Week 11: "Just Keep Writing"

Week 11:
March 15-21


This week, the week before SPRING BREAK, I am finding my energy drained and my efforts spread thin. In addition to teaching full time I am taking an online graduate school course and as much as I love it, there are times when I feel it more as a burden than a blessing. Every week we must write a commentary expressing our thoughts and reactions to the week's assigned readings. I genuinely love doing this. We share our thoughts and then respond to one another and engage in an online dialogue about matters of education near and dear to our heart. Usually our commentary pieces are thoughtful reflections. Very seldom do we argue or disagree with one another. Earlier in the course, our professor had made us read some articles by a literary theorists that just rubbed us all the wrong way. We were united in our respectful disagreement with his ideas and concepts. 

Sometimes I feel as though my graduate school cohort may be too supportive. I love my peers deeply and genuinely see them all as friends, in addition to partners in learning, but shouldn't a learning environment contain a bit of controversy and push-back? I do not wish to be in a hostile learning environment, but a little healthy debate and disagreement is what, for me, makes learning so fun! 

So for this week's blog post, I am taking the easy way out and rather than coming up with a new or original piece of writing, I am going to be copying and pasting my graduate school commentary. I spend approximately 45 minutes to an hour composing my commentaries. Sometimes the words flow easily and other times, I find myself struggling to articulate my thoughts. Fortunately my professor doesn't much care about our writing style, so long as it is authentic! Sometimes I write in a very free and stream-of-consciousness style of writing and sometimes I strive to be more "academic". 

As much as I love having this blog as a place to publish my thoughts and hold myself accountable to my discipline of writing I do feel pressure to keep it up and maintain my weekly commitment to posting. 

Writing is a discipline. Even the best writers in the world must force themselves down and put fingertips to keypad, or pen to paper. Inspiration is fleeting. Sometimes we just have to be our own kick in the ass. 

The readings for the past few weeks have confirmed for me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am a literature teacher through and through. I love writing, but like my yoga practice, writing is something I do privately, for me. Sure, I’ve had fantasies about publishing a book of my poems or travel experiences, but my love for classic literature stops me from making that dream into a reality. I don’t consider my writing to be worthy enough to be placed on bookshelves alongside the works of Plath, Chatwin, Thoreau or Emerson (four of my favorite writers who I draw tremendous inspiration from in my “personal” writing). However, when I walk through bookstores today and pick up copies of the newest and shiniest bestsellers, self-help texts and memoirs, I cannot help but think, “Ok, I can write better than this person”.

Like Peter Elbow, I love that I was trained in classical literature. I love that I had older male professors who walked through the hallowed stone hallways of Wellesley with their beaten leather briefcases full of spindly handwritten lecture notes on texts they knew inside and out. I hung on their every word and considered insights on literature from them to be gold. My literary education definitely felt like a religion at times. These professors were the high priests who knew how to access the secrets of the Gods – Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Plath, Bishop.  I was a lowly servile nun, furiously pouring through scripture looking for the “key”, the secrets that I knew lay beneath the words, if only I was smart or dedicated enough to find them.

But this kind of attitude is completely lost on most of my students. Most of them want to go to college to escape their parents, make money or take steps towards forging a successful career. In many ways, I admire them, they are much more practical than I was in high school. I applied to the best liberal arts schools in the country and honestly, if I had unlimited funds, I would happily just stay in school forever. Learning in and of itself was the gift for me. This may be one of the reasons why I push so hard against the current trends in education to make learning more “skills” oriented. Our learning coordinator (curriculum police, as I quietly refer to her) repeats in all of our planning means, “If you can’t measure it, then you can’t assess it”.

So much of Elbow’s article resonated with me. I have numerous notes that I wrote down in the margins of his paper that I wanted to share with you all, but I want to challenge myself to write about something that makes me slightly uncomfortable: getting kids to read.

Gerald Graffs’ article was a perfect piece to read this week as I have just begun tutoring a sixth grade boy who is a classic “reluctant reader”. His reading teacher has shared with me that he reads at fourth grade reading level and that he likely has undiagnosed ADHD. His father won’t hear of it – he’s a military man who just wants to see his son “buckle down” and start improving his reading scores. “Go hard on him”, he’s told me. “Just hit him with the tough stuff”. Oh boy. What have I gotten myself into, right? Truth be told, I know that I am probably not the best person to be tutoring this child, but I am a friend of the family and none of the other teachers really want to deal with this father any more. So here I am, tutoring a twelve year old four times a week in basic reading skills.

I must admit, I was hoping that Graff’s piece would give me more answers. After all, he too admitted to being a “reluctant reader”. Now the big difference between Graff and my tutee, J, is that J is so much younger than Graff. J is just in 6^th grade, while Graff describes his struggles with reading through high school and college. Most of Graff’s struggle with literature stemmed from his insecurities about not being able to grasp the “critical vocabulary” of literary analysis. J, however, doesn’t have to do literary criticism in sixth grade. In fact, from what I’ve observed, the educational system in middle school is actually perfect for reluctant readers. The sixth grade English team uses book clubs and literary circles to engage kids in reading – that is the social component Graff (and Appleman, last week) mentioned is so necessary to fostering a love of reading. Yet, J still doesn’t like to read. In sixth grades, the kids get to pick their own books – free choice! Another strategy I thought would help foster a love of reading in a reluctant reader. Nope. He just passively picks the books he sees other kids reading and says, “this is good”, but he doesn’t actually care. He doesn’t know what he likes to read and furthermore, it doesn’t even bother him all that much.

I became frustrated. While I appreciate Graff’s points about how literature teachers teach more criticism than actual literature, this information wasn’t helping me get through to my little reluctant reader. Though I must admit, I liked when he wrote “…students who do well in school and college are those who learn to talk more or less like their teachers, who learn to produce something resembling intellectualspeak” (47). I couldn’t help but smile as I recalled the fruitful discussions I had with my students last semester when I taught 1984. Teaching 1984 in Saudi Arabia had to have been one of the more enjoyable experiences of my teaching career. If the Saudi authorities had heard some of our discussions, I am sure I would have been exported in a hot second.

But back to J. How am I going to help this kid not only improve his reading skills but actually come to enjoy reading? I don’t think it is possible to improve reading skills without actually buying in to the process of reading (right guys?). So how do I pull him out of his reluctance to accept reading? 

Graff writes, “reading books with comprehension, making arguments, writing papers, and making comments in a class discussion are social activities….the social conversation that reading, writing and arguing must be part of in order to become personally meaningful”.

J will read if he thinks that reading is meaningful. But right now social activities aren’t doing it for him. So what is missing?

The answer was in front of me the entire time. His father. Two nights ago I was at their house for a few hours tutoring J and when the father came home from work I looked over and saw him relaxing on the couch. What was he doing? Playing on the iPad.

I realized that if I am to get J to read and see reading as an important life activity, I am going to have to get the father to read. I’m a little scared to bring this up to him, he is an intimidating person after all, but I think that this is the key. For the most part, we mimic the behaviors of the people we look up to and respect. Growing up, that was my parents. I loved them and looked up to them. Whenever they got home from work, what did I see them doing? Reading. They were always reading.

This week I finally realized that teaching really is impossible. Because we cannot confine our learning to mere classrooms. If we are to truly master the art of teaching, we must also get into the homes and work directly with parents.  I know that parenting is a tough job. I am sure that most parents at the end of hard working days do not want to sit and do homework with their kids or read books with them. I don’t have kids, but I get it, I really do. But it has to be done.

Cover Photo from Stephen King's inspirational memoir, On Writing.

After reading this book, I finally began to understand that great writers
aren't born, they are made. Writing is hard work, it requires tremendous
discipline and above all, a thick skin. King was rejected hundreds upon
hundreds of times. Yet he kept writing. He writes that he must force himself
to write for a few hours every day and that it is crucial for writers to have an
isolated, quiet space that is only used for writing. 

Week 7: "Renewed Inspiration"

Feb 12th - 18th

This week's post is dedicated to my beautiful mother who turned 62 on February 12th! 

Like any female child, I fought against her attempts to help and advise me while growing up, but as I've gotten older and more mature over the years, she has become a true source of strength and inspiration in my life. I look up to her and admire her and value her judgement and opinion above most others. She is the most humble person I have ever encountered. She works incredibly hard at all things and yet never complains. Her family is her top priority and she loves and takes care of us and her friends, who she treats like family, without question. She makes me laugh and pushes my sister and I to be the best possible versions of ourselves that we can be. She doesn't tolerate unkindness and is a highly sensitive soul. In today's world sensitivity is not a coveted or even largely respected character trait, but she feels with her entire heart and loves all unconditionally. She has taught me that kindness is the greatest form of power. 

Thank you Mom. It cannot be said enough! You bring such light into the world and inspire me to be a better person than I am. I love you!

Growing up, my mother used to always say how much she would love to go to Cairo one day. She fantasized about seeing the pyramids and going to King Tut's tomb. She had introduced me to the film "Cleopatra" starring Elizabeth Taylor and she delighted in watching and re-watching Steve Martin's famous song he performed on SNL about "funky Tut". She is a sincere history buff and surely I have never seen her read anything that isn't non-fiction. So you can imagine her joy at discovering, when I was a senior in high school, that my softball team was scheduled to travel to Cairo for our final tournament. Since our team had done so well all season and because this was a fun and exciting destination, she came on the trip with my father (the assistant coach), my sister and I! It was such an exciting and memorable experience, full of beautiful sights, intense softball games, poolside lounging, my first time smoking shisha, and of course, gold medals and a first place trophy. I must admit, however that the trip was tainted for me by the fact that I was suffering from a stress fracture in my right leg and couldn't help my team win our title. I still shudder thinking about it. It was a terrible moment of weakness for me. I felt so helpless and my confidence in myself was almost shattered. As proud as I was for my teammates for pulling together and winning gold, I couldn't help but suffer with the thought that I was unnecessary. 

Fast forward 9 years and I find myself in Cairo once again. This time, however, I am filled with joy, love, a strong sense of self, and confidence. I flew to Cairo this past weekend to meet up with my childhood best friend of more than seventeen years. We met when we were children in Saudi Arabia and though we have grown up apart over the years, we have remained close and have developed into very similar spirits. We differ in a lot of ways, but our cores are the same. We both love traveling and trying new things and pushing ourselves out of our comforts zone and shaping our own rules. I love this woman as a sister and she constantly inspires me. 

Friends are family to me. Growing up overseas away from my blood relatives in Massachusetts forced me to seek comfort and support among my friends. My friends have seen me at my best and my worst and they love me unconditionally. I am not a perfect person, as I have tried to repeat and shout out to the world over and over again in recent months, but true friends love you for all your imperfections and failures. True friends pick you up when you've fallen apart and will give you space when you need time to heal. They are there. I've always loved that quote about friends being like stars, for as an international traveller, I find it perfectly describes the power that friendships have in my life, 

"True friends are like stars, you can't always see them, but you always know they're there". 

I have a great number of very strong, inspiring and empowering women in my life. They take the form of friends and relatives, but also students, teachers, parents, acquaintances. Though I suffer from feelings of loneliness at times,  I know that I am loved. I live a life of incredible fortune and privilege. 

Being in Cairo this past weekend was a very humbling experience. As Krisztina and I were driven through the city's dusty side streets, shaded by the leaning cement awnings and balconies of partially constructed apartments, I couldn't help but think about how good I have it. Having spent the past two and a half years here in Riyadh, I almost forgot what real poverty looked like.  Most of Cairo is painted over with a layer of sandy grime, trash is stuffed into every crevice and is sprinkle like confetti along footpaths and alleys. Most buildings and mosques seem as though they are all falling apart ever so slightly at the seams. Yet the people are kind, open and giving.  Citizens walk around wearing worn caps and sweaters and shoes splitting at the heel. Though the temperature there hovers around the mid-fifties, Egyptians are as bundled up as New Englanders preparing for a Nor'easter. Beggars clad in oily scraps of fabric sit in the middle of sidewalks, arms or stubs outstretched in hope of receiving a single coin of charity. Tourists stick out like sore thumbs and are feasted after like juicy steaks to stray dogs. 

I felt ashamed remembering that mere days ago I was curled up on my couch feeling sorry for myself as I scrolled through pages of New York City real estate thinking, I am going to be so poor next year. 

"So poor"? Poor because I won't have a rent-free two bedroom, three bathroom villa all to myself? Poor because I won't be making a tax-free salary? Poor because I won't be able to travel to Cairo or Dubai on my weekends? 

I bowed my head in shame. 

On our second night in Cairo, the manager of the hostel Krisztina and I were staying at treated us to shisha and dessert. We drove out to a little cafe on the Nile and were the only people there save the waiters. For two hours we sat across from one another, sipped fresh mango juice,  inhaled the sweet vapors of apple flavored sticky tobacco and talked about politics. The Egyptians love talking politics. Krisztina and I bombarded Atef, our kind host, with question after question about life in Cairo: the revolution, the military, sanitation, recycling, religion, family, dating, sex, marriage, tourism, Russia, the US government, Hillary Clinton and on and on and on. The whole night we were enraptured by his thoughtful and sincere responses to our questions. We learned so much and I gained a deep sense of appreciation for my upbringing abroad. I was amazed at how well-informed and knowledgable Atef was. He knew the names of so many world leaders and their positions with regards to Egyptian affairs. He recalled the days of the revolutions in 2011 and proudly shared that he "was there". He was one of the faceless men in the crowd holding and waving flags and banners, screaming at the top of his lungs in the middle of Tahrir square. I wondered if I had unknowingly seen him on TV. 

"How could I not be there?" he exclaimed, "it is my country!" He smiled as he joked that his vocal chords have only just now started recovering. The hostel he owns, that Krisztina and I called home for three nights, is just a few steps down the street from the famous apex of the revolution. 

"You couldn't avoid it if you tried," Atef cooly replied when I asked if it was frightening being so close to Tahrir square. 

He then assured Krisztina and I that, as tourists, we had nothing to fear in Egypt. 

"This is Egyptian against Egyptian" he asserted. 

Sadly, this information hasn't made it's way to the majority of the Western world yet and Cairo's tourism industry has taken a big hit. 

"I've lost approximately 3 million pounds" (the equivalent of around $400,000) Atef admitted to us when we asked about how badly the revolution has affected the tourist industry. Cairo is a city full of multi-lingual, well-informed, passionate and proud people who make their living by providing driving, touring, and informational services to foreigners. Now most of them are unable to secure work for months at at time. As a tourist, I definitely felt like everyone was trying to rip me off, but truthfully, that is true in any third world country. It was certainly true in Egypt before the revolution and it will remain to be true in years to come.  

Overall, this weekend was one of incredibly joy and excitement. Krisztina and I spared no expenses in making the most of our time in Cairo and we did so by hiring local drivers, eating in local eateries and of course, contributing to the tourism industry by renting camels and being guided by locals around the famous pyramids. Every cent we spent was worth it. We tried to stay as off the beaten path, experiencing the realities of Cairo life, as best we could -- 25 cent falafel pitas every morning, copious amounts of tea and broken Arabic expressions and words of gratitude on our lips at every moment. There is truly no better way to see the world. 

New Donkey Friend at Sakkara

Best Friends Watching the Sun Go Down at the Pyramids

Beautiful architecture in Khan el-Kalili (downtown souk)

Coptic Christian rock sculptures and crosses

Driving up the mountain known as "Garbage City" to see a Coptic Cathedral built into a cliff. 

Typical Mode of Transport in Cairo

Mokattam village, also known as "Garbage City", is where all of Cairo's trash gets dumped, but it is then sorted and recycled by the villagers who live among it. 

Koshary, a typical Cairo lunch of noodles, macaroni, lentils, rice, crispy onions, corn, and a delicious spicy paprika sauce! 

My beautiful friend mounting her beautiful camel, Mike Tyson. 

"Looking up" in Cairo is a vision

Teenage kid getting tattooed on the side of the street

Shisha and tea break with our lovely driver, Mohammad and magnoon (crazy) guide, Amir. 

Sunset camel ride by the pyramids

One of my favorite pictures of the trip....camel serenity

A beautiful end to a beautiful weekend.

Week 6: "Senselessness"

I’m feeling hopeless.

The News.

Oh the dreaded news with a capital N. 

I’ve been reading stories about the death of the young Jordanian fighter pilot, captured by ISIS militants and burned alive in a cage. A cage. The militants video-taped the entire thing. A 22 minute video showing such incredible anguish and horror. Torture. Death. I saw a brief still photo of the footage, alongside a photograph showing Queen Rania hugging the pilot’s wife after she had learned of her husband's death through Facebook.

Facebook.

King Abdullah II also went with Queen Rania to the small Jordanian village of Aya where Moaz al-Kassabeh, the fighter pilot, and his family are from. Looking at the pictures of Anwar Tarawneh and her husband, Moaz break my heart. They were only married for six months. He was 26 years old.

26.

My age.

My age.

Jordan has since launched aerial attacks on Syria where ISIS has set up camps. Video footage of those attacks have also been on the News along with pictures show Arabic writing on missiles which say, “for you, the enemy of Islam”.

Murder. Deaths. 

Bombs. Deaths. 

Attack. Deaths. 

Counter-attack. Deaths.

When will it end?

I feel so hopelessly naïve asking this, but why do people kill other people? Really? Why? What instinct or feeling or idea or belief is so strong that it can compel someone to take the life of another human being?

Love. Greed. Vengeance. Power.

These are the “answers” I read when I look up articles or read stories about acts of murder. Because that is what we are doing when we go to war. Committing government sanctioned murder. Murder is still murder even if it’s the “bad guy”.

As children we are told to think about the consequences of our actions. Children, and most adults really, are impulsive by nature. We act without thinking. Yet as grown ups we know that this is wrong and that we should strive to think ahead. The reason I don’t understand murder is because I don’t understand what it achieves. If someone kills someone I love, how will killing that person in return make me feel better? Will it bring back my loved one? No. Will it make me feel better? No. So what is the point?

What is the point?

I need to know.

Is this why people seek religion in times of crisis? We cannot grapple with the complexities of life on our own so we must look to a higher all-powerful, all-knowing figure to justify the ridiculousness of human actions?

Kids with cancer. Another complexity of life I will never be able to understand.

There are so many senseless things in life. Try as we might to control the people and world around us, the truth is, we all have very little control over our lives. We can control little things: like the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the way we chose to spend our time, but we cannot control our bodies on a cellular level, we cannot control our brains, we cannot control the weather, we cannot control other people. So how must we live? In a constant state of chaos? No. In a state of acceptance. If we cannot control the world around us, the only thing we can do is accept it. Pain begets pain. Misery begets misery. Hatred begets hatred. The only way to stop it all is to just stop. Stop. Accept. I don’t mean to give up. No, acceptance is more powerful than giving up. It’s giving in. Its achieving control through relinquishing control and finding peace by not allowing external factors to affect you or force you to take unnecessary action.

Queen Raina of Jordan comforts Anwar Tarawneh, wife of the pilot who was brutally murdered at the hands of ISIS militants, at her late husband's ancestral home near the southern town of Karak

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2942003/It-checked-Facebook-knew-Wife-pilot-murdered-ISIS-shares-heart-wrenching-moment-learned-death-comforted-Jordan-s-Queen-Raina-late-husband-s-home.html#ixzz3Qx8CPpQg

The slickly-edited video released tonight contains aerial shots that appear to show Jordanian strikes on Islamic State targets. The Royal Jordanian Air Force launched strikes on Syria this morning

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2942003/It-checked-Facebook-knew-Wife-pilot-murdered-ISIS-shares-heart-wrenching-moment-learned-death-comforted-Jordan-s-Queen-Raina-late-husband-s-home.html#ixzz3Qx8cMjbL

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!