Zamzam Water and Kisses

A lot of people ask me why I don't teach in America.  "If you love it so much, why not America? And if you really did want to teach, why travel so far away and leave home? Why here?"

Well let me tell you why. You know why? Because in America I wouldn't have students showing up to class excited to share a cup of Zamzam water ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamzam_Well ) with their teacher, that their grandparents brought back for them after completing the Hajj.  Nor would I have students who start class only after they give me a kiss on the cheek  Nor would I have students that I can be affectionate with. Showing them both kinds of parental affection: extreme kuchi koo cutness lovy dovy love to encourage them, and strict, reprimanding, scary, yelling, firm,discipline to straighten them up.

If I did that in America, I might have a lawsuit filed against me or I might be ousted from the teaching line all together.  For showing feelings.  Or not being a slave to bureaucratics.

I go through massive ups downs when I'm teaching.  It's not fun breaking up fights, or having to scream, or having to feel like you're baby sitting kids instead of teaching them.  27 kids, 40 minutes at a time, 5, or 6, or 7 times a day.  And it's not fun dealing with their tantrums or their sheer volume, which fires up your nerves into smoking, flaming, smithereens.  Or pulling them out from beneath chairs, desks or cupboards.  Or having to hear 10 of them speak to you in their loudest voices about 10 different things, completely unrelated to class.  Nor is it fun when they are angry at you, nor when you've lost your temper, for the umpteenth time during the day.  And it's really not fun grading stacks of papers and notebooks filled with incoherent, illegible scraps of writing that gives you a migraine just looking at it.  Nor is it fun having to correct every snippet of conversation kids have with you to correct their verb tenses, pronunciation, or vocabulary.

But certain moments, when you have a student who runs up to you in class, and they share something with you that is extra special to them and you see them act in the most humbling, selfless way, opening up their hearts to you completely, which then makes you realize how lucky, and blessed you are as a teacher to experience raw, pure, selfless love that most people in the world probably don't know how to experience, you understand why it was that you chose this path in the first place. They live on the tip of their innocence, volatile and sensitive, yet forgiving and compassionate. It makes you realize how much you can learn from your students, instead of the other way around.