Blog #3: My takeway from this experience:

Blog #3 My takeaway from this experience.

This week went by in a blur. I tested my limits on energy in the classroom spending all my time creating a great experience for my students. After we pulled through our final day of teaching, we came home to prepare for the party. The party was very interesting and equally crazy. It started off casual as students started coming in and we greeted them. We took plenty of photos with each other and they conversed with the best English they could (I’m glad to say that their English had improved!) Then, at a particular time in the party, we told everyone that the snack bar was open which consisted of a very large assortment of chips and candies. It was at this point that kids went out of control! From across the schoolyard to the band area kids came running like this snack bar was a giant magnet. Instantly they were piling over each other grabbing as much stuff as they could and running out with multiple bags of chips shoved between their arms. It was sort of similar to when a piñata breaks and kids start scrambling over each other grabbing every last piece of candy they see. In a couple of minutes the table was completely cleared! I captured an amazing photo of one of my previous students who had shoved an assortment of chips and candies into his pants and was laughing proudly at his accomplishment. Looking back at this experience I realized that there might have been something deeper going on. These kids might have been grabbing so much to provide for their families instead of out of greed or joy. This saddens me a bit because I have met some of their families and sometimes they rely on every last bit to survive so seeing this much food was like Christmas for the kids. 

For the rest of the night we sang and danced until we said our tearful goodbyes and walked home. While walking home, I started realizing that I may never see those kids again. It was a bitter sweet night as it marked the end of our hard work but now we had to let our students go and hope they can live better lives. In some cases, English is their ticket out. Living in Morocco can be hard from struggling to provide for your family to dreaming of greater things but not having the right connections to be able to travel. Our lives are completely different in America and it makes me realize how privileged we are. It makes me feel guilty of my life.

In truth we are all human beings living on the same Earth. So similar yet so different. Carl Sagan made a speech about our earth to prove that exact point. During Voyager 1’s journey out of our solar system, he convinced the astrophysicists to turn the camera around back towards us. The historic photo was captured of a beaming ray from our sun enlightening a very small white dot which was our Earth. He stated that everyone we ever knew, every single record of our history, and every crazy discovery all happened right there on that little white dot. My life, my student’s lives, and everyone’s lives I have ever loved share one major thing in common. That little white dot. Even though we are basically all neighbors on this planet we call home, all it takes is crossing an ocean and the poverty levels increase, opportunities decrease, and people’s views on others change. Our world is a confusing place and sometimes I want to remind people that other ethnicities and people are just like us. They just grew up on a different land mass making their hopes and dreams for the future altered sometimes forever.