I searched for the word to talk about how i've felt after the 'coming home' of the cycling trip. i feel... free. light. like i don't need anyone or anything really. like everything i need to live and to cope, i have within me, within my means.

The word came to me today, in a short bliss when i drove on the highway and the sunlight illuminated the paddy fields, the landscape around me and i thought for a moment that happiness is munching on muruku, those delicious crunchy things loaded in good spices, given by my student, made by the closest thing she had to a mother.

The word was - self-sufficient. That's how i feel. And self-sufficient means, yes, that i earn enough money to physically sustain myself and everything i physically need; but also, that i am emotionally sufficient for myself now, no longer to need emotional attachments or outside admiration to feel worthy. that i also do not need anyone's approval to feel alright. that everything i need to live, to cope, physically, emotionally, spiritually, i have within, and within my means.

That's alright. That's an alright way to be feeling after many years existing on a false sense of helplessness.

its because i have broken and have put myself together. Also, it is why i decided to keep teaching - because in that it pays me, and it gives me a sense of purpose, and in that the relationship with my students gives me a way to feel emotionally and spiritually both fulfilled and needed - it is one good decision that keeps me feeling self-sufficient. because that is what we should be doing anyway, more and more of the things that make us feel alive, feel like ourselves, that keeps building a force that grows and feeds back into itself - self sufficient.

Teacher Thoughts

1. Care. That is number one. It starts from the heart. If you care for them, if you learn their names, they will know it. They will fall into your circle of influence. This will show in your attitude towards them - in whether you smile at them, how you greet them.

2. Be consistent. Do not lower the expectations. Do not bend the rules. Do not 'pick your battles'. Make the rules clear from Day One. Hold it every.time. Each day's goal is 100% students 100% doing what you want, what they need to succeed in this class.
This consistency is what will change their behaviours; change their lives. Also apply it to yourself. Be consistent with routines and structure.

3. Make routines. Anything that will be repeated. Make it a routine.

4. Do not repeat things. Say it once, follow through.

5. Do not raise your voice or show emotion / frustration. Always tow the line of the management system. Rest in it doing its job.

6. Teaching English is building blocks. The basic brick is vocabulary - words. Build word banks. Then sentences. Then passages.

7. Make charts.

8. Create jobs from day one. Kids invest in being an active participant in classroom culture building.

It's not easy at all.

It's easy to breathe, to exist.
Living? It's hard as hell.  It takes courage to show up day after day,  to keep pushing to be where we are, to hold on to dreams, to not be beaten by brick walls around the way. It takes a special kind of strength to hold on to innocence and do things out of a good heart. It takes strength to not become the one who is bitter when compared,  as we all do, to the success of others.

It takes fortitude to live with and through pain, and failures, and the realisations of how truly limited we are; truly needy, and yet, truly alone. It takes a hidden treasure to walk with life through days when you suffer from a dry soul.

It's the simplest thing, and the hardest thing.

they never found her body. the man who worked in the stall nearby reported seeing her walk into the sea. he thought it was strange that she was all alone, and she looked entranced.

Later they would find leftover cans of beer in her car; cigarette butts in her room. a video left on her laptop of her singing, 'its times like these we learn to live again'. pieces of writing, of poetry that she had written at different times through the years. a picture of her smiling.

1.

the hurting person
the hurting teacher
pushes the sticky welcome of the floor away
defying gravity
and with the crumbling remains of debris,
puts one foot in front of another.
smiles,  adding an extra cheer in her voice
overcompensating for the deep hollow echoing inside
hurting teachers; hurting parents, hurting workers everywhere

we build with blood weeping from our broken parts.

tell them i was broken
tell them....i was pieces of a broken pot
but for all the brokenness; all the empty pieces and jagged edges, all the bleeding of the substance i tried to hold
i did my best
to love
to embrace
to have a life of meaning
with all my broken pieces

breathing out slowly... letting go.

to feel heavy and light at the same time..