Le Struggle

It's been a long, busy month.

I remember in June saying that I would try to post updates to this blog about my Thailand adventures every other week. Perhaps I was a bit too ambitious; nonetheless, I still hope to be able to do that.



August Highlights

To sum up August over here at GES in Thailand—at least for me—there is only one word: Gong Show. The first week of the month heralded the last week of our interim Chemistry teacher's presence, as she was to return to school on the 7th. Being the resident Chemistry teacher, it was my job to take over the course load that she was bearing & incorporate it into my already busy schedule. At that time, the school hadn't really considered that 8 of my 24 hours of in-class instruction were directly conflicting with the Chemistry course load that I was to resume. Having been myself filling in for another class—the English 10B course—I didn't really have any flex room, and the school didn't really anticipate the fact that there would be no 10B English teacher when I took over Chemistry. I'm pretty sure that the Thailand mentality of "ignore it & it will fix itself" came much into play here, where my thoughts are that they were hoping I'd be able to teach all of the high school math classes, all of the high school chemistry classes while still managing to teach the 10B English class at the same time. In fact, the first copy of my revised schedule reflected just that—that I was to do all of this. Thankfully, the laws of physics overruled the school & my restriction of only being able to be in one place at one time won out (though, as we will see later on, this wasn't an isolated case).

Jumping into Chemistry was alright, for the most part. At the beginning, I pretty much had to have the students tell me what they'd learned in the course so far, for although the previous teacher covered the content, with these students there is no guarantee that they retained a single thing. As for my 10B class, they were pretty much abandoned for a whole week, until the lines of communication finally connected & it was discovered that the school was short one teacher. For the next two, weeks, however, the 10B class was completely dissolved, being conglomerated into he 10A class—a student body whose English proficiency is, for the most part, pretty good (in contrast with 10B who, at the beginning of the year, didn't know what a door or a window or a stair was). The 10B parents were becoming a bit upset with the school, for the students were placed into classes & were not given any textbooks with which to study. The sad thing is that not a single person knew how long these students would be remaining in these classes.

Then one day, there was a bit of a "melt down." I was asked to come into the Thai administration office for a chat, and pretty much I was told that the parents of all the 10B students were making very angry phone calls to the school, questioning the academic standards of the school and—since I was technically the "home room" teacher for the 10B students—that I was the primary cause of this "failing" of the school in the parents' eyes.

I was taken aback, to say the least. After being lectured about not doing my job, about not teaching these students, about not having enough textbooks for these kids, about failing these students' parents & failing the school in one of my primary job requirements, I was then officially directed to create a new ESL class which would occur at the same time as my current ESL instruction time, where I would be responsible for an intense, comprehensive instruction plan for these 10B students, to help them with the coursework that they currently were taking. The great irony was that not only was I not teaching the 10B students at all any more, but that having the 10A & 10B students who were enrolled in ESL for the morning (which is supposed to be a total of 14 students, but only one ever shows up) to be part of the same class for ESL in the morning was strictly forbidden—there would be too many students in the one classroom. I mentioned this to my employer, but it fell on deaf ears. I was, then, perforce to teach two separate classes 5 times a week at the exact same time. End of discussion.

Feeling greatly encouraged, being told that the school's failings to its students were my fault because I didn't have enough textbooks for the kids (which, apparently is my responsibility, even though the school didn't order enough textbooks to begin with)—even though our English administrator told me to not bother with textbooks for these students, since they couldn't understand the material anyways and that they would be moved to a new class as soon as things were worked out—I went back to my classroom, trying to figure out how in the world I would be able to teach two classes at the same time without being in the same room. No, no I didn't do that. I instead thought of just walking off the school property and never coming back. I had had it.

But then, my first class of the day began & the students—praise the Lord for them—lit up the gloomy day with their smiles, energy & enthusiasm for the material. Were it not for my kids, I most definitely would have been gone before lunch that day.

After school, I talked to our English administrator, telling him about this "meeting” that I had had in the morning. I let him know that there was absolutely no way that I could be doing this, and I asked for his advice help. He picked up a sheet of paper off of his desk and handed it to me, saying, "Here."

Not sure what I was receiving, I looked at the sheet & was immediately met with a wave of dumbfounded relief. He had handed me a schedule for the new 10B teacher, and after a second of me looking at it, he said, "That should probably help." No kidding. Needless to say, my anxiety and stress levels immediately dropped from a balmy 300% to a more manageable 85. Oh, and I decided to remain teaching at the school.


Current Conditions

Right now, if you were to ask me how I was doing, I would probably tell you that I was drained, strained and empty. I've been chastised from some of the lower grade-level teachers of doing too much work, that my personal health (mental, physical & spiritual) would be at-risk were I to remain working at the same rate that I currently found myself. They're right, admittedly, but I unfortunately cannot see myself reducing the workload. I am teaching advanced Mathematics—algebraic theorems & trigonometric proof that I myself don’t even fully comprehend, yet I am responsible for disseminating said concepts to the children in my classroom. Needless to say, I spend hours pouring over the material to try and wrap my mind around the information enough to be able to present it to the students in each & every lesson. Suggestions have been made to me to let the students teach themselves, but I don't know if these students—who, as a whole, haven't the determination to complete 6 homework questions in 3 days—would be capable of "teaching themselves." At present, I employ a cooperative learning approach to instruction in my class, grouping the students into teams, where a representative distribution of abilities (poor students & over-achievers) are compelled to work together in order to progress along a scheduled system of rewards. It works out well, but even the brightest students wouldn’t be able to teach themselves this material. Ask yourself: could you effectively master the concept of "rationalising the denominator of radical expressions" all by yourself, or do you think that someone who's at least been exposed to this stuff sometime before would be of great benefit to your learning?

That being said, I am at an impasse. I feel torn in many, many directions. I am overwhelmed with the amount of work that I have to accomplish on a week-to-week basis—so much so, that it beings back dreadful memories of those 100+ hour school weeks during final projects with my double-major (the temporal investment here doesn't appear to be as much, but the feeling is reminiscent—one of dreadful drowning). However, I am fully aware that the only way I can accomplish this task is to rely wholly on God. And there's the catch: I've no time to give myself a respectable meeting with God anymore. Deadlines, projects, marking, content mastery & lesson plans all haunt me for 18 hours each day, leaving me only with a 6 hour respite in my dreamless sleep.

Add on top of all this, the desire to retain some semblance of a presence within our community, and I might as well tie those concrete shoes onto my feet before jumping into the swimming pool. I am consumed by work; I am stretched by community; I am torn by my relationship with God. As a result, I feel empty, broken and useless.

I have not felt more alone spiritually right now than ever before. God seems to me to be a distant memory, and I constantly have to fight off the thought that Christianity is a delusion. I feel abandoned by God, yet I cannot cast Him off: I've seen Him & experienced Him too much to say that He isn't real. He just seems to have gone on hiatus or something. Or rather, I am probably much too busy doing stuff that I do not give Him the time of day to commune with me.

Would I say that I'm under spiritual attack? I'd love to, but since I am currently _in_ this situation, I cannot really say that I am—the thought that I've been living a hoax is just as prevalent in my thoughts, so there is no consolation; there is no way for me to judge without bias. You, oh reader, probably can. If you're of the spiritual persuasion, you'd probably conclude that there is a war going on & since I've placed myself in a front-lines ministry position, I'm apt to be attacked pretty heavily. I myself just do not know. Not anymore.

All I know is that I'm tired; I'm empty; I'm stretched to capacity & I would like some rest. Please don't quote any Bible verses to me about coming to God to get rest—that will only exacerbate my frustrations.



But please, do pray.