Teaching in a land of unspeakable pain

Harrington was just 25 when, two years ago, she took the job at the school. But teaching is in her DNA: Her parents met as first-year teachers at Noble and Greenough School, and still teach and live there. Kate and her two younger brothers grew up on campus and graduated from Nobles. One brother teaches school in Connecticut; the other is still in college.

“It’s the family business,’’ says Harrington. “I was desperate to be a teacher. It’s the only thing I wanted to do.’’

After graduating from Harvard, she became a New York City Teaching Fellow, and was placed in a middle school in the Bronx. The fellows must also earn a master’s degree while working; Harrington got a degree in teach ing English as a Second Language from City College.

Her students were mostly low-income Hispanics for whom English was a new language. “That first year of teaching was so difficult,’’ says Harrington. “These kids come from really tough environments, and it takes a lot of effort to motivate some of them. There were a lot of behavioral issues.’’

One of her students pulled a pair of scissors on another; Harrington got between them and broke it up. In the principal’s office, with the boy’s father and a school counselor, Harrington saw a completely different child. “He had his head in his hands. He wasn’t challenging me. He was just sad.’’

The boy told the group: “I know I’m bad, and I don’t know how to change it. I don’t know how to fix it.’’ It was then that Harrington realized she, too, had to change. “My approach to him wasn’t working and I had to find a new way. After that, if he was getting ready to lash out, I approached him with the biggest expression of calm and kindness that I could possibly generate. It changed the way I was in the classroom forever. You can never presume to know where the kids are coming from.’’

She’d also let the boy do tricep dips and push-ups in class. “He had extra energy and he needed to do that. The other students knew it, too.’’

Though she loved her job, Harrington felt the pull of international teaching.

“I always told my students we are all global citizens,’’ she says. She found a posting for a job in a girls’ school in Rwanda, a poor, landlocked country decimated by a 1994 genocide. The job description thrilled Harrington: teaching English to nonspeakers and being a coach for the Rwandan teachers.

When Harrington was in the seventh grade, more than 800,000 people - mostly Tutsi and moderate Hutus - were slaughtered by extremist Hutus during a period of 100 days. Using machetes and clubs, neighbors killed neighbors - teachers and students, priests and parishioners killed one another. Most of the women who weren’t killed were left widows; many were HIV-infected through rape. Thousands of children were orphaned, many becoming heads of households before age 10.

Ground Zero for the genocide was the Bugesera district in the country’s east province; in one month, five of every six Tutsis there were killed by the majority Hutu. And this is where the Maranyundo School was built - by Boston-area women under the leadership of Sister Ann Fox, who runs the Paraclete Center in South Boston.

A grim irony of the genocide is that because so many Rwandan men were killed, or in exile or prison, women have had to rebuild the country. Before the killings, women had little power or education. But when Paul Kagame, the rebel leader who ended the genocide, became president, he made it clear that educating girls was crucial to the country’s recovery. Today, Rwanda boasts more elected women parliamentarians per capita than any country in the world.

When the Maranyundo School opened two years ago, most of its students were of the first postgenocide generation, though some older girls were survivors, a few of them orphaned by the killings.

With the third class now being phased in, the school is at a capacity of 180 students. Most are from farm families who live in mud or cement huts with no running water.

All the other teachers are Rwandan, though there are a couple of volunteer American tutors. No one asks the students, or the teachers, who is Hutu and who is Tutsi.

It’s a boarding school; the girls all sleep in bunk beds in a dorm.

“The girls really take care of each other,’’ says Harrington. “This really is the new generation, and I see so much hope in these children.’’ Rwanda, following South Africa’s lead after apartheid, has immersed itself in peace and reconciliation, and has emphasized restorative justice. “These students will be the first ones to carry this into the future.’’

But her heart is still in the Bronx, and Harrington says she’ll probably return soon to teach there. “It’s very difficult to explain to people in Rwanda that there is also poverty in America, and I think it’s important to address that. I feel called back to urban American education. So many kids here have to be lucky to find that one teacher who ‘gets them.’ There has to be a way to make it not depend on luck.’’

Until such a way is discovered - perhaps by Kate Harrington - lucky indeed is the student who has her for a teacher.

Globe columnist Bella English lives in Milton. She can be reached at english@globe.com.