Week 4: "Educational Inspiration and Professional Irritation"

Week 4: January 20th - January 27th 


"Educational Inspiration"

I am a graduate student again! It feels so good to take a few hours out of my day to be a student. Though I am still a full time teacher and don't have the beautiful luxury of being able to dedicate every second of my attention to my graduate school work, it is still so wonderful knowing that I am back in an intellectually stimulating community. 

I poured over this week's assigned reading with gusto! Printing off the pages upon pages of scholarly material and attacked it with my highlighters and pens. I relished in the art of annotation and carefully composed my reflective commentary to share with my peers. It felt so good to type out my thoughts and "publish" them to a forum of readers that I knew would read them. Though my words were merely my own thoughts and musings, it made me feel good to think that my peers were reading them and possibly gaining insight from my reflections and ideas. I know it is egotistical but I like to think that my writing is impactful. I hope that my words are able to reach and influence others. I see it happening more and more with my students, yet I am beginning to fear that my students almost trust me too much at times and are beginning to value my thoughts and ideas over their own. I certainly did this in high school and in university. I wrote down every single word my teachers' said and looked to them for insight and clarity. What I am learning now in my Master's program is that truth, especially literary interpretation, must come from within and we must steer clear of consulting "experts" on matters of interpretation. Only individuals can extract meaning from texts or works of art. Though we can look to experts to reveal more information and facts about a text or work of art, discovering meaning is a purely personal act. While our experiences, relationships and knowledge may influence our judgements, we must accept that all ideas and opinions are valid. 

Getting back into the reading of academic texts was a struggle at first. I found myself worrying about whether or not I was reading deeply enough into the articles and I had to read and re-read passages over again several times before I felt like "I got it". Yet I enjoyed the challenge and reminded myself, as I always remind my students, that reading is a struggle. If it was easy, it would be pointless. The fact that I had to stop to look up words and re-read passages and write down questions in the margins made the act of reading more meaningful and therefore, more valuable. 

It felt so great to post my reflections on this week's reading materials and watch our online classroom start to blossom with replies and additional commentary responses. I feel so fortunate to be a part of this intellectual community. I am so inspired by each and every single one of my peers. We all have unique personal and educational backgrounds and we are all teaching in very different types of schools, but what unites us is our humility and our fierce desires to be better and to question the educational system in the United States. We notice, wonder and connect our ideas to our readings and our experiences and to one another. It is a beautiful collaborative process and one I feel privileged to be a part of. I get to work and think alongside some of the most interesting and innovative minds in America! 

My one complaint is that we are all learning and collaborating virtually....which is not terrible, but I crave the personal stimulus of face-to-face interactions and dialogue. I can "see" my peers in their distinctive writing voices on our online learning platform (Moodle), yet it is no replacement for seeing them in person. We had such a wonderful time together this summer and I miss that carefree, warm and driven environment we had created for ourselves in the hallowed Teacher's College halls.

Oh how I wish I could be in graduate school full time forever.... 


"Professional Irritation"


This weekend, January 22-24, I joined approximately sixty of my colleagues for a professional development conference in Manama, Bahrain. As the days of the week bore on, my colleagues and I squirmed with excitement at the prospect of doing work over glasses of wine in a more liberal Arab nation! Truth be told, we were really all more interested in the social aspect of this weekend's conference over that of the actual professional development. Yet I think we all thought that the conference would be able to provide us with some "take aways" to help us all strengthen our teaching practices and work together as a team. I have always loved professional development conferences. Even though I find most of what is being talked about to be redundant I can usually find at least some good in everything.

That was not the case this weekend.

The keynote speaker of the conference was boring and the subject of her talks concerned information that I already knew about. This surprised me considering that I am only a fifth year teacher and by no means consider myself an educational expert. Yet as I dispassionately stared at her powerpoint presentation I couldn't help but think, I could be giving this speech. I do not say this often, as I pride myself on being a nerd with the belief that everyone has something to teach, but I was utterly bored out of my mind.

My saving grace was the fact that I was attending this conference with my amazing, bright, inspiring, intelligent and interesting colleagues. We call ourselves "The Dream Team" and I do not exaggerate when I say that working alongside these people I can easily call friends as well as co-workers, is indeed a dream. We all ignored the speaker and made the most of our weekend by working together on our own lessons and units. We were actually quite productive when left to our own devices. Something that never ceases to frustrate me about teaching conferences and workshops is the amount of micromanaging that goes on. I am a teacher, I know how to focus and get to work, I don't need to be shuffled from room to room and reminded of the task or to be given "five minute warnings" -- I'm a grown woman, I have a watch, I'll get there. The people who run teacher trainings treat us like children. I resent the fact that I must be told what to do and when to do it. I am a good teacher and I genuinely love my job. You don't need to tell someone to do something when they love to do it. I know I am unique in this regard. There are many teachers who do not find inspiration in what they do (and unfortunately these are probably the ones going off and getting their PhD's and torturing me with their speeches and expensive conferences). 

I do not mean to insult those hard working educators who do get their PhDs and publish studies and findings and books about "best practices" and "strategies for teaching success" but I am somewhat disdainful of the fact that I am spoken at like I am not a good educator. What really boils my blood is to think that these types of professional development "master" speakers probably (most definitely) get paid THOUSANDS of dollars to spew off their theories. 

I typed the following remarks to my graduate school online forum during the conference while in the throes of irritation:

" Its mind-blowing to me. I am in a conference center with hundreds of other teachers in great international schools in the Middle East, all of whom I am sure have great ideas and innovative ways of approaching learning, and yet we must all now sit silently and listen to a PhD (no offense Adam) published educational curriculum theorist talk AT us about what we should be doing in our classrooms. 

I apologize for my disdainful and snarky remarks. We are all tired and exhausted (from nights of poisoning our livers to days of poisoning our spirits). I just find it incredibly frustrating when people who have not stepped foot in a classroom in DECADES tell me how to teach. A teacher friend of mine from Australia said that in her school district there principals can only be principals for five years at a time and then they must go back to a classroom for a year or two and then can go back to being an administrator. I love that! Don't get me wrong, I am a nerd and I love reading articles and would get several PhDs for fun, if I could, but the people that should be making the most money and should be the ones standing up and telling their stories and theories are teachers. Hard working, red-ink stained finger-tipped, bags under the eyes, young, old, white, black, experienced, inexperienced classroom teachers. 

I admit I was a little "heated" and I was writing from a place of frustration, but my general sentiments still feel true to me.

I work in one of the greatest schools in the world alongside the greatest teachers in the world. I have learned more about teaching after working here during the past two years than I feel I could have ever learned in a non-teaching graduate school classroom. To become a better teacher you must teach. You must stand up in front of other students and through trial and error you will find your rhythm and very quickly discover what works and what doesn't. 

While my experiences at this teaching conference this weekend frustrated me, I have learned from them. 

I have learned that those who can't do, teach and those who can't teach, teach teachers. 

But I, alongside my inspiring cohort of Master's candidates at Teacher's College at Columbia, am going to change all that!

Week 3: "Bright Lights and a Renewed Sense of Hope"

Week 3: January 12th - 20th

I need to be much more dutiful about maintaining my writing practice. Yet I don't want to feel so obliged to my writing that I start churning out forced robotic responses about mundane issues and reflections, but I also don't want to let myself get lazy or too comfortable either. 

My graduate school online course is about to begin and I honestly couldn't be more excited to get back into the swing of things and start reading intellectually-stimulating and challenging journal articles. I look forward to engaging in dialogue with my amazing cohort of like-minded educators who continually inspire me to think more deeply and live more authentically.

Speaking of living authentically, this week I celebrated two very special AIS-R events. The first was something new: the AIS-R Foundation Gala: an expensive evening of fundraising for the school. Celebrated at the beautiful home of our high school principal, the evening felt positively star-studded. Big bulbed bright lights strung haphazardly among the trees of the sunken garden illuminated the cleanly scrubbed and made-up faces of AIS-R parents, faculty and supporters. Everyone was dressed to the nines (where does that expression come from exactly?) and looked phenomenal. The dinner was catered by the Four Seasons and I thought it was absolutely delicious. My favorite dishes were the mushroom soup - rich, aromatic and earthy - and the smoked salmon appetizer. Three people at my table didn't like smoked salmon so I was able to fill myself with three helpings of it! That and my numerous glasses of sweet red wine in the company of my dear friends made for a very joyful, if not hedonistic evening. 

I had spent the few hours leading up to the gala getting ready with my "gals". We did our hair and make up and talked frivolously. It felt like being back in high school again. 

I don't know how much money the gala raised but I am assuming it was quite a hefty load. It got me thinking about the value of an education and how so many people do not see education as an investment. I know that I currently live in an incredibly affluent part of the world and that the parents of my students are able to afford to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on their children's education, but it is more than just money, it is about priorities. The parents of my students could just as easily spend their money on private tutors but they clearly prioritize the educational needs of their children and value the American educational system. All of my students' parents want and expect their children to attend American universities because "they are the best". Wanting the best for your child is not just an American concept. My students' parents come from all over the world. Their businesses and homes and livelihoods have been shaped outside of the United States, which finds me wondering, why do they value an American education so much? 

When I look at American public schools  today I see a wide variety of educational experiences. Some US public schools are phenomenal places of learning that value teachers by paying them well and supporting their professional growth. These schools value their parents and above all, their students. These school's commit to learning and provide safe, caring and supportive environments for all to thrive. Other schools do not. On the opposite end of the spectrum there are those US public schools that intimidate their teachers, belittle students and criticize parents. This is particularly true in impoverished school districts - namely, the ones who need the most support and encouragement. 

Why is this? Why does this happen? What is to account for the severe gap between the privileged and underprivileged? Is it really just money? Or is it something else? 

....I feel myself slipping into a discussion about socioeconomic inequalities in the United States and while I do consider this to be a worthy topic of reflection, I feel as though it is rather heavy and detracting from the original intention I had for this post. So I apologize socioeconomic gap but you are just going to have to wait. 

Fast forward to January 20th. 

One of my most favorite AIS-R days of the year....

The Terry Fox Run! 

Earlier this year I made a commitment to myself to get into better shape through running. I have started off slowly and over the past few weeks have been making better progress with my speed and distance. The Terry Fox run at our school was a short run, just a little over 2 miles. The real Terry Fox ran approximately a marathon a day! His goal was to run from the Eastern coast of Canada to the Western coast. He dipped his foot into the Atlantic and set running off for the Pacific. He was just barely 21 years old. His story is heartbreaking, but I never tire of hearing it. Diagnosed with bone cancer at the age of 18 Terry Fox's life as a normal and ordinary Canadian teenager was changed for ever. He came up with the idea of running across Canada as a way to garner attention for cancer research. Cancer in the late 80s didn't have the tremendous support or attention that it has today. Nowadays there are numerous walks, runs, marathons, events and fundraisers for cancer research, but back in Terry's time, it was still quite a hush hush issue. He made his illness and the struggle to find a cure for cancer public and inspired a generation of kids to stand up for causes he believed in. 

I tear up almost every Terry Fox day thinking about him and his story. He never got to finish his run across Canada. He died a few hundred miles before reaching the finish line. Though he did manage to run the equivalent distance of Miami to Seattle (which shockingly is only just slightly more than halfway across Canada). 

Every year the Terry Fox run reminds me to stop complaining. To step up and take action. To quit whining. To feel more grateful. I had lots of students coming up to me telling me they couldn't run because "they were sick", "they had bad shoes", "they were tired"....I smiled and half-jokingly looked at them and said, "Terry Fox had progressive cancer and only one leg and he ran about a marathon a day, what's your excuse again?". 

But Terry Fox didn't run across Canada on one leg to make others feel guilty about not running. He ran because that is all he knew how to do. He wasn't the smartest, best looking or most creative person, but he had a passion and a vision of a better world and he did what he could. We don't have to be perfect. We don't even have to succeed, but we do have to try and we do have to give it everything we've got. 

Week 2: "Fleeting Fantasies"

I’ve never had much of a talent for writing fiction. I’ve always preferred to draw inspiration from real life and write about the world from my own perspective and limited, but real, lens of experience. My love for writing is inherently selfish – I write to understand, to reflect, to process. I honestly never even considered having other people read my writing until I started teaching and my mother encouraged me to “write down everything”. In addition to keeping a personal journal (as I have done for years) I began to blog about my experiences as a first year teacher. I'm grateful to my mother for suggesting this as writing about my experiences as a first year teacher proved to be invaluable to my development as an educator and as a young woman just trying to make it in this world. I’ve attempted to maintain my blog writing practice over the past five years (with irregular frequency).

Yet recently my love for narrative non-fiction has been striking me as rather ironic considering that I fantasize constantly. My fantasies are mostly inspired by that most imagination-inducing of questions, “what if…” What if my school was suddenly under attack, how would I handle the situation? I envision myself sheltering my students and building a barrier of desks to block the door. Then, like Angelina Jolie in an action movie, I would smash through the window of my classroom, having built a ladder out of chairs and pieces of clothing, to shuffle my students outside where I then guide them to safety after scaling the compound walls. There would also be some big helicopter rescue in there as well…

Alright, the majority of my fantasies are never quite that action packed, but every day I find something to fantasize about. What if that man over there is the love of my life? What if someone reads my blog and offers me a book deal? What if I get hired to work at one of the best private schools in NYC? What if I don’t get hired at all and I have to work as a waitress, barista or bartender (honestly not that terrible of an idea….)? What if this is the year all my dreams come true? What if this is the year that everything falls apart?

I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic. Having been raised in a safe, loving and protective environment overseas I think my imagination evolved as a result of my need to feel more alive and on edge in my exciting surroundings. Even though I lived a wonderful life and travelled extensively as a child, I loved the adrenaline rush of pretending my life was at risk and fantasizing about falling hopelessly in love. Perhaps Disney is to blame, or the dry desert sands of Arabia, but however I chose to explain away my behaviors, I know that I am a woman who will never stop fantasizing about the future. 

As I've gotten older I've begun to think more seriously about how I would like to make an impact on the world. Teacher isn't enough. I want to reach more people and contribute to more meaningful causes. I feel as though the only way I can do this is through writing and publishing a book. But what exactly would I write about? I feel like teacher memoirs and confessional prose narratives are a dime a dozen these days. Writing about life as a single woman overseas, forget it. Its been done and it continues to be done. I've always sought to set myself apart from the crowd in some way. I never liked "fitting in" - I've always preferred to stand out. When I reflect upon my life over the past five years, these significant / exciting / terrifying "post-undergraduate" years, I feel as though my life has been quite special and unique. But what exactly would I write about? I feel like books must have some kind of purpose or moral to them and my life is still being written. There are no illuminating culminating life lessons or valuable pearls of wisdom I feel qualified to proclaim to the world based on just my experiences alone. As I sit here typing these words and contemplating the reality of writing something worth publishing, the words "but what's the point" ring out loud and resolutely in my ears. 

What is the point?

What is the point of writing all this down? What is the point of publishing these words and sharing them with others when all my writing concerns is myself? 

Sylvia Plath just wrote about herself and look at how influential her work became...

Yes, but Sylvia Plath was able to translate her life into fiction. She was able to draw inspiration from life and take qualities and characteristics of people around her and morph them into fictional characters and experiences. I suppose I could do that. I've never tried. Perhaps that can be an ongoing goal for me in my writing. Perhaps if I fictionalize my experiences I can draw greater meaning from them. Yet isn't this a delusional way of reflecting life? Yes. I suppose it is. But I believe that our fantasies can teach us a great deal more about life and ourselves than objective reality can. As Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, "Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures". 

“Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.” ― Khaled Hosseini

“That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.” ― Tim O'Brien

2015: Week One (Starting Over)

Write a post a week.

I have proclaimed that as a goal for many years now and I have continually failed to achieve it. My excuses were always understandable: I prioritized my private journal writings over that of blogging, I got too busy with extracurricular activities (theatre, student council, coaching), I had too much grading to do, I was lesson planning, I was on vacation....I live a very busy and active life and it was "understandable" that I couldn't manage to find the time to write a blog post a week. After all, the best excuse I told myself was that it was better to "go out and live life" than to sit around writing about it. 

Well this year I want things to be different. This year I want to take more control over my life and challenge myself to be stronger, smarter, faster, and just better than the woman I was last year. 

We grow and change as people every year. Experiences change us. People change us. Ideas change us. 

This year I learned a great deal about myself: my personal strengths and weaknesses were brought to surface. It was a year of incredible highs and incredible lows. 

A brief recap of 2014:

• January: celebrated New Years single and happy with my girl friends in NYC. The future felt limitless.
• February: travelled to Cambodia and found a renewed faith in humanity and passion to help others. Got accepted to Columbia University Teacher's College! 
• March: turned 26 years old and spent the month surrounded by friends and feeling very well-loved and cared for. 
• April: coached softball for the first time and grew closer to a friend here in Saudi 
• May: helped my first group of IB seniors prepare for their IB exams and the future, juggled several relationships and felt compelled to make some tough choices between men I care about.
• June: moved out of my beloved Al Yamama villa and old AIS-R campus. It felt like the end of an era and I was sad to leave. 
• July: began graduate school and loved every single second of it. Committed to being in an official relationship with a kind and caring man who adored me. 
• August: actually got to see and spend time with the new boyfriend, it was blissful and perfect and every day felt like living in a dream. 
• September: return to Saudi and step "back" into my old life, socializing and partying and acting like a single girl
• October: a close friend of mine leaves Saudi for good and I leave to go to Colombia to visit with my father, we have one of the best and most adventerous and fun vacations ever
• November: a quiet month, I spend a weekend in Dubai to catch the last days of summer, I feel the struggles of being in a long-distance relationship grow stronger but I make the mental commitment to be with the man of my dreams and fantasize about our future seriously
• December: the exciting build up to a short lived engagement, followed by the biggest heartbreak I've ever experienced. I hurt someone I loved and must live with the guilt and try to heal and move on. My family and friends step up and support me with such incredible love, compassion and understanding that I am left feeling breathless with gratitude.

And now we have entered into the first week of January. The first week of 2015. It has been a difficult week. I was fortunate to get to spend New Years with my best friend in New York City, where I have decided to move to permanently this summer. I rekindled a friendship with an old high school friend and she renewed my inspiration to live a more purposeful and healthy life. 

While I dreaded leaving my friends and family in the United States, returning back to my Saudi life was not as bad as I had expected it to be. Getting back into the routine of work was actually very refreshing. Though I struggled emotionally to explain to my friends here about my failed relationship (I had to re-tell the same story of our breakup over and over again, like scratching open the scab of a wound afresh each day), I got through it and now that I've purged myself of the story and the tears and heartbreak and guilt, I finally feel somewhat reluctantly ready to start my life over again.

In addition to feeling gratitude for my friends, my family, my students, my work, my health, my life, I have decided that my overall New Year resolution this year is simply one word:

Patience. 

A great deal of my struggles this year were a result of my impatience. I was impatient to find love. I was impatient to become a "grown up". I was impatient with myself and impatient with others for not being on the same page as me. Impatience leads to making impulsive and selfish decisions. Impatience leads to making mistakes. Impatience leads to not listening to your heart. 

This year I am going to work on this quality. I am going to work on patience. I must learn to wait. I must learn to listen. I must learn to see things through. I must learn to take my time. I must learn to see the big picture. 

But it starts small. 

So today it is a blog post. 

It is my hope that through cultivating more patience in my life, I will learn to be a more committed person. More committed to my personal, emotional, physical and professional goals. I know now that I am not a perfect person (try as I might to act like one). But as Coach Ladouceur says in the film written about his life as a successful high school football coach, When the Game Stands Tall, "We're not asking you to be perfect on every play. What we're asking of you and what you should be asking of each other is to give a perfect effort..."

Perfect effort. 

To me that means I may continue to fall short of my goals and expectations, but I will not stop putting in effort. I will not quit. I will not let my mistakes and failures define who I am. I deeply regret the hurt I have caused someone I cared deeply about, but I am going to strive to be better. I am going to use that failure to fuel my efforts in the future. Every day is a new day. Every day is a chance to put forth a perfect effort. 

Grateful for my intelligent and beautiful Wellesley sisters

They challenge me, inspire me, comfort me, but most importantly......make me laugh

To new beginnings

The sun is always shining

My guardian angel

My father and grandmother. The holiday this year was a humbling experience for me.