books books books

“You want to give up everything? After all these years of working, because, one night, some woman and her books—“

“You should have seen her, Millies!”

“She’s nothing to me; she shouldn’t have had books. It was her responsibility, she should have thought of that. I hate her.  She’s got you going and next thing you know we’ll be out, no house, no job, nothing.”

“You weren’t there, you didn’t see,” he said. “There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there.  You don’t stay for nothing….you ever seen a burned house? It smoulders for days. Well, this fire’ll last me the rest of my life.  God! I’ve been trying to put it out, in my mind, all night.  I’m crazy with trying.”

“You should have thought of that before becoming a fireman.”

“Thought!” he said.  “Was I given a choice...” ~Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, pg 24).

I’m currently blessed with the opportunity to live out my dream.  I am living and working in a community of people who at first glance appear very different than me.  We come from different countries, languages, cultures, ethnicities, religions…and these differences are made very clear, on a daily basis, as I’m reminded just how “American” I am. Yet, just as often as I’m reminded how abnormal and ignorant I am compared to everyone who has kindly and graciously accepted me as a friend and member of the family, I am equally often reminded of the humanity that connects us and allows us to share this experience we call life.  Together we question, together we laugh, together we sit, together we learn, together we misinterpret each other’s languages, together we eat, and together we pray. 

For the next two years I am teaching at Anda National High School in Anda Pangasinan Philippines.  I can not articulate with words how much I have fallen in love with the classroom. But, I will try. 

Growing up I was certain that I would never be a teacher.  I’ve wanted to be a lot of things, but I have never wanted to be a teacher. I don’t know how to clearly express ideas, I don’t have the creativity, and I don’t have the knowledge.  I spent fifteen and a half years trying to escape the classroom and break free into the “world.”  How naïve I was, and probably still am in some respects.  If it weren’t for the classroom, both the physical structure in a school building and the numerous chances I have had to meet people different than myself as I’ve seen and felt different places, I wouldn’t know the world.  I wouldn’t know there was anything to break free into. 

When I get fired up it’s hard for me to focus, so I apologize because this is going to become quite the chaotic description of my current feelings and ideas.  Luckily I have a soundtrack called “For the People” playing in the background to keep me centered.

I share five different classrooms a day with 40-50 students/teachers in each.  The transformations I’ve been experiencing day by day are overwhelming. The good kind of overwhelming. The kind of overwhelming where you are so excited, and see so much hope, that you need to force rationality and logic into your mind to keep you grounded to the soil that forms the foundation of your school.  It’s also an overwhelming that while filled with hope is also filled with frustrations and discouragement.  Things just seem wrong and unjust.  They seem so easy to fix, yet there seem to be so few solutions, at least tangible solutions. 

I’ve always been easy to anger.  I hear about one mention of an inequality or system of oppression and I’m the girl on the street shouting for a revolution of the system, the girl standing in front of rooms full of people demanding more effort towards empowerment and less focus on pity aid, the girl writing and submitting dozens of pages proposing solutions with words I hope defend the abused, the girl shedding tears as I aimlessly walk the streets that house the people I love as I wonder why change is so hard to achieve.

I remember many conversations and debates, or rather rants, concerning education reform around the world. I have all these utopian ideas on the way things should be and how the world would be a better place if we could just solidify a system of education that creates maximum opportunity for every human being.  On paper the theory works out.  On paper it’s easy.  Re-allocate some funds from here to there, get some teachers who possess a pure passion for the future and understand the development of a person, offer children a place of security where they are given food, where the words they read take them to a place of liberation, where they see themselves as capable independent thinkers who possess the power to transform the world into a place of unified love and support. 

I think words are the most powerful gift a person possesses. While papers can be burned and mouths can be silenced through terror and violence, words remain resilient.  Words spoken by one person are forever a part of the listener’s soul.  It is permanently engrained into his/her being whether he/she is conscious of it or not.  I need to believe this.  I also believe that words felt and sang by a person’s heart will always be a part of that person.  No one can silence a heart.  That is one right, one freedom, that can/will never be stolen. 

The high school I’m working at has a very limited number of books, and the books they do have only contain stories that are a maximum of five pages long.  My students/teachers are craving more words.  They are craving stories and histories and truths.  I am so impressed by the words they write and the thoughts they are developing and the questions that transpire in my hours with them each day, but I feel I am robbing them of a true education as I can only give them a fraction of what they deserve. 

I believe the “teacher” should be guidance, not a master, not an expert.  A teacher should inspire investigation, questioning and argument, and a classroom should be a space of exploration and discovery.  However, in my classes I have found that, even in this short period of time, my students/teachers look at me as an all-knowing guru. We talk about philosophy, history, culture…life.  But, because we don’t have computers or access to internet and we don’t have books, my students take my words as truth.  They have no other opinions, no other insights, no other opportunities to hear or red a different perspective.  While I try to give two sides to every view my students are intelligent and can see my biases.  I’m a jaded person after my years of exploration, and my students are adopting my interpretations of the world as reality.  I need books. I need other people’s words.  I don’t remember history enough to be an expert.  I don’t know enough about the world to be an expert in anything.

Also, my students want to read books.  They want to read stories and poetry.  They want to hold a text and flip through the pages.  They want to have the skills to read a book and comprehend it.  Today they asked me if we could read more, and write about what we read.  I said class is only an hour each day, but we could stay after school some days and make a reading club.  The students were ecstatic about this proposal.  I’m going to see what I can do but I’m afraid that this is currently impossible. There are no chapter books in order for this to happen (I don’t want to use their text books because I don’t want some students to be sections ahead of those who don’t come to the reading club).  I have a few books on pdf files on my computer, but there is no way for me to print them, and even if I could, I can’t afford to print them. 

I want students/teachers I work with to realize they have the ability to think. I believe this realization is possible through the reading of books.  Books have the ability to take us to places we couldn’t previously imagine, and they make us discover ourselves as they take us on journeys throughout time and place introducing us to people we know and the most bizarre strangers.  Books allow our minds to expand.  When we realize we have the power to think, we realize we have the power to speak, and then the powers to share and change.   We realize we are real people who possess rights and futures.

“So come out of your cave walking on your hands, and see the world hanging upside down, you can understand dependence when you know the makers land…I need freedom now”~ Mumford and Sons, The Cave.

If you know any way to send books to the Philippines, or any organizations that donate books around the world, PLEASE PLEASE let me know.  We need books.  We need a future of active, confident, thinkers who strive for a better world.