In all likelihood, this past week
was my final one as an English teacher. I have to admit that I am not entirely
unhappy about that prospect. While, I have great relationships with my three
teachers and I love all of my kids – well, most of them at least – I would be
lying if I said that I really liked teaching. I enjoyed working with immigrants
and refugees in the US, and as I was assisting as an English teacher, I assumed
that I also enjoyed teaching. However, after two years of teaching here, though
I have gained an enormous amount of respect for the teaching profession and now
truly understand how difficult the job really is, I have discovered that
neither my passions nor my future profession lie in teaching.
My final three weeks may be the
busiest of my time here in Tonga. While this is in some ways a blessing as I am
not constantly thinking about my date of departure and all that leaving Tonga
really entails, I also have to remind myself to step back once in a while and
soak in the incredibleness of this place and all that it has meant to me. My
schedule looks something like this: From the 22nd to the 26th,
during school break in between Terms 3 and 4, I will be completely focused on
the running of Camp Grow and Glow. The following week we are back at school for
last minute test prep to prepare the kids for the Class 6 Secondary School
Entrance Exam, and administer a South Pacific Study Exam that is being used by
New Zealand to observe the varying education levels of primary school students across
several countries in the South Pacific. And finally, the week I leave we have
the actual Class 6 exam, a possible farewell feast in my honor, and the packing
up of my house and the distributing of all that I am leaving behind for the people
in my village, before leaving on a plane the next morning for the main island.
But for this last week, I was
still teaching. In fact, we handed out report cards to the parents on Friday,
so I had to assess the kids, give them letter grades, and think of what
comments to write for their parents. While doing so, I looked around at all the
children and realized how much I will miss them. I have already jokingly, and
maybe not so jokingly, told them that they cannot like the new volunteer better
than me, and that they need to promise to cry on the day I leave. Many of them
have pinky promised – yes, that is a thing here too – me to do so, but I
genuinely wonder if due to their young ages they will remember me in the years
to come. I hope so. Tongans love Facebook and I would certainly enjoying seeing
an ex-student friend me 5 years from now, assuming of course that they remember
that my real name is not Soni.
For the most part this past
week was simply about finishing up. I had to collect data for Peace Corps to
quantify how many of my students have improved by at least 10% in their
speaking, writing, and reading of the English language. Though I am by no means
a particularly impressive teacher, I am happy to say that almost all of my
students greatly surpassed these benchmarks and I could not be more proud of
them. They often drove me crazy in the classroom, and I’m sure at times they
had no idea what I was trying to get them to do or learn, but in the end this
experiment was a success for both them and me. I may not love teaching, but I
could not be more impressed with my students and have been so fortunate to work
at GPS Houma.
Some of the kids playing beside my house
Mele, 'Ana, and Mele weaving
Teli and Toua coming back from sweeping (Tongans don't rake they sweep) the leaves at school. And Lisa, my class 4 student, in between
Mandy serving Kava to two men from my village, my neighbor Mana on the left and 'Ofa on the right
Our Kalapu (when we raised money for the camps by serving kava)
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