A week's reflection

Teaching is a humbling profession,
I readily admit.

My 25 kiddos are warming up,
as I interact with them each day,
each individual with an interesting personality,
family background and personal habits.

I am also thankful now,
and a thousand other times in the past,
for a partner like my dear dear laoshi,
who has been a lifeline in more ways than one.
The horror stories of chinese teachers
being a nightmare, as told by my coursemates,
have not entered my workplace in recent months, yet,
though in the past, I did bad experiences with one.
Rude Awakenings, which I shall not go into.

She, of the cute china accented english,
who today pushed me on once again
when I started to worry about issues,
grappling with how small my classroom was to fit 25,
how the furniture never seemed to fit the space even
in all the different floor plans that we drew up,
the management of the kids with group work and play,
and the conflicting views of the Boss,
which just made it even more confusing.

Joy presented its much needed self,
when we solved our classroom arrangement today,
staying back to arrange and work out the issues
after observing the good and bad ways
that our kids have been using the space.

We awarded our
hungry tummies a nice lunch,
with the theme words flexibility
and change punctuating almost every sentence.
Yes, true accomplishment,
echoing this: Dong Xi Shi Si De, Ren Shi Huo De.

This I know,
that my line of work will always be a challenge,
in every aspect.
Complaints and feelings of resentment
are slowly fading away,
but do creep up in stress and
tension-filled situations in an instant,
with much regret.

I commit these to God,
knowing that what I think, do,
analyze and try to comprehend
will not be a clear and constant picture,
and that clarity in all things can only come from Him,
because humanly, it's just impossible
to have your senses kicking up
with so many things happening all at once.

To make it "work",
is just so much more than planning,
and even doing.
Acceptance, patience and being humble
comes into place, which I am still learning
as a person and teacher, even after 4 years.

Please keep me in prayer, dear friends.
I'm going to need alot of it.