Mr Burnzy’s first class

Right now I am in an odd mood. It’s almost…a flat feeling. Yet I don’t know why. I should be feeling fantastic.

I’m in Peru learning to teach English and tonight was my first class. I taught English to Peruvian teenagers. It started awkwardly.

The classroom had a tin roof, a wall of grills on the side (windows with no glass) and a picture of Mother Mary in pride of place on a shelf at the front of the room.

The first two children arrived to the class 15 minutes late and when I started writing on the board the first time I dropped my pen. I used the bend and snap but at the top of the snap my head hit the shelf where the Mother Mary picture stood. It hurt.

Meanwhile, my South African mate Adriaan is also about to begin his class. 

I didn’t realise until after the lesson that the force of the blow caused the picture to fall forward.

It got worse when students kept steadily coming in, some 40 minutes later. I thought ‘ stuff it!” with the order of activities I had planned, and kept it to the same active exercise we planned at the start.

I made sure new students entering the classroom during group work were divided among the more experienced students. I get why my teachers were so cranky that I was 5-10 minutes late to class. It really affected my development and what that teacher could do.

But as my students went on and absorbed more I found myself talking less, letting the students take the lead.

At the end when I finished one of the brighter students handed me my pencils I had lent him.

“Thank you,” he said, smiling at me, in perfect English.

I have felt amazing several times. I have walked on a catwalk to applause, and made people laugh at my stand-up comedy. I thought these were great feelings.  But it was not like the glow I had inside me at that moment. It was a burn and this burn was purpose.

Still, purpose or not, I went straight to the bar afterwards with my fellow teachers.