Surprise Students

My first day back after being sick I had four surprise students show up in English class. Because my class is small, and I wasn't sure if new students had registered while I was away, I let them stay for one class, planning to kick them all out the next day.

I worked on a little "you're kicked out" speech and returned to class that Wednesday evening. When I arrived, however, I discovered that only 2 of the 4 had stayed. And after asking a few questions, I learned that one of them had been moved to my class from a lower level.

3 down 1 to go.

I turned my attention to the remaining surprise student, who was sittting straigt up in his chair notebook in hand, eagerly awaiting class. "Having him around won't hurt anybody," I reasoned, and backed down from my kick-em-out strategy.

A few days passed, and this student continued to arrive ealier than all the other students, armed with his pen and papers. So I started to ask him a few question. Where are you from? How is your family? General conversational English stuff.

I soon found out that this guy, who had heard about my class from the mayor, had been a university student in Port Au Prince last year. He had been visiting La Gonave when the earthquake happened, and when he tried to return for schooling found that his home had been destroyed.



Since then, he has been living on La Gonave, trying to find a way to return to Port Au Prince for University. And in the mean time, he's attending my English class. Though I'm very sad he has had to hault his education, I am so thankful that we can offer him an opportunity to continue studying at least one subject and that we get to have him in our program.