good old old order

First of all, you should be warned that I will not be posting this often forever. Since I've already had about five months of supply teaching, I've got a bunch of stories saved up. Once they're done, we'll have to wait for more to happen...

Anyways, near the beginning of the school year, I got a call to go to a little school way out in the sticks. Fine. At that point I was taking anything I could get. As it turned out, this school was made up of 50% Old Order Mennonites (not sure if that's supposed to be capitalized, but I think they deserve it). It was totally amazing. Not that I've never seen true blue Mennonites before, but I haven't really interacted with them. Of course all the boys were wearing their straw hats, and all the girls their buns or braids. All the boys were wearing their plaid shirts with black pants and suspenders. Which actually suspend their pants. So regardless of the actual size of the pants, they stayed up, some of them just sort of floating around their bodies. Which makes perfect sense, since they can just grow into them. And of course the girls were wearing their tiny floral print dresses (the dresses aren't tiny, the print is) with pinned on aprons. Which seemed to get used all the time, amazingly, even in school. And they all spoke with an accent of some kind, which I can't quite describe. So much so that at times I couldn't understand what they were saying to me. But it's basically exactly how you would expect these kids to talk.

They happened to be doing presentations that day about themselves. The girls all talked about how much they love animals, because they're adorable and soft and cuddly. And especially how much they adore babies because they're so cute. They actually used the word adore. All of them. And the boys love farming and horses and farm equipment. It was a complete blast from the past, but not. Because they exist right now. It boggles my mind. And sitting in every-other chair, are regular non-Menno kids, wearing their jeans and hoodies, asking questions like, "do you ever wish you could watch tv?" and "have you ever ridden in a car?". Of course. It boggles their minds too.

But the thing that really got me happened during art. I had carefully set out all their supplies during the break, and was just giving some final instructions. I asked if there were any questions and then put them to work finishing up their water-colour paintings. As I'm saying "okay, let's get to work then", I realize that they don't have any paint brushes. Before I can think twice, or even finish my thought in fact, a few girls have already handed out paint brushes to half of the class. I thank them and everyone starts painting.

This might sound pretty unremarkable, and perhaps it is, or perhaps it should be. But to me it's not. To me, these are kids that take initiative. These are kids that see a problem and stand up and do something about it. Which is rare. And I can only imagine that they've had to live this way to get by in their lives at home, with tons of kids, tons of work to be done, and no tolerance for laziness or complaining. If you have a problem, you do something about it. On the other hand, in other classes I've experienced, we have the non-Mennos, who have grown up with one, two, or (gasp!) three kids in the family, where a lot is done for them. They put up their hands and say absolutely ridiculous things like, "my pencil is broken," or "I don't have any paper", when they clearly know what to do about these situations! But they just don't do it. They just aren't self-motivated. So how do you teach that? How do you teach them to be self-motivated? Sigh...