A Different Kind of Classroom

Today was one of the days I look forward to. After language, I headed out to the village where I help to teach now and then. It is a long, hot bus ride, but once I have arrived, that doesn't seem to matter to me anymore.

I'm pretty sure that the children teach me more than I teach them, anyways!

I was warmly (and loudly) greeted by the children as I went searching for my glasses, and hankie to wipe my face. We all settled in and began our usual English lessons. These children have learned so much. I am so proud of them. They were sounding out sentences today, which is a long way from only knowing letter names of capital letters a few months ago. They were even telling me the meaning of the sentences in Hindi to show that they were not only reading, but comprehending! It was a good day.

After I had written a sentence on the chalkboard that was propped against an outside tree stump, I gave the children a few moments to write the sentence and look at the words before we read it together. My mind began to reflect on my previous teaching eperiences and how today was so different from any I have had before.

The children age from maybe 5 to 12 or 13 years old. They are dressed in clothes that have been discarded by others. They were only able to write the sentences I gave them because I also supplied the pencil. The chalk almost allowed me to write legibly on the chalkboard. There was at least one puppy that ran between my feet and the underside of an old couch that had been pulled up. One of the students, who is likely 6 or 7 years old, had to bring her 2 year old brother with her because he was her responsiblity today. He was not planning to sit quietly while we all had school, to say the least. The teacher's almost 3 year old sang songs from a few feet away from the make-shift classroom, and the teacher nursed her 5 month old baby girl. All this in the hour and a half that I taught English, Hindi and Math!

Is this the classroom I dreamed of as I studied at Auburn? It isn't even close. But it is the one the Father had planned for me today, and there isn't anywhere else I would have rather been. How he blesses us far beyond anything we could ask or imagine!

~Heather

*Thank the Father for such an amazing opportunity.
*Ask the Father to allow these children, and their families, to come to know and trust only him.