Patience

Patience is a virtue, I suppose.

A week ago, this admission would have seemed almost irrelevant—a mere cliché. But a week ago was before last Monday. A week ago was before I learned that patience is hard, harder than waiting through a dull class, or out-lasting the mischief of bothersome younger siblings, or any number of other things I mistook for patience during some twenty-or-so odd years.

A week ago, that is, I lost my patience.  A week ago I brought an activity for the children at Fundación Ñeque that I knew would be challenging—perhaps, even, I precipitated its certain failure—but I went for it anyway. It was a game, after all … it seemed fun. Furthermore, I had played Memory with my five-year-old host brother just months before and thought perhaps the children at the foundation (although somewhat less well-behaved) would understand and enjoy it. I had no illusions, really, but even the small expectation that it wouldn’t end in complete disaster was, apparently, a little too much.

Everything went wrong. I spent $7.30 printing the game in color. (Apparently color copies cost 1100 percent the cost of ordinary black-and-white.) And later, after I had already arrived at the foundation and was helping a student with her homework, the teacher interrupted our work and ordered—yes ordered, not asked—me to begin the English lesson. Which means that before I even found myself in front of their many expectant faces I was already feeling extraordinarily out-of-sorts. (Teaching while grumpy is something that, with my limited experience in the classroom, I have not yet mastered. Few teachers, I would add—even with lots of experience—ever master that one.)

And then, then: the children. Some ten or twenty kindergarten and first-graders and all wonderfully affectionate; unfortunately, they match their degree of affection with an equal degree of disrespect, disobedience, and an impressive ability to defy instruction. Needless to say, the game was a royal fracaso.  The children couldn’t sit still, couldn’t wait their turn, couldn’t listen to my explanation without touching the Memory cards, couldn’t wait for me to give instruction without interrupting with something totally irrevelant, needed constant contact … in short, the children just couldn’t do it.

And that’s when I lost my patience. That’s when I yelled, and clapped my hands, and my voice became oddly metallic, and I didn’t like the hard-water taste of it in my mouth. That’s when I frightened myself a little bit, and I nearly walked out of the foundation crying.

And frankly, I’m still not sure whether I was in the wrong, or oddly in-the-right. (I did apologize to the students the next time I came in.) But I wonder, when is patience passivity? When is patience merely enabling their disrespect? (Because frankly, that’s what it is). When is caring gentle, and when is caring firm? And how, how do I get through to them?

In the three or so months that I spend here, is it even worth it? (Because it's certainly not viable...)

Or is that merely giving up?