Although most of us are ok, I think some of us are a little apprehensive of teaching younger students, particularly since we were forewarned that they could be a little difficult sometimes. I can't remember the last time I tutored 6th and 7th graders but I can remember me as a young middle schooler, and I know for certain that I was a pain.
In any case, I'm sure we'll all figure it out and make buddies soon enough but today marks a big change. For one, it's the 4th of July. Every 4th of July that I can remember was spent back home in the States. The idea of going to lecture at 9 am on Independence Day is unusual to say the least but the sacrifice is well worth it.
On Friday we wrapped up our IT training program with the adults. I received an email from my learner this weekend, expressing her gratitude to us for helping the Manenberg adults these past two weeks. It wasn't until I saw her email, that I realized what a positive impact, even if small, that our group made. I think it's easy to undermine some of the daily skills we possess. For most of us, computer skills was just a given. We grew up with computers, so we couldn't imagine IT training being as vital as it was. I think this week a lot of us struggled with the dilemma of whether our time and effort in South Africa was worth it. I think every service adventure comes with a misconception that you have to do something big, something momentous for it to be worthwhile, but really, it's the culmination of little things that amount to big changes.
Mother Theresa once said that, "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love".
I have no doubt that every single one of us fully invested our efforts into our learners. The degree of accountability and passion and frustration that every Vanderbilt student shared with his/her learner these past two weeks serves as testament of how much each of us worked hard to maximize our time with the learners.
To a large degree, the true value for us students was getting to know the Manenberg community. We came in with little knowledge specific to the Manenberg community and left with at least a deeper understanding of our learner's daily experience--one that I thought would drastically contradict mine but it didn't. It's easy to believe that just because someone lives miles away, on a different continent, in a different kind of neighborhood that they would be completely different to us, but my learner wasn't. She went to church, visited her relatives and went to the supermarket to buy food every week and travelled to the mall from time to time. Yes, our experiences are different, but the essence is the same.
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