The Kindergarten classroom of Centro de Educación San Pedro sits in a place where anyone who is in the library, the teachers’ lounge, or the principal’s office can hear everything. This includes, but is not limited to: the angelic lulls when each of my five year-olds is fully committed mind, body, and soul to his/her respective Lincoln Log pile, the clamorous transition into lets-throw-some-Lincoln-Logs-at-the-ceiling-fan time, the random shrieks from the kid who doesn’t know why he’s shrieking either, the seemingly endless simultaneous appeals beginning with “Profaaa”(to tie shoes, to call out the latest puncher, to hear what they brought for merienda, to listen to the story about the frog that was in their aunt’s bed last night), the time the bookshelf fell over when Tomás climbed up to get the toy airplane on top (Tomás lives on, not flattened, merely shaken, praise God), the strum of the uke, the rich bonn of the steel drum, the time I taught the second part of the Spanish “heads, shoulder, knees, and toes” as “eyes and sheep and mouth and nose” (and the poor lil guys all just kinda went with it), the soft operatic vibrato I use in order to avoid my own shrieking when there are tiny headlocks and wrestling matches at my ankles, and in the earliest days, the one or two times I truly yelled.
The Kindergarten classroom of Centro de Educación San Pedro sits in a place where no one in the library, the teacher’s lounge, or the principal’s office would ever assume it was a room of perfect people. But if they stepped inside, and stayed long enough, they might just see a miracle.
I think it’s around day 24 of school—probably after one of the mornings I lost my patience and yelled and would soon be sent Larygitis the Great Pacifier once more—when I cross paths with the principal of the school, who gives me a warm chuckle, the saintly nonjudgmental soul she is. With a pat on the back, she says, “Profa Ally… y Sus Terribles,” as if all she’d heard from her office (and, as established, she definitely heard it all) was her storyboard pitch for a novel, and she’s already envisioning a cover page.
I chuckle right back. “Ah, sí. Sus Terribles Preciosos.” Ah, yes. Her Precious Terribles.
“Pero mejor cada día, no?” But it’s better each day, right?
“Sí. Verdad. Verdad. Mejor cada día. ” Yes. True, true. Better every day.
Though still very much a neophyte in this teaching world, I was no longer, praise God, the same Kindergarten teacher I was after day 6. That one who could barely get the kids out the front gate before the frustrated tears started flowing. Who sat by Enrique the security guard, as he wisely but to a very non-receptive audience kept repeating, “Oh Ally, Ally. I told you it was going to take a special patience. I told you.”
…..
Patience. Not so much the wait, but moreso the acting now with the utter trust that it’ll play out as it ought to, that the victory song incessantly sings its fanfare on some plane that transcends all that tries to tell you otherwise in this world.
So you quiet down to hear its melody, act as that Victor prompts you to. No matter how crazy it feels.
…..
After Day 6, the puffy-eyed Profa Ally walks away from Enrique the security guard, back to her classroom, and makes a Valentine card for every one of her students instead of napping on the floor or resigning or giving every utterly objectively adorable five year-old a 2-week suspension. All of which seem like fair options.
Starting with the girl who keeps robbing markers from my desk and scribbling on the wall: “Isabela is kind and creative and I’m so grateful she’s in this class.”
The boy who scaled the feeble bookshelf and keeps sucker-punching everyone: “Tomás is full of spirit and intelligence. He has an incredibly pure heart.”
The girl who rallied half the class for an exodus to the playground in the middle of my well-planned-out colors game, who consistently knocks down all the block towers of the blameless quiet kids who don’t provoke anyone: “Sonia is a leader in our classroom. She is intelligent and she is kind.”
As far as I remember, these weren’t written with a smile, at least at first. Yet something beyond my petty, tired thoughts knew that I was writing truths, what needed to be said. And Peace found me once more as I remembered these kids as they are.
I sent the notes home with the precious terribles the next day, with the instructions that they have their parents read them out loud.
The next morning I preceded blocks time by dramatically announcing each student’s name, with a drumroll and a radio voice.One by one, I called out their gifts, expressed their important place in our class, thanked them for coming. I asked each stand up, and then prompted the rest to give a fuerte round of applause to each and every announcee. Quickly they warmed up to the strangeness of the production.
And though I had yelled before and though I’m a second-language, grammatically questionable, kinda unqualified profa when you get right down to it, at the end of the wee ceremony, Julián calls out, “¿¡Y la Profa Ally?!” so I stand up and receive an applause only a baffling-ly loving God would ever allow me to deserve.
…..
June, 2016. Profa Ally, three summers ago. For the sake of letting you all in on a secret. Father Joe, the tiny old Italian priest, sits down with me for lunch in the midst of my orientation at the St. Louis Center. Amidst all the policies and paperwork and “behaviors” and seemingly impossible task of being the primary caretaker of a unit of young men with disabilities, he speaks stillness into my cerebral control-freak storms: “I know everyone makes this place out to be so hard. But the trick with our kids… is to let them know you love them.”
Let them know you love them.
…..
It gets crazier, one might say. Profa Ally, Day 25. Peace also prompts me to abandon my original popsicle-stick-in-colored-cups “behavior management” strategy completely, and replace it with a lot more affirmation. I begin repeating “Somos amables,” We are kind, such an obnoxious quantity of times that now I can at any moment say, “¿Somos qué?” (We are what?) and there will be at least a 75% response rate of, “¡¡¡AMABLES!!!”
I reward particularly kind moments with the blessed magic- adhesives-sent-from-above we call stickers.
As for the particularly unkind moments, which still happen a lot, we remind ourselves to breathe. (Particularly, I remind myself to breathe.) We are….amables.
“Mírame,” I’ll say gently as I kneel to Sara’s altitude. Look at me. “You are kind.” That hasn’t changed, even though you forgot it, disregarded every instruction, and crumbled Lina’s Rainbow Fish project. “I believe that completely, you know that?”
Usually, eventually, they’ll meet my eyes. Eventually they’ll nod. On a good day, Sara turns to Lina and says she is sorry. On a less ideal one, I’ll tell Lina, “I’m sorry this happened. You don’t deserve it. Watch, we can make your project even better than it was.” Both forget about the conflict in about fifteen seconds.
Sonia steals Tomas’ blocks and Tomás puts her in a headlock, so we step back, we breathe, we remind ourselves who we are, and then at recess I catch Tomás gleefully helping push Sonia on the swing. Two smiles of kids who were never bad.
Julián is having a particularly tough time not sucker-punching anyone who invades his bubble today, so I take his hand and lead him just out of the classroom to speak some Truth into him, so he bites my finger, which totally catches me off guard, even though in hindsight I probably should have seen that coming, so I call out in a bad British accent to my Kiwi friend in the teacher’s lounge “Charlie bit me!” and I’m able to smile at Julián in a way that he knows I hold no guilt over him, though his face displays full-on shit-I-just bit-the-Profa mode, and then five minutes later he’s happily coloring and offering genuine compliments about the crayoning abilities of Mariana. Kind words of a kid who was never bad.
When I ask my five year-olds, “¿Quién nos ama?” (Who loves us?) there’s about a 95% success rate of the response “¡¡¡DIOS!!!” (GOD!!!!)
“Sí. Y Profa Ally tambien,” I’ll add. (Yes. And Profa Ally does too.) “¿Ustedes saben eso, verdad? (You guys know that, right?)
“¡¡SÍ!!”
…..
The Kindergarten classroom of Centro de Education San Pedro sits in a place where all of the teachers and students in grades 1 through 6 must walk by it on their way to the front gate. This means that—given that my brain isn’t a little pile of ashes from the morning and I do in fact have the luxury of leaving the door open— my prep periods after I’ve said adios to the tiny people for the morning and before I say hello to first grade English are often scattered with visitors. Chats of weekend plans, with touching my ukulele and steel drum without asking me, with impromptu photoshoots, with planned ukulele lessons, with confirming that the rumors of my famous stash of American pencil grips left behind from the last Kinder teacher are indeed true/ coincidentally having the complaint Profaa my hand hurts when I write, and with simple, “Hola Profa!” pop-ins.
One day a fifth grader swings by and offers her sympathies based on her interpretation of the Kinder situation. “¿Usted anda en relajo con los de Kinder, no?”
In the rural Honduran colloquial, this translates more or less to “You operate in mayhem with those Kinder kids, huh?” but “relajo” in other contexts–or perhaps merely other perspectives–can also mean peace, or tranquility. Kind of like standing in the midst of what seems like mayhem, and just knowing that you need not despair. Strumming the ukelele during the thunderstorm. Giving a double hug to two five year-olds about to kick one another in the noses. Loosening your grip on needing your class to walk in perfect lines. Handing over the illusion of control, trusting one day it’ll all fall away and Love will have the final, eternal say.
Sometimes what looks like utter chaos (and yes, still often feels like it) is actually what I now think is the richest part of my job. I love that the first part of Kinder’s morning assembly has become a huddle where everyone lets me know how they’re doing, tells me about the snake they saw on the way to school, confirms that they saw me running yesterday, informs me on the latest Chupacabra sighting. Or how we learn about the letter C by making imaginary cometas (kites), running until we trip over ourselves to launch them, and “flying” them out in the grass to the amused bewilderment of more dignified onlookers. How we are all perfectly comfortable parading through the library, belting out about the maravilloso love of God. How if a visitor comes to the classroom or the playground these days, the response is less frequently hiding in shyness and more frequently yelling, “¡¡Buenos Dias!!” as they stumble over one another into bear hug formation. I think it is hilarious and delightful that in the middle of my dramatic reading of Green Eggs and Ham:
Julián: *indicates* You have a zit on your face, Profa.
Profa: Yes.
Julián: I pop it?
Profa: No.
Or, in the middle of coloring in the “B” worksheet:
Mariela: Profa, profa, profa!
Profa: Yes, Mariela?
Mariela: You have no boobs.
Profa: Yes, Mariela.
And though very rarely in the moment itself, I actually love that at least twenty times a week I find myself in the middle of class at a total loss as to what to do, likely with closed eyes and yoga breathing, on the brink of wanting to call it all quits, fully aware of my long list of unqualifications, unable to really do anything other than say, “Oh Good Lord, I really need your help. Lead the way. Show me how you see this. Show me Your miracles working beneath the surface.” Because without fail, He does. And I recognize that it was never in my hands. That I can go on trusting unconditional love and that will be just crazy enough.
I can love sitting down with the five year-olds during blocks time, making phone call with the rectangle pieces and being the only customer passing through their boat shops. I can love that Tomás gets so excited that it’s blocks time that he actually falls off his chair and breakdances in a circle. (Though I’m still struggling to love that Tomás’ parents give him coffee every morning). I can love that when the time comes for Prayer Intentions of the Day, it becomes a cacophony of the names of every single one the Kinder scholars’ family members for the past seven generations. I can love that my post-lunch coffee, novel, and nap will be extra glorious and absolutely guilt-free.
I can love the relajo in the chaos sense, even on the days where it seems like no one is going to follow a single instruction, because it doesn’t alter the relajo in the Peace sense I know, and of course, love. I can love that we are just a band of humans–the little guys in a big new world, led and loved but certainly not controlled by the strange, tall, clumsy, soft-spoken Gringa–slowly finding perfect freedom in this place against all odds.
…..
Profa Ally, the Saturday after day 51. I’m next to Enrique the security guard again, but the eyes are dry this time, minus all the sweat. He’s accompanying fellow volunteers Ruthie, Anna, Dayelle, Olivia, and I up the mountain to the home of Sonia, where we’ve been invited for lunch. My first time officially visiting a student’s home.
Her mother, Maria, fries a chicken for the occasion. Her dad, Paulo, buys the 3-liter Coca Cola. Every plastic chair from their one-room home and a tablecloth-ed fold-out table occupies the entirety the front porch. Sonia and her older brother sit on the railing, eager to show us the iguana that Bear the dog (…or is it Dog the bear? I ask with feigned horror) caught this morning, that they put out of its misery and tied up in preparation for dinner this evening. Later by the outdoor fogón Jamison climbs the tree to show us the resident baby birds. We have an impromptu belting out of the “Yo tengo un gozo en mi alma” (I’ve got a joy in my soul) song with the cousins and neighbor kids who wander in too, my eyes drinking up the towering green palmed mountains all the while, and Maria laughs with/at me, “Still holding classes, are you, Profa?” And all I can think is:
This is a beautiful scene. This makes absolutely no sense.
That’s when you get quiet again. The victory song is still going strong. Something beyond this place tells you, “From here it does.”
……
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is Love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” 1 John 4:16