Fear and Challenges

I read of on a friend of mine’s Facebook status one day in passing. “Do something every day that scares you.” He was talking about how he had been fighting cancer and the scariness of that. Having that fear of not knowing if he had tomorrow taught him to appreciate what he had more. But after he was in remission, he realized it was this really this sense of fear that taught him to live more fully.

Another fear - crossing the river when the water is over the bridge!  As you can see the motorcyles aren't going so people walk across or they pay someone to carry you on their back.  I just pray I am in a truck.

This idea runs through my head often as I live in Haiti; especially when I am flying down the mountains on a motorcycle. Every time it scares me I am always thinking what if a large truck meets us on the road or the rocks or slick and so on. Lately I have diving into teaching. I never imagined myself as a teacher; I never had any intentions of being a teacher. But I am working in Education here; Education is what people need to change their futures. I have observed many times the various classroom dynamics here. I have watched teachers both at our Primary School and our English teachers with Living Media. The teaching process in Haiti is memorization. The teacher puts the words on the board and the students copy them down. Then they memorize, the same with their lesson books they sit and read the books like a chant memorizing every word. It is definitely a different style to learning then I am used to. But it works, but does not necessarily promote creative thinking.

Lee and I were discussing this one time and came up with the perfect analogy. It is like when we put the desks together at the school and the children helped. Brent Olson showed them how to put one together and it was like the kids had logged it into memory how to do it. They put together the others very past and Brent even thought faster then they put them together in the States. They watched it once and had it. I have heard many people say this about Haitians – It is amazing how fast they learn something. They watched us and then they did it. But I think if you just set those pieces of wood in front of them I am not sure they could have guessed how to put them together. However if you showed an American how to do it, I think it would take longer to pick up. It would have for me at least a couple times of working with someone else and then I could probably learn it. However, if you left the desk there for an American to figure out – eventually they would get it and put creative thinking to use to assemble it. I remember this same illustration when I came to Haiti with the Solar Oven Partners. It took me several, several times of showing me how to put these ovens together. But my Haitian brothers and sisters they would watch someone do it – and then they had it. Often times correcting me in the way I was putting it together. It is just different styles of learning.

Anyway – what does this have to do with fear? I want to figure out how to teach my Haitian students more effectively. And I realized that scares me this idea of trying to figure out how to teach and, also wanting to give some of the teachers some tools to also interject some creativity and critical thinking. Almost every day I have been ‘breaking the rules’ I have put my students in a circle in the classroom instead of rows. And the day we did numbers I didn’t even write anything on the board – we just practiced saying the numbers with each other. The student themselves look fearful at this thought of ‘changing the rules’ of learning. But after awhile I see them having fun and learning and enjoying. Without a little fear I am not sure you can continue to grow – so challenge yourself. Step out and scare yourself a little or maybe even a lot.