First New Favorite

 

I should be grading final exams right now. If I just sat down and disciplined myself (like Scott; he is so good at sitting down for hours and just marking), I could get these done in a few hours. But I take tiny breaks to eat dinner, eat a mango, heat up food for our night guard Samson, take a bucket bath, cut my toenails, write a few emails, check my bank account, write these words.

I want so badly to capture this time. That’s all this blog is – an attempt to capture moments and thoughts, and I’ve been so poor at it. I’ve let these months in Tanzania go by without really doing it justice in writing.

I’ve missed opportunities to write about students – new and familiar – who have captured my heart, like Seuri Karisian. He is the young smiling Nyangula in a picture posted a few entries ago. I just got that photo printed so I can give it to him; he had asked for a copy of it a couple days after I took it. So many students ask me for copies of photos, but his request I’ll honor. To me, it seems impossible to not have favorites. I grew to love him – not because he’s the smartest student, not because he’s the most charming or cutest or outgoing but – because he kept filling in his reading log long after everyone else had stopped. I started the reading log in an effort to make the students’ free reading time (DEAR time = Drop Everything And Read time) more substantial and meaningful – after every book read, an entry should go into the reading log that mentions the title, author, main characters, setting, and why the student liked or disliked the book. It’s not hard but it’s something the students took seriously for about a month and then let peter out. I did the same. I think I checked their logs once in the whole semester. Despite this, Seuri K. was diligent with filling in his reading log until the very end of the semester. Not only did he log every book he read, he logged every book I read out loud to the class. And you know what? I think it helped him. His English writing skills have improved a lot and I owe it to his careful reading and his careful logging.

I also love him because he’ll ask questions like, “Teacher, can you bring me a bike?” or he’ll suggest we take a photo next to a bush because it’ll make it seem like we’re in the forest. I’ll never forget the time he had a huge open gash on his knee and when Scott cleaned it with an alcohol wipe, Seuri just laughed, a light, airy, high-pitched laugh. For this go-around, he was my first new favorite.