.......and there goes the first year of teaching.......OY.....

.............Warning...........this is a long one.........you may need some coffee.........

I have avoided posting for the last few months-mostly because I didn't really know what to write, or how to explain my last few months of life. I will try to recap the last semester of school; however, that will probably take more than one post. Perhaps I will begin a retrospective series at some point when I remember/feel like writing about good things that happened. Right now I think I'm just distracted by all of the challenges.

I would have to say that the 3rd quarter was probably the most difficult. I have the delightful personality trait of being extremely critical of myself and whatever I'm doing. I also tend to only look at all of the ways I'm failing rather than the things I do well. The third quarter was spent comparing myself to other teachers and wondering why they won at life while I managed to fail at everything. This, of course, was not true (either of them or me), but that was where my thinking was stuck.

In addition to teaching being a bit of a mess, my personal life wasn't faring much better. First, there's figuring out living in China which is.......you know......foreign (pun fully intended there:). My spiritual life/quiet times were not effective. Eventually I was quite depressed and basically at an all time low. I couldn't reconcile all of the Truths I knew about Him with what I was experiencing in life. I sincerely felt like He had removed from everything/everyone I had ever known and placed me so far away from my comfort zone I couldn't even see it. That all would have been fine if He was there, but at that point I felt like He put me in this place and then left me alone to figure it out. Again, I knew the truth that He had not left me alone, but that's how it felt. And it made me angry.

Things continued like that for awhile. I can't pinpoint the exact reason or time that things changed, but there was one moment that sticks out to me. I was preparing for my ESL class (which currently has only 2 girls that are not excessively talkative), and the principal was going to come observe my class. I was, of course, nervous the night before. I remember talking with Him and asking, "ok, I want to look like a competent teacher so please help the girls talk and participate so that the lesson looks effective." After this, I stopped and realized how completely self focused I had become. I tried to think about the last time I had asked Him to help me figure out lessons and things that would help the students learn effectively and be comfortable trying out their English skills in my class. The fact that I couldn't remember the last time I had been more student centered in my requests disturbed me.

I believe that moment was a bit of a turning point. I won't say that my challenges disappeared and I suddenly became super teacher, but it removed the pressure when I put the focus back on the students, where it should have been all along. And so the year ended on a much better note than that semester began. I am still working through the same things, and probably will continue to work through them, but I realized that it's something I need to face and figure out rather than getting angry and ignoring it.

This might be slightly cliche, but I enjoy music and there is a song by Tenth Avenue North that I think kind of captures some of the stuff I was thinking about over these past few months. Plus, I'm kind of impressed that I actually figured out how to put a video link on here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAVHeVDML5k

Now I just need to figure out how to post pictures!