Here’s a post from our blog getagarman.blogspot.com that I wanted to share as a prayer request:
When I first came to LU as a freshman, I was a declared missions major. I was going to Ecuador as a single woman missionary and “I didn’t need no man.” After my first week of freshman orientation in a classroom full of boys, my advisor Harvey Hartman gently counseled me to find another major. He thought it would be wiser for me to find a trade to bring to another country, and after much praying and thinking, I switched my major to ESL (a brand new major at LU).
ESL teachers were in such high demand in 2001 after I graduated, that I was able to get a job immediately even though I didn’t have a teaching license (all I had to do was have a successful year of teaching and take a class, and I could get it easily). I had a love/hate relationship with the elementary school I taught at. The principle, Ms. Jessie’s philosophy was that kids shouldn’t be doing workbooks all day (which I agree with), therefore I had ZERO curriculum to work with when I arrived (a little extreme…). Everyday I would wake up in a panic, because I constantly was forced to create some lesson plan out of thin air. It was stretching, but I became more creative, resourceful, and learned more than I ever would have if I had just been handed a curriculum manual.
The last four weeks I have been thanking God for Harvey Hartman and Ms. Jessie. Last month our Icelandic teacher told me he had started running ads for the English class I was going to teach in his back room. I laughed and told him that I didn’t think it would work out. I was wrong. We got back from Greece on Friday night at midnight, Saturday and Sunday I was decorating my classroom, and on Monday I had students!
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Please pray that I have strength to teach these classes as it requires a lot of energy and I am still recovering from the miscarriage. Also, pray for connections to be made with the families
of my students.
You’ve got our prayers.