To be honest, there’s a lot I’m
dreading about my rapidly approaching second year of teaching: the intricate
bureaucracy, the sap-slow staff meetings, the focus on punishment instead of
praise, the throng of school practices that defy logic, the demands placed on
me as a white foreigner with connections and a computer. But there’s one thing
I can’t wait for: seeing my kids again.
The student I’d predict to be most
likely to go to university is Samson. He announced in the first week that he
hoped to become a priest, and he did so in a sort of high-strung, highly
enunciated, holier-than-thou manner that made me not like him very much – but
he has since become one of my favorites. I marvel at his sincerity, his effort,
and his limber way with language. He works miles ahead of anyone else in the
class, forms sentences with varied structure, and has definitely reached the
same neighborhood as fluency. And he is always smiling.
Jacob is the other star of Form 3,
but he’s a little trickier to figure out. He perpetually wears a knowing smirk,
and for good reason – usually, he does
know. He readily raises his hand and jumps at opportunities to perform, but
always with this slow, sly swagger, a posture that seems to say, “I don’t care
that everyone’s watching me, but I know
everyone is watching me.” Mysteriously, that classroom swagger fades on the
street. He lives closer to me than any other student in the school, and yet he
never comes up to me on his own. In fact, he is downright shy. I can’t explain
it, but obviously the image you choose to project can be complex, especially
when you’re 16.
There are other students who are
less intellectually flashy, but whom I’ve been lucky to get to know. Petros is
one of my favorites – he has the look and walk of a young Barack Obama, but
presented in a wildly friendly, almost puppyish way. He drifts easily between
the school social circles, but always sits alone in class, seemingly by choice.
And he puts a heartwarming degree of effort in his English, despite the fact
that it isn’t his best subject, and despite the fact that he is not the
brightest in the class. He is hard not to notice.
There are others as well, of
course: quiet, contemplative Richard, who prefers to just listen but writes
spectacularly when given the chance; sweet, eager Elijah, who leaps at the
opportunity to erase the board for me; sassy, straightforward Thoko, who is a
girl with the air of a woman; and beautiful, brave Maggie, the first of any of
the girls to approach me on her own, often the only girl to speak up in class,
and the student who delivered an argument so passionate, cogent, and bold in
one of our Life Skills debates that I consciously thought, “I want to be like
her.” There’s whisper-voiced Felix, who I sense does not get treated well by
his classmates, but whose time will come, and there’s multi-dimensional Benjamin,
who runs with a rough crowd and comes to school erratically, but has started to
glitter under the right light, turning in essays with surprising fluency and
looking at me with more engagement and fascination. It’s hard to say who will
still be here next year – my guess is the two suspendees, Bornface and
Hastings, have slipped away for good. But others are harder to pin down, like
Stanley, the boy who disappeared from school for weeks, was put in jail for
attacking a woman, and then came to my house on a Saturday afternoon asking for
help with his English. We’ll see.
The ten-year age difference between
me and most of the Form 1s creates a much different dynamic. They’re more
boisterous and bouncy, eager to talk because they’re less self-conscious about
what they don’t know, but terribly difficult to talk to because everything they don’t know happens to be a lot. It’s a
very female-driven room, too – Judith, Chance, and Bubile would run the whole
show if allowed. (And to be honest, they could,
undoubtedly). It’s harder to get to know the Form 1s in the sea of faces, but
there are some standouts: adorable Cecelia, always in a pink jacket and ready
to offer a guess, even if she is (unfortunately, usually) wrong, and
mischievous Chiku, who means well but can never be trusted. (On an end-of-term
survey, in response to the question “What did you like about this class?”, he
wrote “You because you are so beautiful and wonderful and delicious.” Oh god.)
There’s quiet, sharp Prince, who confided in me that he hopes to become a
teacher “just like you”; Salayi, whose grades from the beginning of the term
are almost unrecognizable compared to her final exam results (in a great way!);
and sweet Divason, who sits in the back with rapt, faintly lovestruck
attention, sending encouraging smiles my way that really help, whether he
realizes it or not.
I admire them and I’m maddened by
them. They disappoint me and they amaze me. And I cannot wait to see them in
two weeks.
