What is the Meaning of Success?

It’s hard to believe that there are only 4 weeks left of school. Difficult to believe that I have spent 9 months living in a random corner of the world, and difficult to believe that I have entered classrooms now for nine months and filled countless hours with that strange thing called ‘education.’

Education is a strange thing. Once you release it, it can sprout and blossom. Or it can simply die. I have released this thing into the world through my words and actions and can only hope that it has not just fallen on hard ground and withered away. Despite the frustrations that have followed me throughout this great endeavor, I have been able to witness some of the buds that have grown from my efforts.

One of the easiest ways to see progress is to start from the very bottom. I was assigned the Basic English class and was placed in charge of girls who could barely get past basic conversation let alone read and write in English (I don’t blame them. They either live in Guatemala or have parents who don’t speak a lick of English). The ambitious, literature-loving me began the year with visions of inspiring my students with Shakespeare, Milton, and all the rest of my favorite authors. I foresaw deep discussions, well-written reflections on themes and symbolism, and just inspiration, pure and simple. But my ambitious delusion was put into perspective by week two of teaching. (The first week was filled with introductions and icebreakers. I didn’t really have much time to figure things out before, especially since I didn’t know what subject I was teaching until the first day of classes.) I had assigned a poem to read entitled ‘Life’s Success’ It was a fairly simple, straightforward piece of art that I thought even the least literary inclined could handle and enjoy at least a little. We went through the poem. The students have a natural inclination for music and enjoyed listening to the rhythm and meter of the poem, even if they couldn’t fully grasp its meaning. We finished the reading and I looked around at my smiling students.

“Alright girls, can you tell me what this poem is about?”

Silence. The first time the chattering had stopped all semester.

“Surely someone can tell me what this poem is about?”

Is it cliché to say that I could hear a pin-drop? Because that would be a pretty accurate description. I had to change my strategy.

“Are there any words in this poem that people don’t understand?”

“Miss,” one brave girl replied, “What is the meaning of ‘success?’”

I was floored. How could they understand the poem when they could not even understand the main word in the poem’s title? My dreams of a year of Wordsworth and Steinbeck had been crushed. I had to make some new goals, and, as we were already two weeks into the term, I had to make them quick. My dreams of literary analysis swiftly morphed into dreams of basic vocabulary skills, basic writing skills, and basic reading comprehension. I plugged away at it all year, lecturing on verbs and prepositions, quizzing on vocabulary words, reading stories paragraph-by-paragraph, wondering if we would ever make it to the finish-line with such a slow trudge along the way. Instead of O. Henry and Guy de Maupassant (Two authors I loved when I was in highschool), I was forced to enlist the help of some of my other favorite writers, from Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein to my own dear friend, Sarah Cramer. Instead of Dramas and Sonnets, I changed my tune to Fairy Tales and Limericks. It was a much more enjoyable compromise.

Months passed, and I could only hope that some of the seeds that I had planted had taken root. What I discovered was a pleasant surprise and some comfort in the fact that the year is quickly coming to a close. We were reading our final selection for the year, “The Alchemist” by Paolo Coehlo. Due to my lack of copies, we can only read it during class time and quite honestly, it’s slow-going). It’s not a difficult read, by any means, but leaps and bounds more advanced from what we began the year with—so many big words! One afternoon in this past week, we were sitting outside and reading the story aloud in turns (Their ability to read aloud and enunciate properly has been one of their greatest improvements. I blame Mrs. Malone for burrowing proper reading skills into my head, making it necessary for me to pass them on.) and we came across a rather dense section of writing—plenty of big words and abstract descriptions. I was almost nervous to ask the meaning of the phrase “The crystal retains the aroma…” (It seems trite, but English can be a little tricky sometimes when don’t know the meanings). But I did it anyway.

“It means that the cups they’re placing the tea in can hold the smell well.”

Leave it to little Beatriz to make my day. I let out a giggle of delight and my students probably thought that I had had too much sugar today. It’s not a big victory, and I know I can’t take all of the credit for it, but it felt like we had finally made it somewhere. In teaching, it’s the little things that make your day, and I’m glad to get a small glimpse of the progress I have worked towards all year. The success of this year is knowing that, even if we haven’t quite reached the finish line, at least we’re moving in the right direction.