Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Two quotes on my TFA farewell poster by two students that I love that caused me to tear up:
"Last year I wasn't reading good. Miss Kara helped me grow in reading." - TD
"My favorite memory is a picture of me and Miss Kara." -BL
(only I know, and now by default all of you, that for this child with autism, who refers to memories in pictures, he means that his favorite memory is the picture in his mind of the two of us)
I truly love these students, and I am consistently surprised by how many more tears there are left when thinking about them. I hope and pray they have more teachers who encourage them to become all that they can be and give them the skills to be successful. I hope they make the right choices. I hope they defy every dooming statistic. I hope they lead meaningful lives that they can feel proud of. I hope that one day I hear from and about them. They have meant the world to me.
"Last year I wasn't reading good. Miss Kara helped me grow in reading." - TD
"My favorite memory is a picture of me and Miss Kara." -BL
(only I know, and now by default all of you, that for this child with autism, who refers to memories in pictures, he means that his favorite memory is the picture in his mind of the two of us)
I truly love these students, and I am consistently surprised by how many more tears there are left when thinking about them. I hope and pray they have more teachers who encourage them to become all that they can be and give them the skills to be successful. I hope they make the right choices. I hope they defy every dooming statistic. I hope they lead meaningful lives that they can feel proud of. I hope that one day I hear from and about them. They have meant the world to me.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Today I said my final goodbyes to my students. I actually lost it sitting next to one particular student with autism, whom I've had for the last two years and to whom I've grown particularly close. He kept wanting to talk about the arcade, while tears ran down my face. Eventually he understood this was the last time I would see him, and he became upset, and he told me he'd miss me. I could not control my emotions as I told him to help his mom with using e-mail. Another student I couldn't find until he was on the bus, and the best I could give was a wave through the window. It's rough. I've truly loved these kids and given my last two years to them. They'll never really know how much I've loved them and how much I will always care for them. I hope and pray for the best. This is the end of one chapter.
Monday, May 09, 2011
As most of you know, I live in a rural parish in Louisiana called Pointe Coupee. As you may also know, there has been serious flooding all up and down the Mississippi River, and the crest is slowly rolling toward us. At the moment, the eyes of the state are on this parish due to the existence of two important flood control components: the Old River Control Structure and the Morganza Spillway. If everything goes according to plan, there will be significant flooding just to the West and East of us, but we will be spared, as will Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The levees have to hold, and the control structure has to hold. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers, as we hang tight and wait.
Here are some interesting links:
About the opening of the Morganza Spillway -
http://www.nola.com/weather/index.ssf/2011/05/morganza_spillway_might_be_ope.html
From a neighboring parish expected to flood significantly -
http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20110508/OPINION01/110509612
Here are some interesting links:
About the opening of the Morganza Spillway -
http://www.nola.com/weather/index.ssf/2011/05/morganza_spillway_might_be_ope.html
From a neighboring parish expected to flood significantly -
http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20110508/OPINION01/110509612
Saturday, May 07, 2011
After my last update, I couldn't help but notice the spike in visits to this website, so I decided to explore the "stats" on my page. I must say, I've been quite frankly surprised by my global audience. Who is my reader in Singapore? Or more suprisingly, Iran?! Goodness, I can't think of anyone I know in Iran. Anyhow, welcome to all my new global readers. I appreciate you. We will journey together.
Just as a reminder, I've gotten a lot of e-mail addresses in the last few days since posting my last update, but be sure to give me your e-mail address if you want to be included in my e-mail updates. :)
Just as a reminder, I've gotten a lot of e-mail addresses in the last few days since posting my last update, but be sure to give me your e-mail address if you want to be included in my e-mail updates. :)
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Dear all,
I've spent several weeks considering when, what, and how to write these following words. I used to announce every new transition in life with some relish, caring to update all, and drag along hundreds of readers through every change in life. That's changed. I'm not sure why, but, instead, this time I finalized the next phase of life and have been steadily preparing for it while actually telling relatively few of my plans. Likewise, I've all but stopped writing in my blog (http://glance.blogspot.com for those of you reading this elsewhere), and I've frequently considered deleting it, preferring to become more anonymous, not less. Attempting to spill out the words of where my future is headed, I find myself fumbling for half an hour over a few words, wishing instead for fewer followers, rather than asking for more.
Yet friends have been frequently reminding me of late that my desire for anonymity has a degree of selfishness attached to it. The reality is, for whatever reason, there appears to be a whole list of people who deeply care about receiving updates from me at least next year, and I would be arrogant to think all their care was directed at me. They care to hear from me, because they care about the issues I will be facing. I increasingly realize that the stories and concerns that I could voice to the public over the next year are not my own, and I do not promote justice in my silence. So, followers, though I may have seemed to attempt to lose you in the last two years, if you are still with me or joining me for the first time now, I ask that you journey with me now so that we can together journey with victims of all mass atrocities.
In short: I am returning to the Thai-Burmese border, where I will be working with individuals fleeing the ongoing ethnic slaughtering by the Myanmar government (I will refer to the government as Myanmar, but the country and its people as Burma, in solidarity with all those who never elected the government that demanded its name change).
Three years ago today I arrived in the Mae La Refugee Camp near Mae Sot, Thailand, on the border with Burma. We did not yet know that the day before (May 2, 2008) one of the worst and most broadcast cyclones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Nargis) had just hit Burma or that the remnants were headed toward us that evening. By the time it had crossed the mountains and arrived at the refugee camp, it merely felt like a bad storm, and we mildly lamented having been wet all night long. Yet, removed from all media, we remained unaware for a few days longer of all the destruction that had just occurred.
In the meanwhile, my friends and I, who had been seemingly randomly invited to the school in the camp, began interviewing refugees and recording their stories every chance we got. We spent time visiting an orphanage, where the children played games, sang songs with us, and drew us pictures. Their pictures were almost universally of family members being murdered by the Myanmar army (otherwise known as the SPDC). We hung out in the "Care Villa," a home for male victims of land mines, many of whom were once captured by the SPDC and forced to be porters or human land mine detectors, eventually resulting in the explosions that nearly cost them their lives and left generally blind and missing limbs. These men created the richest, most beautiful, and moving chorus I have ever experienced in my life. I think these men gave me a picture of heaven.
We spent evenings with college students like ourselves, who took turns playing volleyball with us and telling us stories of the SPDC pouring boiling water of their friends' heads alive, so that their hair would come out faster.
We read literature. We wrote stories. We laughed and had fun. We sobbed. We were shocked. We were stunned. We were confused. I really don't have words for the emotions of that week. We had just finished four months in Thailand, but the emotions of that single week stand out to me far more than all the emotions of the other four months combined. Interacting with the survivors of what more and more fear to be an all-out genocide (http://www.genocideintervention.net/educate/crisis/burma) changed everything. How does a person ever forget that level of suffering? That level of horror? Each of us spread out across the country after our return to the State, and we all dealt with what we had seen differently, though it affected each of us deeply. Some of my friends started a non-profit (http://lovemine.org/), another dove headfirst into the American Burmese refugee population in Harrisburg, and others like myself have been at least temporarily removed from it all with an inner promise to return when a chance arose. For the last three years, my involvement with the situation in Burma has been reduced largely to obsessively following all news from the region (check out: http://www.irrawaddy.org/).
Two years ago, as I was graduating college, I came very close to taking a teaching position on the border with the Burma Volunteer Program (http://www.burmavolunteers.org/). However, I ended up deciding that I was not yet ready to face the issues of the refugee camps and that I did not yet have skills to be an excellent teacher. I remembered clearly a nurse in Egypt admonishing all of us (young college students on a study abroad program) to not come back until we could honestly claim to be excellent in our fields and have something worth giving to the Egyptian people. Though the Thai-Burmese border is not Egypt, I felt the advice held, and I ended up signing on to two years with Teach for America (http://www.teachforamerica.org/), through which I have taught special education in rural Louisiana. I could write another five posts just about this experience, but let it be said that I made the right choice, and I am very glad I took this opportunity. I have learned more than simply the teaching skills that I felt I needed. I've learned something about suffering, hoping in a hopeless situation, and most importantly the idea of longevity.
I considered for a long time going immediately back to school for a graduate degree after Teach for America, but, as is obviously clear by this point, my passion for the situation occurring inside and along the borders of Burma has become to great to simply study it from afar. I have never felt more strongly about any life decision, nor have I ever felt this level of confidence about the "rightness" of this. Sometime in the Fall it became quite clear to me that I needed to go. In October and November, I began putting out feelers to many of the organizations that exist, both within Burma and Thailand, and I was offered several positions by several respectable organizations. For all those, I was both humbled and grateful. However, in the end, I chose an organization named Partners Relief and Development (http://www.partnersworld.org/index.html) that a friend of a friend had recommended because of where and with whom they will have me working. I will spend the summer primarily in North Carolina and then leave for Thailand August 23. I will be working primarily with the Shan ethnic group, one of the ethnic groups targeted by the military.
In the meanwhile, I am now putting out the feelers for all the e-mail addresses of those who want e-mailed updates. I will not be putting all updates on this blog. I will continue to use the blog, and it will contain some things that e-mails will not have (such as random tidbits that I don't want to wait to put in a regular update), but there are details I will always leave out in this very public realm. I already have a sizeable list of individuals, but I wanted to open it up to those of you I don't see on a regular basis. Please let me know if you would like to be added to this list. You can e-mail me or facebook me your address. Wish you all the best!
Always,
Kara
I've spent several weeks considering when, what, and how to write these following words. I used to announce every new transition in life with some relish, caring to update all, and drag along hundreds of readers through every change in life. That's changed. I'm not sure why, but, instead, this time I finalized the next phase of life and have been steadily preparing for it while actually telling relatively few of my plans. Likewise, I've all but stopped writing in my blog (http://glance.blogspot.com for those of you reading this elsewhere), and I've frequently considered deleting it, preferring to become more anonymous, not less. Attempting to spill out the words of where my future is headed, I find myself fumbling for half an hour over a few words, wishing instead for fewer followers, rather than asking for more.
Yet friends have been frequently reminding me of late that my desire for anonymity has a degree of selfishness attached to it. The reality is, for whatever reason, there appears to be a whole list of people who deeply care about receiving updates from me at least next year, and I would be arrogant to think all their care was directed at me. They care to hear from me, because they care about the issues I will be facing. I increasingly realize that the stories and concerns that I could voice to the public over the next year are not my own, and I do not promote justice in my silence. So, followers, though I may have seemed to attempt to lose you in the last two years, if you are still with me or joining me for the first time now, I ask that you journey with me now so that we can together journey with victims of all mass atrocities.
In short: I am returning to the Thai-Burmese border, where I will be working with individuals fleeing the ongoing ethnic slaughtering by the Myanmar government (I will refer to the government as Myanmar, but the country and its people as Burma, in solidarity with all those who never elected the government that demanded its name change).
Three years ago today I arrived in the Mae La Refugee Camp near Mae Sot, Thailand, on the border with Burma. We did not yet know that the day before (May 2, 2008) one of the worst and most broadcast cyclones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Nargis) had just hit Burma or that the remnants were headed toward us that evening. By the time it had crossed the mountains and arrived at the refugee camp, it merely felt like a bad storm, and we mildly lamented having been wet all night long. Yet, removed from all media, we remained unaware for a few days longer of all the destruction that had just occurred.
In the meanwhile, my friends and I, who had been seemingly randomly invited to the school in the camp, began interviewing refugees and recording their stories every chance we got. We spent time visiting an orphanage, where the children played games, sang songs with us, and drew us pictures. Their pictures were almost universally of family members being murdered by the Myanmar army (otherwise known as the SPDC). We hung out in the "Care Villa," a home for male victims of land mines, many of whom were once captured by the SPDC and forced to be porters or human land mine detectors, eventually resulting in the explosions that nearly cost them their lives and left generally blind and missing limbs. These men created the richest, most beautiful, and moving chorus I have ever experienced in my life. I think these men gave me a picture of heaven.
We spent evenings with college students like ourselves, who took turns playing volleyball with us and telling us stories of the SPDC pouring boiling water of their friends' heads alive, so that their hair would come out faster.
We read literature. We wrote stories. We laughed and had fun. We sobbed. We were shocked. We were stunned. We were confused. I really don't have words for the emotions of that week. We had just finished four months in Thailand, but the emotions of that single week stand out to me far more than all the emotions of the other four months combined. Interacting with the survivors of what more and more fear to be an all-out genocide (http://www.genocideintervention.net/educate/crisis/burma) changed everything. How does a person ever forget that level of suffering? That level of horror? Each of us spread out across the country after our return to the State, and we all dealt with what we had seen differently, though it affected each of us deeply. Some of my friends started a non-profit (http://lovemine.org/), another dove headfirst into the American Burmese refugee population in Harrisburg, and others like myself have been at least temporarily removed from it all with an inner promise to return when a chance arose. For the last three years, my involvement with the situation in Burma has been reduced largely to obsessively following all news from the region (check out: http://www.irrawaddy.org/).
Two years ago, as I was graduating college, I came very close to taking a teaching position on the border with the Burma Volunteer Program (http://www.burmavolunteers.org/). However, I ended up deciding that I was not yet ready to face the issues of the refugee camps and that I did not yet have skills to be an excellent teacher. I remembered clearly a nurse in Egypt admonishing all of us (young college students on a study abroad program) to not come back until we could honestly claim to be excellent in our fields and have something worth giving to the Egyptian people. Though the Thai-Burmese border is not Egypt, I felt the advice held, and I ended up signing on to two years with Teach for America (http://www.teachforamerica.org/), through which I have taught special education in rural Louisiana. I could write another five posts just about this experience, but let it be said that I made the right choice, and I am very glad I took this opportunity. I have learned more than simply the teaching skills that I felt I needed. I've learned something about suffering, hoping in a hopeless situation, and most importantly the idea of longevity.
I considered for a long time going immediately back to school for a graduate degree after Teach for America, but, as is obviously clear by this point, my passion for the situation occurring inside and along the borders of Burma has become to great to simply study it from afar. I have never felt more strongly about any life decision, nor have I ever felt this level of confidence about the "rightness" of this. Sometime in the Fall it became quite clear to me that I needed to go. In October and November, I began putting out feelers to many of the organizations that exist, both within Burma and Thailand, and I was offered several positions by several respectable organizations. For all those, I was both humbled and grateful. However, in the end, I chose an organization named Partners Relief and Development (http://www.partnersworld.org/index.html) that a friend of a friend had recommended because of where and with whom they will have me working. I will spend the summer primarily in North Carolina and then leave for Thailand August 23. I will be working primarily with the Shan ethnic group, one of the ethnic groups targeted by the military.
In the meanwhile, I am now putting out the feelers for all the e-mail addresses of those who want e-mailed updates. I will not be putting all updates on this blog. I will continue to use the blog, and it will contain some things that e-mails will not have (such as random tidbits that I don't want to wait to put in a regular update), but there are details I will always leave out in this very public realm. I already have a sizeable list of individuals, but I wanted to open it up to those of you I don't see on a regular basis. Please let me know if you would like to be added to this list. You can e-mail me or facebook me your address. Wish you all the best!
Always,
Kara
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