what it was like

I remember during my ESL course we had an exercise in which we were to imagine teaching at “Island School”. At this school (on a remote island, supposedly) we were only allowed to choose one piece of teaching equipment. We had to debate amongst ourselves whether we would bring ESL books, a projector, a printer, a computer, etc. What a fun conceptual exercise! But I was going to Korea. I needn’t worry.

Then I went to Honduras. In order to have handouts (or tests, or quizzes, or a crossword activity to keep students subdued for fourteen seconds), I had to go to the office, kick the secretary out of her desk and print a copy of whatever material I wanted. The printer habitually jammed. No one knew how to fix it. Except perhaps the secretary, who was on the phone by this point. Then I would walk across the commons to the small printer / storage room where I would write down however many copies I wanted and leave behind the master copy. Eventually Javier, the school’s handyman, would get around to making the copies for me and track me down mid-class. I had no projector. My laptop speakers were far too weak to drown out lawnmowers/ saws/students/ flies/ cows/ dogs/ fans/ elementary kids “singing”, and the screen too small for class use anyway. The books? The ultra-conservative homeschool ones with old English bible verses? A wasteth of thine time, though for posterity’s sake the students and I attempted to muddle through. Whiteboard markers were always running out of ink, but to leave the classroom meant to leave the classroom, and I didn’t know how many students would be left by the time I returned. It was also questionable whether the student I sent to get markers would return, so one disappearance vs. the entire class was a continual calculation. 

None of these hurdles were impossible. Yet all the small frustrations managed to deplete whatever energy remained. It always felt like I was spinning around in octahedrons, desperate to find a rhythm. I never did.