Pride

Each night when I create my lesson plans, I worry that they will be too boring or too simple. I get nervous that class 8 won’t want to listen to me or that they will lack the desire to perform the tasks I assign them. But each day I am proved wrong over and over. The reality that I am presenting them with something new is enough for them to care. The students devote themselves to their work in a way that amazes me day after day, year after year. It seems as though I should have grown to understand and even expect their full engagement by now, yet there has not been a moment where their constant yearning for information has been anything short of incredible. The students take perfect notes, are constantly asking how to pronounce words, and desperately beg me to provide them with new definitions. Their goal is to do their classwork correctly, not completely.

The passion which is felt in the classroom is something which is nearly impossible to describe. On Monday I taught a lesson about modern appliances. It was wonderful to see the students so interested in things they had never seen before and even some things they had never heard of. To help them imagine what one looked like, we made small replicas of washing machines using paper and tape. The next day a boy named Nishan brought me a washing machine replica that he had built at home. Instead of being made from paper, the sides were composed of cardboard which he had painted blue, a cup had been glued into a hole he cut to represent the opening for the clothes, and buttons were pasted on with unbelievable precision. Nishan, a boy who has most likely never had the opportunity to see a washing machine with his own eyes, felt so strongly about something he learned that he took the time to create a perfect prototype without any help. He demonstrated the passion, creativity, and love each student brings to the classroom on a daily basis. They want to know more, to build more, to be more.

It is not only education which the Nepali people devote themselves to. It is their religion as well. The streets and buildings which were destroyed in the earthquakes are still being repaired everywhere you look. Four years have gone by, yet not a single moment has passed without a reminder of the devastation. Reconstruction is happening at all times because the Nepali people are driven to get back what has been taken from them. Their strength to continue and perseverance to recover never seem to waiver. Women walk the streets carrying bags filled with bricks and men work day and night to return those bricks to their original position. The same way the students have pride in their classwork; the citizens have pride in their homes. They want them to be strong and to be beautiful because their name is on it. Because they are responsible for them, they own them. And in Nepal that means something.

I have been inspired to engage in my tasks and work to make sure everything is I do is done to the best of my ability. Because I am Zoe Booth. And I want that to mean something.