of it for a tiny bit of time has become a rare experience that will become memories for many years.

I walked in cold.  That's one way to describe what I did.  Cold and unprepared.  Cold, old and unprepared.  I see in just this short time why some run at top speed from the profession and why some remain for year after year until retirement.  This is an experience of extreme challenge, extreme frustration, extreme demands, extreme puzzlement, extreme mental and physical output, and extreme joy.  I think I have experience Time travel in some way or perhaps should experience it so I could better think in the mind of a 5 year old.  

I think that there were some reading changes from my childhood until now.  I didn't know that two letters together made phonograms.  I think we called them letter blends or something like that but I don't think I learned that in kindergarten.  But then there are some discipline and order methods that still work, like turning out the lights gets instant attention quicker than hollering, "get quiet."  The old fashioned stay in from recess and sit by yourself in a chair in the hall still works really good and I don't think it is considered cruel and unusual punishment.  

Immanuel Mission School in the Sweetwater Community of North Eastern Arizona is similar in many ways to some schools but in more ways it is different.  The children here are no different than any other children all over the world.  They have the same strengths and the same problems as kids everywhere.  It just is that some of the problems are in greater numbers in some places.  There is a culture difference in some ways and yet I think I could walk into a school in the Appalacians or Delray Detroit and find a class similar to this one in the Navajo Nation.  Some of the children in the class understand that they need to do what someone in charge says to do.  Others are finding out still late in their school year that they don't get to choose sometimes and that life doesn't revolve around their very own self.  They are finding out there  are conscequences to their choices the same as some homeschooled kids and public school kids.  

Perhaps the most interesting revelation I have found while observing and teaching this class is that the children reflect the common world view that they are basically good and do no wrong.  Teaching the concept of sinners before a righteous God is perhaps the first light that needs to be ignited in their hearts and minds.  This is possible here where in a public school it is forbidden.  It is possible here to stop in the middle of a situation and pray about it with the child or children.  It is possible here to give and receive hugs.  I can openly teach that The Bible is God's Word given from God to men who wrote it down in His book.  I can talk about God's laws and openly say the name of The Lord Jesus Christ.  I can tell them the Wonderful Story of Love and the wonderful fact that that love is for them.  

Quite some time has passed since I first recorded my thoughts about my time as a teacher. I found out that it is better to start teaching when you are young because teaching is physically demanding. I also learned  that God does not always call the enabled, he enables the called.   Whatever I did for those few short weeks were only by the strength and grace of God.  In some ways I did not want to go but I'm glad I did.  I hope it was in some small way like Esther "for such a time as this."  I know if I had not gone God would have used someone else.  I am glad I heard His call and obeyed even though my faith was weak.  I was blessed by the whole experience.  I was taught more than what I taught.