I’ve lived without a sink for almost two months and it’s been the best two months of my life. I’m in Vietnam as a volunteer English teacher. What does that entail? Each week I teach at two public preschools, one private preschool, one homeschool class, one public primary school and one English center. The age…

I’m not sure if I really listened. Understood where they had been and why. What was prompting them to take a step and where they were hoping to go.

Talking it out. Letting it air. Bringing it to the surface. Fleeing isolation.

Easily distracted, not fully present. Rebuked and rebuffed. Imperfect, and dispute that unchanging fact, it is not a weight that presses down on the road to improvement.

One is running around the classroom when everyone is supposed to be sitting down. One child is screaming at another. A child points out that another child sat in their chair when they got up to answer a question and now won’t move. What are you going to do? Watch idle as it happens? Listen…