September 7, 2006 7:00 PM

I am the WORST teacher in the world. At least that’s how I feel at the moment. The kids ate me alive today, and I vacillated between wanting to run away crying and wishing I could throw each and every child off of the nearest available cliff. The volunteers here who are teachers tell me this is a normal feeling to have about one’s students about once a week, so I guess today was my day. Everything I tried to get them under control only made things worse. The very eloquent speech (with my Spanish? I don’t think so) about mutual respect seemed to work at the time, but by the end of the day many were promising equally bad behavior tomorrow.

It didn’t help when the local teacher (whose nickname is now Spikes so that she doesn’t know when we’re talking about her) ignored my request to come into the classroom and remind the students that they have to listen to the volunteers and behave in their classes, etc. Spikes does have a big responsibility with Muenala. There are now 36 students (including the little ones in the Jardín), spanning ages 3-12. She has two classrooms in which to operate. So believe me, I recognize that her job is hard. But when she chooses to spend all of her time with the four second-graders, there’s really a problem. So while she deals with four students, I now have 13 students in grades 4 and 5 to teach (Sally ended up with the Jardín rather than me). The last two days she hasn’t even stepped into my classroom.

So I’m frustrated and feeling really defeated after today’s demonstration of thoroughly bad behavior that I couldn’t reign in. Tomorrow I’m going to try a different tactic. Rather than being the disciplinarian, I’m going to try to kill them with kindness. I remember back to being in middle school and torturing substitute teachers who showed any sign of being flustered. My hope is that approach will ease the feeling of being a walking target for every naughty behavior kids can dream up. But if anyone else has any suggestions they think should work, feel free to send them my way. Apparently I can use all the help I can get.

The obvious question, I imagine, is whether or not I’m still glad to be here now that the going is tough. The answer is a resounding yes. Today I feel ineffective and incompetent, but tomorrow I’m going to try something new and see if it’s any better. One of the reasons I came down here was to build confidence in my teaching skills – now I realize I’ll be doing that from the very bottom up. I have another 11 weeks at Muenala, and that’s a long time for the kids to get to know me and trust me. It’s also plenty of time for me to make mistakes and be forgiven by the kids; to have days that I can’t stand them and days that I want to take each one of them home with me; days when I question my choice to teach and days when I know in the depth of my soul that I’m meant to do this work.

One thing I’m realizing out here is that nothing is static. The stuff that’s getting me down today probably won’t exist in a week, and definitely won’t in a month. I have to learn to be more patient. And I also have to be more willing to learn from the tough days, like today, in order to make them fewer and far between. I’ll admit that I came home and hid out in my room feeling sorry for myself, but as I write about my day I’m feeling much more optimistic about tomorrow and the weeks ahead.

And thankfully tomorrow is Friday and therefore the close of the first week of the term. I’m told that it takes a week to get into the swing of things here, so hopefully next week will be better. I’m also heading out of town this weekend with my host family, and I’m so excited. They own a farm in the cloud forest where they’re in the process of building a small hostel. It’s supposed to be beautiful and peaceful. I plan to swim in the river, read, and relax. It will also be my first truly Spanish-only time since I’ve been here. Because the other volunteers speak English, I spend a lot less time speaking Spanish than I originally thought. But this weekend will be all in Spanish – great practice. I don’t even plan to take any English books with me.

In other words, it’s all good.