All I want to do is climb on a plane and fly home. Is that too much to ask?
My time in Ghana has been filled with the highest highs and the lowest lows. When things are good in Ghana - they're great and full of laughter and so much fun! But when things are bad in Ghana - Ghana roundhouse kicks you to the face and then steps on your chest to make sure you aren't getting back up for a while.
What is it about us humans that makes it so much easier to focus on only the bad? What is it about us humans that makes us WANT to focus on the bad instead of the good around us? What IS that? Who wants to be miserable? Me, apparently.
I've just been so intensely discouraged at school lately and I don't know what to do about it. I know that any problems in the classroom originate with the teacher and that it's my fault what's happening and it's up to me to fix it - but I'm lost. All I see around me are students who don't care and want everything the easy way. They just want the answer and care nothing about learning the information. No matter how much practice I give these students, no matter how many worksheets, no matter how much reading, no matter how many problems I solve on the board in class - nothing I do is ever enough for these students. On almost every quiz and test some of my students have taken this semester, a certain fill-in-the-blank section has been included. They've seen these almost exact questions several times. Just glancing through a test these students took shows that several of the students are STILL MISSING THE QUESTIONS. Even after I remind the students to study their previous quizzes and tests. Even after I mark their questions wrong. I don't understand what to do. Then this morning I walked in to class to things like, "Miss Lyle, you're wrong! You gave us a wrong answer. You made a mistake! Hahaha." I had already been alerted to the mistake yesterday by one of the students but by that point class was over and I didn't have a chance to fix it. Yes, I made a mistake and no, I don't have any problems with admitting that because I did make a mistake. I told the class that yes, I made a mistake in the calculation because I used the wrong value for one of the variables and I gave them the new, correct answer. What am I doing that makes these students approach me in this way? WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?
Some of my students hate asking me questions. "Why?" you might wonder. Because I never give a straight out answer. I usually always ask them another question to try and help them figure out the answer for themselves. How can it be bad that I want to try and enable them to think for themselves? Almost always they ask me questions they can figure out for themselves if they would take me seriously when I ask them to think. Half of learning science is learning a new way to think in a problem solving way. I try to help my students learn that but I just feel like I'm beating my head against a brick wall. I guess I can't force people to learn if they just don't want to.
Okay, seriously. Just caught a student drawing on their desk. I told them that they will serve lunch detention and they told me that they didn't know it was wrong to write on the desk...
.............
Um, too bad?
I feel like I do so much for these students and all I get back is... well, not much some days. Granted - some days are really good and I get to laugh and joke with my students and have fun while getting done what we need to get done. But then other days... I'm sure I'm not alone in this and I'm sure it's much the same in schools all across the world - and no, that doesn't make me feel any better. And maybe I'm just having an exceptionally bad day and that's all it is, I don't know. All I know is that my students don't listen to a darn thing I say and then blame me when they miss something. I'm tired of being blamed. I'm tired of taking responsibility.
What am I doing to cause this behavior? What should I be doing instead? What should I stop doing? I didn't come to Africa to yell at students all day.
I need prayer. Prayer for my attitude and behavior. Prayer that I would be completely surrendered to God and the working of His Holy Spirit in my life. I can't fix or change any of this.
I can't do it.
But I know One who can. I serve a God who is mightier than all of this. Who knows exactly what I'm feeling and what I'm going through right now. He also knows exactly what my students are feeling and going through. Pray for my students. Pray that I would be sensitive to what they need. Pray that I would be open to a new direction for my classroom if that's what it takes.
Please help me to bathe this situation in prayer.
I've been trying to hold on to it and do it myself for too long. All God is asking of me is to surrender it to Him. He knows what to do with it. He knows the right course, the right words, the right everything. I'm supposed to be in Ghana working for Him anyway, so why do I try to hold on to what's rightfully His with such a strong grip? WHY???
"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." James 4:7
If I'm not submitted to God, does that mean I'm serving the world - the devil? If I'm not totally submitted to God and serving Him... then what am I serving? My own agenda?
At the end of my time in Ghana, I want so much to be able to say what Paul said in 2 Timothy, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." When I finish here in Ghana I want to be able to say that I did something good for the Kingdom here. That I kept my faith and submission to God above all else and shared it with others - my students. I want to finish well.
Please pray for my students and I as we struggle through this.
Thanks for letting me ramble and work through this. Sometimes I just need what's in my head to spill out to get it organized.
Leaving Ghana 9 weeks from tomorrow.
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