Jaded Corps

This was not the July recap I sat down to write.

You see when you start teaching in the middle of the trimester you don’t have a lot of control over what your students already know. In fact, you don’t have any control over it at all. So the best you can do is to start teaching them from where you think the last teacher left off and hope that you get enough covered by the time the trimester ends for them to pass their tests. Now if there was anything that was royally inconvenient about my move, it was the turmas I inherited. And if you are one of my PCV friends you’ve already heard me complain about this and I’m sorry. Basically – all of my classes were wicked behind where they should’ve been which would be one thing if they really knew the stuff they were supposed to have already learned, but they didn’t. So I had 4 classes that were in 3 different places in the curriculum but who were all at least a unit behind, and didn’t have a strong enough grasp on the basics for me to rush through the rest of the topics. All of that was frustrating but I didn’t realize how frustrating until we had our government tests this week. I knew my kids would struggle because of how behind they were, but I didn’t anticipate how disheartening it would be to realize not one of my kids could answer a single question on the test in 8th or 9th grade. Not one. How do you not feel awful about yourself as a teacher after that?? Of course I know that this isn’t completely or even remotely my fault, but at the same time, my students failed their test and therefore I failed them. 

There is a lot of talk in the PC community about being “jaded” and for the first chunk of my service I prided myself on being able to stay grounded and only mildly jaded. We use this word “jaded” to describe the feeling you get when all seems lost and you’re no longer the wide-eyed optimistic PCV that was ready to hit the ground running as soon as you got into community. You’re “jaded” once you’ve accepted that a lot of your students are going to fail with or without your help, and that the children will never stop referring to you by the local word for “white person.” It’s a negative feeling and I am not a negative person, so jaded was not something I wanted to become. I knew that the difference I was making wouldn’t always be visible but would usually still exist and that was all I needed for awhile. But then I have weeks like this one, that come after being stuck at site for a bit too long without a break and not a whole lot of light at the end of the tunnel, and I really struggle to appreciate my impact. You see, when your work doesn’t seem to be helping anyone, even more when it appears to be hindering some, it’s really hard to justify the shitty times. Why should I put myself through all the struggles that come with this life if my main goal is to teach these kids and I don’t seem to be able to do that??

I’m going to stop you all there. 

I am not writing this post for you too all comment and tell me that I am making a difference even if I cannot see it and so on and so forth. Actually, I think I’ve said this enough times in this blog that I think I can make the blanket statement that I’m very rarely ever writing these blog posts to garner any reaction from you, my “audience.” Not that I do not appreciate that sentiment, because I do, but that is not my purpose here. 

So often throughout my PC journey from the day I found out I was accepted, up until this moment, when I told people what I was doing, I was hit with this wave of awe and admiration. There is an expectation that PCVs are making a huge difference in their communities while leading these really tough lives. But we aren’t. Most of my days are a lot like, if not easier than, your lives back home. I get up, do chores, eat food, and go to work. Yes, some of those tasks are a bit more labor intensive, and some of the daily interactions come with an added cultural or lingual barrier, but for the most part, my life is really normal. On a day-to-day basis I do not see my impact and while I believe that it is there, sometimes it is hard to avoid getting “jaded.” Mentally? I’m stronger than I have been for a long time. But emotionally? I’m a little disheartened and need some reenergizing. I’ll find my passion again, chances are it’ll be in some random seemingly insignificant act, but it’ll come. I guess my point is this – what happens to me, and I suspect other PCVs, after weeks like this, is what seems like “becoming jaded,” but I what I think is happening is normalizing. No, we aren’t saving the world and living in the trenches, but we do have a purpose. And in the most cliché way possible, if I can accept the things I cannot change then I can start to change the things I cannot accept. 

I would promise my next post will come sooner, or have more to do with my daily life, or would be more positive, but I’m not sure that’s something I can change 😉 Thank you for your continued support – as a reward here’s a cute picture of my cats. Oh, I got cats! More on them next time. Probably. 

– A