Measuring Success

On the way to the airport I was going through my last minute emotions, excitement and anticipation mixed with nervousness. My parents and I began discussing their opinion of my ongoing travels. Different from my first years they no longer express concern for safety (ok, at least less) but this year they challenged me to find answers to the effectiveness of these trips.

Typically, at the end of the summer, all that sticks with me are the delights.. the joys of watching children laugh, reflecting on what was learned and what was taught and mostly the joy of seeing walls of division melt into friendship. What I forget are the difficulties at the start (good thing). I forget about the language barrier .. that while we all speak English, my accent to some makes me unintelligible. I forget about introducing new concepts and how different it must seem from anything they are used to, and I forget that I will have to overcome my position of “honor” (that comes from being a teacher and a foreigner) and that it must be overcome by slowly building trust. Really, before they will trust me as a teacher.. they need to trust me as a person…

So, success is hard to measure (at least by the standards people want to hear about). Last week I taught concepts that didn’t seem to fly and complicated because I missed two days at the school because of a "bandh." I also watched teachers laugh in nervousness because I wanted to join them for lunch.

On Thursday night I prayed to know what to do.. I didn’t really want to leave materials that I had not shown teachers how to use.. but we were out of time. As I prayed I was reminded that they definitely could not use what I did not leave. So, I left everything.. giving them a brief rundown on what was there and trusting that my job was only to teach and God’s job was to instill in them the desire to use the concepts. While I have no clue what will be used and what will not be used or how to report “success” in that regard (yet).. three teachers did join me for tea on Friday at the hotel.. and that.. is success… we weren’t giggling in nervousness but instead giggling in friendship .