Growth can be difficult. Often, it comes when we feel like we’re struggling, failing, moving backwards. Growth often comes when we’re uncomfortable. I’ve experienced this feeling of being uncomfortable quite a bit in my life. Whether it was traveling 1,000 miles west of Boxford, Massachusetts, my hometown, to go to Indiana University, 3,000 miles east of Boxford to teach in a high school just north of Paris, France, or some 6,000 miles west of Boxford, to Room 742 in Marianne Hall, one of my “homes” on this island, I’ve felt uncomfortable, challenged, stressed, sometimes even doubtful, quite often. Yet with each experience, I look back and understand more deeply that it’s in these new, often difficult experiences that I’ve grown.

Four doors down the hall from me on Marianne Hall’s fourth floor, Elind Durand has his own story of growth. Durand, or “Señor,” as he’s known by many, never even imagined living in Hawaii while growing up in Peru, a country of some 32 million people on the west coast of South America. Then a relationship propelled him to make the 5,920-mile trek from his home city of Lima to Oahu. There, he got settled in Mākaha on the island’s west side or, as Señor calls it, “the Hawaiian Hawaii.” Nevertheless, the locals welcomed him with aloha, even if it took him some time to adapt to Hawaiian slang (“Howzit?”).

Professionally, Durand grew as well. He worked multiple part-time jobs, including a teaching position downtown at Saint Theresa’s. He applied to Saint Francis School twice to no avail, but he kept trying, kept growing. Applying for a third time in 2012, he got a job offer and has served as a Spanish teacher at Saint Francis ever since.

From Lima, Peru, to the island of Oahu, Señor has experienced growth with each step.

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“My experience at Saint Francis was nice. I like it here. I feel like I grow more here. This school offers more training, they’ll pay for more learning. I could actually get established here and build a program that can run year after year and you can fix it, adjust it, see the results. And this has lasted almost eight years working here. So, I really like it. But it’s sad. It’s sad it’s closing. But I feel grateful because it gave me more experience. Teaching part-time at different schools, you cannot connect much with the students because you’re just like a passing teacher always, yeah? I feel like here, I grow, like, as a career, more than at other places. My experience, it was positive. There was some down stuff, but put it all together, it was very positive. I feel like I’ve grown, and I’ve got more experience and I can face some situations that previous years I couldn’t figure out how to solve it or approach it. My experience, in simple words, was a good experience.”