"the motive and the cue for passion"

(Matt)

First of all, a “shout out” to Dan and Atarah (and Christopher) Sidey for the commenting spree. We’re starting a new contest here on our blog whereby the total word count of your comments represents the strength of your friendship/family-ship; so far, Dan is about a Tolstoy novel ahead of everyone else, so get writin’!

(Just kidding about the contest. It’s by total number of posts, not by word count). J

As the rest of this post will be heavy, I want to first give an updated “Life in Russia” fun fact. Today’s fact: the Russian “babushka” (pronounced BAA-boosh-ka). The common stereotype is that “grandmas” in Russia are rude, pushy, and outspoken. True? Absolutely. Today in the Metro I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around to find a tiny old woman pointing to my bookbag to tell me that it was open. I was on the extreme edge of the platform, so she must have gone far out of her way to perform this “duty.” My students tell me that babushki will often comment on young people’s clothes in the midst of crowded metro stations; one student told me that just this morning a babushka told her that her clothes were ugly! I’ve also had babushki knock me aside in trying to enter the metro, and Makinzie tells a story about how a babushka pretended to wander aimlessly in front of her in the grocery store line and then stole Kinzie’s spot! This attitude is so different from the sweet nature of my own grandmothers that I can only laugh each time a babushka acts “in character”.

OK. Now on to the weightiness. Today was a “what am I doing here?” kind of day. For the past three weeks, I have been noticing that a few of my students have seemed a little recalcitrant in class—not openly rude, but a little edgy and defiant. The undercurrent surfaced last week in Sociolinguistics during what was otherwise a seemingly innocent conversation: I was explaining the need for sociolinguists to withhold making judgments about “good” and “bad” language practices, and in the process one student was visibly upset at the presumption that anyone could ignore “bad” Russian language when all Russians know the standards for “correct” and “incorrect” Russian. I was surprised to hear one of my most intelligent students trying to argue that it would be impossible to study language without judging the people according to the way that they speak! I was even more surprised when this student and her clique turned surly for the remaining hour of class, challenging me on almost every point that I was making and acting very inhospitable.

Small elements of these frustrating attitudes filtered into my class yesterday, and then again this morning another moment of drama occurred when I called on a student (in a class of 8) who had not said anything the entire morning.

“Olya,” I asked, “What do you think about the ending of the play?” (We were reading Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus).

“Nothing; I didn’t like it. I didn’t really care about anything that happened in it”, was the reply.

Even after more prodding, the student refused to answer. After class, she came to talk to me:

“Matthew”, she said (students here don’t use titles for teachers), “I don’t understand why we have to make every story relate to the Bible. Aren’t there other options? In our Russian Literature classes here, our Russian teachers never try to make us find religious themes in the texts. I have a hard time answering your questions because I don’t see how these stories are relevant to us.”

This was a low point for me. Although I took time to explain how important religion was within the historical context of the authors we were reading and attempted to convince the student that I was not simply forcing a religious meaning onto the texts (she seemed unconvinced by either argument), I already felt crushed on the inside with the sense that my very mission here in Russia was failing. The issue is not really with my style of teaching or with the course material—I want students to feel free to comment and question—but with the overall sense that this student and others do not really respect or appreciate what I am trying to do for them.

I recognize the selfishness of this thought, but I honestly wanted to list for this student all of the sacrifices that people have made and all of the time I have spent to bring before her this very knowledge that she seemed to think was not relevant or interesting. But the individual student isn’t really the problem at all—it’s my impinging sense that these students are dissatisfied and I’m not really sure why. It’s also my selfishness at wanting to be treated with importance, when I’m really here to submit myself completely to God’s will.

The whole situation is surely divinely planned for us, since the student rebellion comes at a time when I am working exhaustingly already on applications for future academic jobs. I want to say that it is all more than I can handle, but for some reason God keeps giving me the ability to handle more and more—not a quality I would necessarily pick out of the stack. Looking back over my first posts to this blog, I can see that for some reason God has not allowed the train of long days to “break down”, but at the same time I am still OK and have enough energy to do everything I need to do. I also am completely humbled by Kinzie’s service to me and support for me; my computer chair has become like a high chair and I’m not far from being completely dependent on my wife for food (fortunately I can handle my own diaper changes). Kinzie is thriving during this time in her relationships with everyone here in Russia, which is deeply encouraging to me and evidence of God’s work in our lives.

So I don’t know where I’m left at the moment, except to say that I’m trusting and hopeful and confident at the same time that I’m frustrated and a little downtrodden. I’ll keep you updated on the outcome, but I know it will work out!