The Learning Teacher

This blog has served multiple purposes it seems. At times I have themes, like India or quotes. At times it serves to just be an avenue where I can write out recent realizations that happened to occur when I'm actually willing to write and not be lazy. And since the beginning, the title of this blog has transformed to fit all these multiple purposes. I'm glad I chose such a vague title as, "eyes to see." :P

Today, I'd like to introduce a new theme that will carry throughout the summer. This blog will document my time teaching at a school in San Francisco for the next two months. My belief in education as a tool to bring change in social justice issues is strong, and this summer I want take a dip into what it actually takes!

Logistically, I will be teaching science to 5th graders with a team of other college students from around the U.S. The program I'm working with specifically targets high-achieving, low-income students. It focuses on this particular group because most often than not, students who are academically capable face specific challenges because of their socio-economic background that must be recognized. Without intentional support in the current U.S. educational system, many of these students fall out of paths toward college compared with students coming from higher-income homes.

I received an email recently of the orientation week schedule, and took a deep breath. :] The hours are long, but I have a pretty certain feeling all this will be worth it. I'm hoping to blog at least 1-2 times a week until the end of this program. In the end, I also hope explore the intersections between God, education, and my passions as a teacher.

I will come in as a teacher, but oh my, there is so much to learn :] Excited.

means and ends

means and ends. i often get them switched up. often times, switching them up is a costly thing. then why do i especially like to make means into ends if i already know that this would be costly? why do ends always hide themselves so subtly, that people spend their whole lives just achieving means?

all right, enough with the vagueness. it's always hard to read blog posts when generalizations are used. so i will talk specifics. today is january 16th, a little late for new years resolutions, but nonetheless, the weight of making goals, bucket lists, and expectations for the new year has finally hit. the year is 2011, a year of tumultuous changes, decisions, and the ongoing list of "last semester, last classes, last retreats, last january 16th i'll ever have at berkeley, last ___..." yes, you get the picture.

everything in me wants this last semester here at berkeley to be the epitome of my experience as an undergrad, to make the most of every moment with people special to me, to practice disciplines like praying consistently, to explore every best rated on yelp for berkeley restaurants/activities, to overcome fears i've had throughout college, to have the next year set in stone so that my parents will know that i'm capable with living on my own. in other words, to be a perfect superwoman sarahlee by may 2011.

haha.

where has all this goal-making got me to? it has got me into the mentality that "perfect superwoman sarahlee" is the end-all of all my desires. "but that's completely unrealistic, and so selfish!" i had thought. this realization got me all cynical about goal-making for a little while. why make goals when i don't even know what's best for me? why make goals when half the time i utterly fail them, forget about them, grow apathetic about them? i'll just stop making goals and live without expectation so i'll never get disappointed.

sigh, just kidding.

the reason for this post is an interesting one as i discover more how easily it is to switch my means into ends. more specifically, making the achievement of my goals the end instead of making goals the means of reaching an end that i'm not so aware of. what is that true end then? i hope i'm making sense.

anyway, here is a thought to consider. what if, the true end of goal-making is actually the process of achieving those goals? in attempting to reach goals, i've seen what takes priority in my life, i see how many obstacles i'm willing to encounter to reach certain goals, i see how limited i am in my discipline and strength to become someone i want to be, i encounter how deeply rooted some of my fears are, i realize that sometimes i have to take my eraser and change my goals as i discover that some goals are actually fruitless and self-seeking, i find that smaller steps might be needed. most importantly for me, i become more keenly aware of weak i am, how tainted my judgment can be, and yet at the same time be in the position to say, "God, your way is better." Suddenly, goal-making and achieving are a means to discovering all the above.

Goal-making is a risk, because there is every reason for those goals not to be fulfilled. But without movement, i'd just stay stagnant my whole life, living the way of prevention, living cautiously as to seem perfect, and completely miss out on what God has to share with me. But with risk, i step into the realm of something beyond what i think i can do, i step into making mistakes, i step into dependence on God's constant presence and rely on Him to teach me what the true end might be.

In conclusion, today I decided that finishing my bucket list for the last semester at berkeley is well worth it :]

salvageable?

my first language was cantonese. when i watch home videos of myself, i hardly recognize my own voice when i was younger. the fluency i had back then is ridiculous(ly good) to what i sound like today.

this break has been unique in that my grandma has been here with my family in san diego. i have never spent the holidays (consciously at least, i have when i was much younger) with my grandma. this holiday is extra special because for the first time i've baked with my grandma, handed her a present for christmas, listened to her story, and lived life with her.

she is an amazing individual...living in vietnam during the war, receiving minimal education though she desired much more, being treated as something "lower than" because she was the girl in the family, feeling restricted the majority of her life because of her controlling guardian, learning to live in the different cultures of venezuela and canada...the list can go on.

i stand amazed and yet saddened because only now, after so much life has already passed have my grandma and i gotten to really know each other. and what has kept that distance though my family visits her almost every year now is language. the weight of that sadness came especially today when we were having breakfast downstairs in the kitchen. for some reason my cantonese was extra choppy and i could not communicate myself fully to her. my problem is that i understand practically everything spoken but draw a blank when it comes to speaking myself. after mumbling something half understandable she told me a few things that i don't know how to take in yet.

"your family should have never spoken english between each other, that way you would have remembered," "your brother speaks better than you do," "this is how i feel like when i have a meal with your family, and i just sit there because i cannot speak english like you all do, neither do i understand everything your family is saying."

i didn't know how to respond (of course even if i did, it'd probably be miscommunicated anyway). i nodded and smiled instead showing her i understood and agreed to what she said.

guilt. shame. regret. all these can't be avoided in life. i feel that at least the initial impact of these things are far too natural to be avoided. but is guilt the end of the road? far from it! that is why i titled this post as it is. is my cantonese salvageable? yes. but now i have a choice, to wallow in my guilt, or do something about it. now more than before do i really desire not only to have my cantonese back, but also to know my history. to love my history, because though it still might be foreign to me, it is every part in shaping the environment and place i am today. and for my grandma, that we'd have a time one day when we'd joke, and chat, and to be more fully able to love each other through the words we say.

coming home

These days have been wonderful. Coming home to a pantry full of food, asking my mom if she has this ingredient for baking and finding it always available, sleeping in mold-free rooms, strolling along La Jolla Shores with my family, making spontaneous road trips to Irvine just to get 85C bread, and waking up at comfortable hours and making my mornings as long as possible (I count mornings as the time before I do anything that requires work).

Yes, being at home in San Diego has been quite the treat. But my point in writing today isn’t about telling the world how luxurious my break has been (though I love it), but to examine something that I’ve noticed after years of coming back home that could be a personal thing or a shared thing.

There’s an aspect of coming home that’s double sided. Whenever I come home I experience a constancy and slowness that I extremely appreciate that is very hard to find in college life. However, my brother and I were talking about this the other night, and we found that the comfort that comes from this constancy lasts about a couple days to a week. Then the coin starts to flip.

There’s a point where constancy starts to look more like stagnancy. I’ve experienced these hints of stagnancy when I feel that I am still treated like the Sarah Lee people knew four years ago. When I’m put into group environments and I people act as if we never left, as if they’re ignoring the many stories added to who I am today. Is this just a cry to everyone saying, “Look at the real me”? Maybe. But I’m hoping what speaks out the most in the post is not a pointing of fingers. Besides, the fingers point to me as well. What I mean is that I play a part in this whole coming home deal. I realized that part of coming back to old relationships is patience, and understanding that there is no way others at home could fully understand my experiences.

But I want to continue to emphasize a need that I have to keep in mind as well…the need to simply listen, and to hear people out, and to not assume that one knows everything, their tendiencies, their flaws, their strengths, and at least come to a better understanding after listening. The environment I seem to come back to is set with traditions and often times those traditions, going back and doing things like we always do, doesn’t create the best environment for hearing people out, and knowing who people are today.

This will serve to be a reminder for me, to look at people even I think will never change, and to see them as dynamic, and multifaceted people, who are more than I have known them to be.

black, white, & gray

i'd prefer things black and white. 

life's just easier that way. one thing is completely right, one thing is completely wrong. good decision vs. bad decision. even for viewing people too. she's smart, chinese, athletic. he's an activist, christian, latino. sticking to those all-encompassing black & white  labels works much easier in my brain. 

but for all humans like me :P as i live each day, most things in life seem more gray, hazy, a bit foggy. i had a conversation this week that has inspired me to write this. as i talked with her, i saw how both of us pretty much had to step out of black&white thinking. our lives seem to be revolving in a stage where gray seemed to take the dominate stage. 

however, i'm beginning to appreciate the color gray a little more. only in the conceptual sense, i like purple the best. but why the heck desire gray, a much harder place to be in, a much more vulnerable place to be in? i admit, of course i'm not happy about not always knowing. but i'm appreciating. there is beauty in gray. gray times in life allows for exploration and discovery through active questioning and seeking. gray allows for growth as i realize, dang, i really don't know it all. as a Christian, i've seen overarching exploration, discovery, and growth, is a building of trust when gray is all i see.

i wonder if God allows me to walk in gray for that very reason then. to learn how to trust. in those moments where i hear/read great inspiring truths and all of a sudden the details of reality clash with these truths and i find myself in gray...i wonder if it is in gray that i learn to trust. 

oh and how convenient, i stumbled upon a quote this week that relates to this topic. henri nouwen says this:

"Mostly we have just enough light to see the next step: what we have to do in the coming hour or the following day. The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go."

hmm, trusting that there's enough light for the next step. walking in gray might just be worth it.

my thing with quotes

different things capture me. the sky, a good movie, a crush, pretty stationary...etc.

but there's something about words that especially captures my attention. quotes in particular have this uncanny ability to say mountains within a few phrases, to cut to the heart in one sentence. at the beginning of my freshmen year i started a "quotable quotes and verses" poster that i had hoped would carry on throughout my time in college. whenever i read/heard a quote from somebody (famous/anonymous/friend...didn't matter) that absolutely blew my mind or spoke eloquently to what i was going through..i'd write it on that poster.

so, i've kept that to myself pretty much for the past two and a half years. but then recently i thought, "hm, i have a blog. a very sad blog that has been ignored since the summer pretty much ha. hey, why not share some quotes." and so here starts a new phase of this blog...from india to quotes. smooth transition huh. 

anyway, these quotes  won't just be outtatheblue type quotes. they're ones that are going to be relevant to my life. and maybe, i'm hoping, relevant or thought-inspiring for whoever reads. and for whoever doesn't mind reading less eloquent writing, i'll be sharing my response/agreement/disagreement/application to these quotes as well :) fun stufff...

ok with that intro done :P here is my first quote. the topic is on the identity of christians as children of God.

"We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us--not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving, not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying, but simply because He has chosen to love us." -Frederick Buechner

~~~~

what struck me first was the line, "...and not because we recognize the futility of our trying." it put into perspective the utter nothingness i can show or bring to God that would influence his love for me. one thing that has become apparent to me as i learn more about the God of the Bible, is that a fuller understanding of Him, must be preceded with an openness from me. and openness most often requires humility, a letting go of what i hold onto as more worthy or better than.

here's the twisted-ness that happens though. just because i know that humility is the attitude that allows for a relationship to happen, does not mean that that knowledge ensures that God loves me. it's mind-boggling to think about at times. but what a slap in the face! what a reminder to me of the unmerited love of God...that seriously, logically, i will never understand. and what a reminder that mere knowledge of certain truths means nothing. no matter how good those truths are. 

the quote is especially relevant these days especially after coming back from urbana, a large christian conference i went to over winter break where definitely...a lot of very good knowledgeable things were presented to me. what an easy temptation for me to think that i am better now, or that God and i are tighter, just cuz i received certain pieces of good information about Him. 

dang it, so right now i was just reminded of why i don't like blogging sometimes. i always feel like there is so much more to explore over certain topics, but writing it all out takes too long or i get lazy. hm. and i also realize that readers of this blog reaches a wide variety of audiences...so my language may resonate with some more than others. well! if you're curious enough, i'd be open to longer discussions over these things. anyway, with that said, hope you enjoyed the quote. til next time :]

truth and grace must be good friends.

and the blog is back :)

after a month of transitioning back from india into the craziness of berkeley life, i still can't quite say i've had enough time to swallow what happened this summer. sometimes i want to avoid being too idle, for then i am certain to wrestle more with how india, ministry, relationships, academics, and God over all these things, affects me now. so as an attempt to avoid avoidance, i've turned to writing again to help me process...and of course, like all blogs do, stir up thoughts for those who read as well. i'll take things a step at a time, not overly expect myself to be some revolutionary as a result of my experiences, but at the same time be aware of how God has already shaped me in ways i may not presently realize. 

the reason for the title of this blog comes from a recent conviction that addresses the issue of inadequacy...an issue that i've seen overwhelm those who struggle with it, and an issue that i myself am farrr from being immune to.

the link between truth and grace did not start forming until a very good friend of mine used the two words in a sentence while we were having a conversation a couple weeks ago. i wonder if she knows her own wisdom :P anyhow we were talking about truth and grace in application to other people. we were realizing that knowing truth without grace results in judgment, pride, and contempt toward others. lemme see, example would be like this: say i came back from spending time in a developing country and was convicted to spend less on eating out because i knew the truth of where money could be better invested in. having this conviction is not bad in itself, BUT without grace...i would look disgustedly at how other people spend their money extravagantly and criticize those who eat out as their regular routine. without grace, i would not stop to think that people are at such different stages in life, and that me knowing some truth, actually makes me no better a person. without grace i would be so caught up in truth that the opportunity to know the other person and his/her background would pass as insignificant. the lack of grace drains the goodness out of what certain truths have to offer.

how does this all tie into the root of inadequacy? here's something neat. i've found more and more that how i relate to others reflects a lot on how i relate to myself. 

we all know a lot of truths, especially as we grow up. Christians know a lot of truth, as part of growing in relationship with God, Christians are taught much. but knowing truth is far from embracing truth. and here is where the dots connected for me a few days ago. in the same way that truth without grace unfairly places others in lower esteem, truth without grace in application to self, results in feelings of inadequacy that we often put unfairly upon ourselves. most all of us are at a point in life where we are still discovering who we are and the expectation to live up to truths would be unreal if we could master them overnight. we do not take the time to realize that we are humans who are encountering truths. the beauty of truths get lost when we are so focused on how much we fall short in living up to these truths.

so what next for me? befriending truth and grace at the same time. having balance sucks cuz i like to sit on extremes. but one without the other results in judgment (without grace) or complacency (without truth). 

i'm thinking how this discussion really leads to many other things, but i'll stop here for now. of course all this is not the only source of inadequacy, but i believe it plays a part. finding that adequacy? hm that's a whole other truth to embrace :) oh life. nice to be blogging again. until next time