job

It is hard for me to explain my heart in regard to my current job.

In so many ways it has been a gift from God. The children, the languages, the smells, the issues, the vastly different paras represented...all of these things are so good for my soul, so life-giving, so fun.

I love sitting around at lunch with people from burma, morocco, russia, nepal, and talking about weddings and love and things like that.

I love hearing the lilting elongated vowels of the Nepali kids when they speak their own language.

I love when little Bidhan looks at a figurine of a farmer holding a pig and shouts "PIG MAN".

I love when our sub comes to tell me about Set and how she found him squatting on top of the toilet, and I, having seen it a million times over, require no further explanation.

I love smiling at scared moms and dads and kids as they walk into our school after being in the states for only days.

I love the smells that I can't really place, but assume must be some sort of spice used in Burmese food, as I smell it at the Ways and it permeates through the hall where my class is located.

I love friends who think a baby shower means literally showering a pregnant mom..who is shocked by this odd tradition.

I love when sweet little Hai Ny's say "I love your bracelet" while holding my necklace.

I love sitting at the snack table and quietly saying "i'm spiderman" knowing that an almost instantaneous roar of "i'm spiderman", "i'm batman", "I'm ironman", "ironman 2" will follow....first words for a young nepali boy to learn. =)

But.

I don't like politics. I don't like being given a perfect evaluation by my teachers. and a crappy one by someone who has no idea the expectations of my job or how I carry them out.

I don't like the idea of cramming whole classrooms of students into what was once a closet, so we can say we "served 1000" (yet none of them score well on the csap)

I don't like when people are given jobs because they have worked with the person calling the shots for many many years. that's okay if you are good at what you do. not okay if you are awful at what you do, and have no love in your heart for children (see child catcher post).

I don't like to be treated like I don't know how to do my job, because I stood up for myself against a teacher that has tenure. (and who also happens to be awful.) And how even though that was...6 months ago I'm still paying for it now.

So bitterly and so love-filled I arrive...day after day. So bitterly and so love-filled I leave...day after day.