I have this student. Let's call him Joe, just for fun. I do actually have a student named Joe, but this story is not about him. Anyways, Joe REALLY likes to sleep during class. I, obviously, do not approve of this, but at one point it was so chronic of a thing that it was a lot more satisfying to prank him while he was asleep than to constantly be saying things like, "Joe, sit up" or "Joe, get your forehead off your desk" or "Joe, time to stand up for a stretch" or "Joe, please try to pay attention to what you are supposed to be doing right now" over and over and over and over and over...
I drew all over his face with a whiteboard marker once.
I gave paperclips to all his classmates and had them drop them one by one down the back of his pants to see how long it would take him to wake up. When he finally woke up, he didn't even realize there were paperclips in his pants until he stood up to leave class and screamed like a woman because he thought millions of bugs were running down his legs.
I slammed a math textbook down on his desk once. He and half the class almost had a heart attack.
So yes. Joe likes to sleep. Kind of a lot. He's just one of those kids who never seems quite fully awake, no matter what hour of the day it is.
This year I have Joe as a senior for AP Calculus. I had one of my happiest moments as a teacher yesterday when, after having the class work out some example problems, Joe declared loudly, "I REALLY like this. I don't know what it is about this. It's really hard, but it's so fun. I mean it's so fun that if you offered to let me go back to bed right now, I'd rather do THIS."
Ladies and gentlemen, proof that miracles DO happen.
28 August 2013
Guys, Guess What?
I have gone over a MONTH without writing a blog post! That is a record. Lots of big things have happened in the last month, so let me just give you a quick (or maybe not-so-quick) rundown of the main events.
1. Ramadan and Idul Fitri all happened. If you remember from past blog posts, Ramadan is the fasting month, and Idul Fitri is the HUGE celebration that happens at the end of the fasting. I actually fasted two (non-consecutive) days this year, which meant waking up in the threes to eat breakfast way before first light, and then no food or drink (no water in this heat is DIFFICULT) until 5:42 PM when what sounds like air raid sirens go off all over town alerting us that we can now eat and drink. As if we didn't have both eyes glued to the clock in anticipation already...
Some of my church friends who knew I was fasting (because one of the days I fasted was a Sunday) joked that I must be converting. That is definitely not the case. I am thankful for Jesus who is full of mercy and grace and doesn't bless me just because I fast for an entire month. But as my white friends have moved away one by one, I find myself these days spending large amounts of my time (AKA all summer long) with Indonesians. And yeah, a lot of my Indonesian friends are Muslim. And if I'm spending time with them, especially if I'm in their home, I think it shows a lot of sensitivity and respect to NOT be scarving down three meals a day in front of them. It's not something they ever asked of me. It's something I wanted to do. And while I really have no desire to do the full month-long fast, I think it was a really good experience for me to do it for those two days!
2. There's not really a way to ease you into this next one, so I'll just come out and say it. Aswan and I broke up at the end of July. It's not really information that I like volunteering publicly, but for lots of people back home, this is probably the only way you'll know, and I DO want you to be able to keep up with what is going on in my life. We've been wrestling with some pretty heavy issues for the majority of the past year and our relationship had cooled off a lot - so much so, in fact, that none of our friends could even tell that we had broken up until we told them! In fact, I honestly don't feel like a lot has changed in our relationship except that we don't go on dates anymore. We are both involved in a lot of the same things, we go to the same church, and we have a lot of the same friends, so I see him just about every day still, and we've been able to transition almost seamlessly into a friendship, which I am SO thankful for.
3. School started, and I am now in my SIXTH year of teaching. As far as seniority goes, I have been here the third longest of any foreign teacher at our school, and I have been here for longer than ALL of the administration COMBINED. This is the very first year that I've actually been able to feel the age gap between me and my students, and I am finally beginning to ask myself, "Am I (gasp) OLD?" I'm teaching three of the same classes of students that I've taught in years past, but I also have one entirely new class, and boy, are they going to be a handful. My principal also decided roughly 8 days before school started to entirely change our math curriculum. That didn't leave a whole lot of time. So yeah... we just got our new material yesterday. School started three weeks ago. Um... good thing I am awesome at making stuff up and sounding convincing. I mean, I wasn't like "inventing" random math facts. More like I was just doing everything COMPLETELY from scratch with no curriculum. Thank goodness for experience. That makes it a whole lot easier. And this year is going to be a whole NEW experience as the new material we opted to buy is completely online, which means that students will be using technology (in the form of e-readers, ipads, tablets, and smartphones) in the classroom all day, every day. My principal has way more faith in a 9th grader's ability to use his iPhone for school purposes only than I do. Mostly because I know that if it were me, I would totally be playing Candy Crush the whole time.
4. Melanie came for a visit. And then left again. But that was pretty cool. So shoutout to Melanie.
5. MY MOM GOT FACEBOOK! WUTT? (Sorry mom, I couldn't resist.)
6. My Indonesian grandmother, Pak Kur's mom, died last week. If you are a faithful reader of my blog, you KNOW how I feel about death in Indonesia. This time was different. Maybe because I knew her. Maybe because I knew how much pain she was in before she died. Maybe because I am so close to the family. Maybe because I knew she was ready. Maybe it's because I know she is with Jesus. Maybe because when I looked down at her in her coffin, she looked healthier and happier than she had for weeks.
Because I am considered part of the family, I had to be there for all three days of the funeral. The day she died was basically just the visitation. They had her laid out in the house and everyone came to pay their respects and eat a meal. The second day was the burial. That evening and then on into the evening of the third day was the wake. I gotta say, it was almost a comedic funeral. At one point, a chicken had to be forcibly removed. They didn't dig the hole big enough for the coffin, so they stuck it down in as far as it would go, then three men jumped up and down on top of it until it finally went all the way down in with a loud BANG. Someone's herd of goats ran screaming through the graveyard while the pastor was doing the whole "ashes to ashes" speech. A woman passed out. They served plates of tobacco leaves and rolling paper at the wake. And I totally saw one old woman pull out a narcotic nut and start sucking on it during the sermon. That was AFTER she finally woke up.
OK, I think that's about the long and the short of it. Sorry it's been so long, but as you can see, there has been a TON going on. And sometimes I just need to process things before I can talk about them. So I hope you will forgive me for my hiatus, and I promise to write more soon! In fact, I'm about to write another post NOW!
1. Ramadan and Idul Fitri all happened. If you remember from past blog posts, Ramadan is the fasting month, and Idul Fitri is the HUGE celebration that happens at the end of the fasting. I actually fasted two (non-consecutive) days this year, which meant waking up in the threes to eat breakfast way before first light, and then no food or drink (no water in this heat is DIFFICULT) until 5:42 PM when what sounds like air raid sirens go off all over town alerting us that we can now eat and drink. As if we didn't have both eyes glued to the clock in anticipation already...
Some of my church friends who knew I was fasting (because one of the days I fasted was a Sunday) joked that I must be converting. That is definitely not the case. I am thankful for Jesus who is full of mercy and grace and doesn't bless me just because I fast for an entire month. But as my white friends have moved away one by one, I find myself these days spending large amounts of my time (AKA all summer long) with Indonesians. And yeah, a lot of my Indonesian friends are Muslim. And if I'm spending time with them, especially if I'm in their home, I think it shows a lot of sensitivity and respect to NOT be scarving down three meals a day in front of them. It's not something they ever asked of me. It's something I wanted to do. And while I really have no desire to do the full month-long fast, I think it was a really good experience for me to do it for those two days!
2. There's not really a way to ease you into this next one, so I'll just come out and say it. Aswan and I broke up at the end of July. It's not really information that I like volunteering publicly, but for lots of people back home, this is probably the only way you'll know, and I DO want you to be able to keep up with what is going on in my life. We've been wrestling with some pretty heavy issues for the majority of the past year and our relationship had cooled off a lot - so much so, in fact, that none of our friends could even tell that we had broken up until we told them! In fact, I honestly don't feel like a lot has changed in our relationship except that we don't go on dates anymore. We are both involved in a lot of the same things, we go to the same church, and we have a lot of the same friends, so I see him just about every day still, and we've been able to transition almost seamlessly into a friendship, which I am SO thankful for.
3. School started, and I am now in my SIXTH year of teaching. As far as seniority goes, I have been here the third longest of any foreign teacher at our school, and I have been here for longer than ALL of the administration COMBINED. This is the very first year that I've actually been able to feel the age gap between me and my students, and I am finally beginning to ask myself, "Am I (gasp) OLD?" I'm teaching three of the same classes of students that I've taught in years past, but I also have one entirely new class, and boy, are they going to be a handful. My principal also decided roughly 8 days before school started to entirely change our math curriculum. That didn't leave a whole lot of time. So yeah... we just got our new material yesterday. School started three weeks ago. Um... good thing I am awesome at making stuff up and sounding convincing. I mean, I wasn't like "inventing" random math facts. More like I was just doing everything COMPLETELY from scratch with no curriculum. Thank goodness for experience. That makes it a whole lot easier. And this year is going to be a whole NEW experience as the new material we opted to buy is completely online, which means that students will be using technology (in the form of e-readers, ipads, tablets, and smartphones) in the classroom all day, every day. My principal has way more faith in a 9th grader's ability to use his iPhone for school purposes only than I do. Mostly because I know that if it were me, I would totally be playing Candy Crush the whole time.
4. Melanie came for a visit. And then left again. But that was pretty cool. So shoutout to Melanie.
5. MY MOM GOT FACEBOOK! WUTT? (Sorry mom, I couldn't resist.)
6. My Indonesian grandmother, Pak Kur's mom, died last week. If you are a faithful reader of my blog, you KNOW how I feel about death in Indonesia. This time was different. Maybe because I knew her. Maybe because I knew how much pain she was in before she died. Maybe because I am so close to the family. Maybe because I knew she was ready. Maybe it's because I know she is with Jesus. Maybe because when I looked down at her in her coffin, she looked healthier and happier than she had for weeks.
Because I am considered part of the family, I had to be there for all three days of the funeral. The day she died was basically just the visitation. They had her laid out in the house and everyone came to pay their respects and eat a meal. The second day was the burial. That evening and then on into the evening of the third day was the wake. I gotta say, it was almost a comedic funeral. At one point, a chicken had to be forcibly removed. They didn't dig the hole big enough for the coffin, so they stuck it down in as far as it would go, then three men jumped up and down on top of it until it finally went all the way down in with a loud BANG. Someone's herd of goats ran screaming through the graveyard while the pastor was doing the whole "ashes to ashes" speech. A woman passed out. They served plates of tobacco leaves and rolling paper at the wake. And I totally saw one old woman pull out a narcotic nut and start sucking on it during the sermon. That was AFTER she finally woke up.
OK, I think that's about the long and the short of it. Sorry it's been so long, but as you can see, there has been a TON going on. And sometimes I just need to process things before I can talk about them. So I hope you will forgive me for my hiatus, and I promise to write more soon! In fact, I'm about to write another post NOW!
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