All’s Well that Ends Well

This morning I turned in my final grades for my first school year. It’s been a rough path to get to these final grades. In the first three weeks of school, our class schedule changed four times. I began teaching in classrooms with no windows, no doors, and sometimes desks in temperatures that cause one to perspire as much as I’ve ever encountered. But low resources weren’t the only issue.

The students were also a battle. I taught only in the afternoons (our school doesn’t have enough classrooms to host all five grades at once), which meant my class day was 12:45 to 6. If I taught first period, approximately 10 students would be on time. The rest trickled in throughout the first hour of school. And if I taught in the final time slot, I could only hope and pray that their other teachers had showed up. If not, I could have anywhere between 18 and zero students. And then there were the students that didn’t bother to attend class. They figured I wouldn’t notice one missing student in a classroom of 50. Or they figured they could buy my favor like they would another teacher. I tried my hardest to incentivize attendance, but still I was left with 75% of my students in full classes.

But the largest difficulty, and the most difficult to swallow, was the system itself. In a country where there aren’t enough teachers to go around, and too many students in each classroom to merit individual attention, students are passed through years of schooling without ever learning the material, or how to learn, or even to enjoy learning. As a result, teaching intro chemistry becomes infinitely more difficult. This past year, I tried to teach chemistry- a naturally difficult and interwoven subject- to students with no critical thinking skills and no intellectual curiosity. This means putting the pieces together in the grand and complex puzzle that is chemistry becomes nearly impossible. The words on the blackboard can be written in notebooks, memorized and regurgitated, but any meaning in those words is lost in translation. I can write the definition of conservation of mass on the board and explain its significance every class period. But no matter how many times I explain it, these words won’t describe the reason we balance a chemical equation.

But through all these adversities, shortcomings, and problem students, I realize there is still so much for me to learn. I’ve always recognized that there is more I can learn; more books I can read, more subjects to study, and more cultures to experience. But I seem to forget that these things are privileges, which can be taken away so easily. So, perhaps next year when I’m frustrated that my students still think atoms, elements, and molecules are synonymous, I will stop to remember that my schooling was my privilege. Perhaps next year I won’t try to teach chemistry to students who don’t know what the word ‘triple’ means, but will try to teach that school, that knowledge is a wonderful opportunity to open so many doors to so many worlds.

Perhaps this school year didn’t end well. Many of my students will not be happy with their grades. I certainly am not happy with many of my students’ efforts. But perhaps Shakespeare had it wrong. Maybe all is well despite poor endings.