Jumping
A short insight of jumping your own borders in 10 months.
Jumping, that is how my Malta experience started 10 months ago. I arrived and the first thing I did was jumping off a cliff of 35m.
But soon I realized that jumping off a cliff was not the hardest border I had to fight with in my year full of change, challenges and boundaries.
In September 2012 I came to Malta, an overwhelming island, surrounded by clean and pure light blue water, full of sunlight and lovely people. Everything was new and exciting for me and I was positive that it would be the best year of my life!
I have to admit that I arrived in the vacation period of the Maltese autumn and had time to explore the island with my new family and friends.
Then two weeks later I had to start working in an after school project for children from 5 up to 16 years teaching English and art at Centru Tbexbix, the Sunrise Centre for Children.
I had to jump in at the deep end and at first fell very hard, overwhelmed and shocked by my first weeks of work: Different language, different culture, different social classes and stories.
I was surprised how hard it could be to work with children especially because I always loved to be around children and they always seemed to love me as well.
On Malta no one was listening to me, nothing I learned of education seemed to matter, no respect, no rules, a lot of fights and frustration where my companions during the first weeks.
One month passed and nothing happened, I seemed to come up against a brick wall and had no idea how to jump over it. So I felt small and helpless but still had the thirst of knowledge why these children wouldn’t listen no matter how hard I tried to create great and interesting lessons. The only thing I knew I had to do was talking to my boss. She was very kind and was one step out of the situation.
I heard stories of these children I will never ever forget.
Horrible stories about their broken and violent backgrounds. Some of them with imprisoned parents, some of them with no-caring parents and some of them without any parent. My boss told me those stories but I was the one who had to deal with them on my own and the children. But knowing them in this kind of way brought me closer than I ever expected towards them.
These kids were not only my students. I had to be their friend, mentor, teacher and student – not another teacher they have plenty in school, telling them what to draw or to learn.
Together we could create so much more. The only thing I had to do was stepping back and letting them do. It is amazing what wonderful things we created as a team!
Looking back I can say that I probably learned more from these children then they learned from me – Forgetting the kind of education you are used to, letting yourself go and opening up, to others but primarily to yourself. Being more patient, because people need different time to learn. Appreciating very small things, no matter if pieces of art or the progress in any other kind of learning process.
I jumped into this new experience, into another culture – survived the culture shock and can’t imagine that I could’ve missed this experience!
So I can say no matter if you are about to jump borders, boundaries or cliffs – You should definitely give it a shot and try. Of course you can fall hard and hurt yourself, but the nice part is that you have the chance to stand up again. And the moment of coming out of the water, breathing the air is the best feeling you can possibly have.
Just because you tried.