Class Resumes

The nursing school officially kicked into gear last week, but we had the opportunity to welcome a visiting dentist from the States to give a 3 day seminar to the nurses on dental hygeine, prevention, and disease recognition. It was a procrastinating professor's DREAM!

This year we have 23 students in the probation class (pre-nursing school), 26 students are starting their first year, and 25 students continue on into their second year. Although the numbers are semi-fluid, we are all happy for the continued participation year after year.

Yesterday I found myself back at the black board in front of a new class of students. Much preferring one-on-one style of teaching to a classroom setting, I had been slightly dreading the return to lectures. The new first-year class had me especially worried since a couple of the students had been ornery for Patrick during their English class last semester. I don't know if it was the fact that I saw one of the biggest trouble makers in clinic and sent her home (cause she was SICK!) with medicines and advice for taking care of self OR if it was the beginning-of-the-year optimism, but my first day with the new class offered me attentive students, not ONE snoozer, and good questions in both the child development and pharmacology classes.

Today I greeted the second year students, a class that will always have a special place in my heart as they served as my "training wheels" as a teacher here. They've given me a heaping pile of patience as with them I've learned Creole, started to learn to gauge what they know within the context of their cultural experience in health care, and attempted to together move forward. Although there are less students than when they started, the faces sitting in my second year class reflect a year of study, an introduction to clinics, and the success of having made it this far. Their questions are more sophisticated, the wheels of their brains chugging along and processing information at a much faster pace. Such observations--student advancement--must be why teachers do it. You can't but help but be proud of the evolution. This year I'm teaching their class Obstetrics. They seemed happy to have me back, patient as always, and quite entertained with the subject material. We had a great 2 hours.

At the end of class, just as focus was teetering off into more racy subjects of sex, Patrick and Solomon arrived to pick me up from school. The students all were overjoyed to see their favorite tiny student who had sat with them most of last semester. Although much too independent and mobile to be expected to sit through any more classes for awhile, Solomon entertained all by cruising across the classroom on his own two feet, and then clapping for himself winning him wild applause.

The CONASPEH leadership states time and time again that education is their primary goal, the one way they believe they can truly change the quality of life of the Haitian people and the coarse of the country's progress. Although education doesn't fill bellies in the present, it works to equip individuals to not only eat in the future, but establish a better lifestyle. And although I much prefer hiding away in a clinic, putting on Band-Aids, treating illness and counseling on disease prevention, my time in front of the classroom may be the most valuable thing I can do in the long run. So I work to get over my shyness, find creative tools for teaching, and celebrate the fact that I have two classes full of good students to work with. I look forward to giving them my own round of applause at the end of their study when they are running on their own two feet.