Education

No Straight Lines

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Beginning at the parking lot and continuing along the walking trail leading to my favourite climbing spot are whimsical painted stones giving life advice. One that I particularly like reads, in translation, “The crooked tree enjoys life. The straight tree becomes a board.”

I have to smile every time I see this modified teaching from Daoist philosopher Lao Tzu. Indeed.

Consider an individual who carves their own path versus one who unquestioningly follows a straight line. Think of creatives, often revered for their skills, who report having had difficulty fitting in. There are whole communities of “alternatives” who are so similar to one another as to not be “alternative” at all. As an educator, I find this important to keep the spectrum of difference in mind in working with students. To some extent, I need them to “play the game” of school because of the way society is structured, but there is wiggle room between adherence to instructions and stamping out individuality.

I can see my life path reflected in the saying, too. I spent my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood occupied with, out of a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, what I was “supposed to” be doing. I had a plan and followed it, pretty predictably, until I didn’t. When I stopped the relentless, goal-oriented drive towards some imagined end, I realized that I didn’t actually want what the end had come to symbolize. I’d foregone the opportunity to “take chances, make mistakes, and get messy” in the words of Ms. Frizzle, everyone’s favourite science teacher, and came a little late to self-discovery.

But I got there, which is what had me in the forest climbing rocks in the first place.

This particular sign is placed so that you catch a glimpse of it on your way into the forest and see it full on when leaving. A little something to think about on the drive back home. I walked that way once with a friend whose oldest son is a good example of the crooked tree. He does not fit into any model called typical and things are hard for him that are not hard for everyone. But he can carry on a conversation like an adult, has genuine interests, and is afraid of nothing. My friend and I stopped together at the tree. Neither of us needed to say any more.

Thüringer Wald, Bad Tabarz, Germany – April 2024
Germany

Blink

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My grade seven students were surprised to find that class had already ended, shocked by the observation made earlier in the lesson that it had been a year and a half since they had completed the important exhibition that concludes grade five.

Time is funny like that.

I first moved overseas ten years ago.

My then-boyfriend and I got on a plane and slept better on the flight from Chicago to Hong Kong, the second leg of our journey, than we had in the nights leading up to our departure. We landed in Malaysia knowing nothing about what we were doing, I realized later, and it’s a good thing, too. Had we known how much we didn’t know, we never would have gone.

I’ve been much more prepared for subsequent moves and I can only shake my head at everything that went wrong that first time. Sometimes I ask myself why I hadn’t simply spent a little more time on the internet doing some pretty basic research, but then I remember that the world was a different place ten years ago. Information was not expected to be at our fingertips, so we didn’t spend much time looking. Unlike today, a world in which we are paralyzed by the amount of available information, I trusted what I was told and moved on.

Considering the ten years since getting on that plane, I cannot be more grateful for not knowing, for not having asked, for letting blissful ignorance guide me in the direction of what could logically be considered a stupid decision. Shortly before departure, I learned that my boss had quit, and found out upon arrival that ground had not been broken for the promised staff apartments and that the school itself was a hard-hat zone without consistent running water. Had I walked into those conditions today, I would have headed straight back to the airport.

But hindsight is twenty-twenty, and most of us who arrived were optimistic to a fault. It’s kind of a beautiful trait, actually, because it kept us going. We said “yes” again and again when everything around us was screaming “no”.

Optimism or utter foolishness, depending on how you look at what happened next.

In the end, my then-boyfriend and I moved (well-prepared!) to different countries, staying together for a year only to separate upon reuniting the next. Subsequently, I spent a few years deciding who I wanted to be now that I’d grown up. Armed with experience and facing a dearth of options, I took the only one there was: A small school had offered me a job, a small school in a small town that, according to my scouring of Google Maps, had a climbing hall. The news everywhere said that a pandemic was a bad time to find a new job, so the only logical answer was to take it.

In just over a month, I’ll take the German citizenship test for the chance that I’ll apply for citizenship here one day, a sure sign that I’ve decided to call this place home. For this, I can thank learning the language and falling in love with a local. We laugh when telling people about the dot on the map that brought us together, and remain in awe of the travel experiences that had us, for years, in the same corners of the world mere months apart.

I remain astonished at how small the world is, and I think I moved abroad to live that for myself. I signed and then broke a two-year contract, and then I blinked and ten years went by.

Education

Fourteen

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My fourteenth year of teaching began this week and it caught me by surprise. I ran through the numbers:

  • Three years at my first school
  • Three years in three different schools
  • Four years in one school
  • Beginning my fourth year at my current school

Somehow, I don’t feel quite old or experienced enough for all of that. But somewhere along the way, that’s indeed what happened.

I remember being a new teacher, staying late at school every night, settling myself into cafés to work on the weekends, balancing lesson planning with coursework for my Master’s. I remember a former colleague-turned-friend, the woman who hired me, asking me how she could help. I remember another colleague reminding me, when I mentioned nervousness and uncertainty, that the students didn’t know what I was feeling. I remember yet another colleague sitting down with me to go over lessons, make suggestions, and encourage me to try different things. I was mentored and supported and could not have been luckier for it.

By the time I began my third year of teaching, I could see the differences in myself and the first-year teacher who had started in my department. With a couple years of experience and my Master’s complete, I had time outside of school now, no longer staying much later than anyone else. I was excited rather than terrified at the prospect of preparing a new course, something I didn’t even realize until the new teacher pointed it out.

Now, I’ve designed new courses so many times that I don’t know what a school year looks like without it. It keeps things interesting, keeps me on my toes and trying different things. And now that the workload is normal rather than overwhelming, it’s also a lot of fun.

That’s how I know I’ve been doing this for a while. That’s how I can tell that I do know a thing or two, that my experience counts for rather a lot, and that my students and I really do learn from each other.

Here’s to year fourteen, to the newest course to develop, and to the young people I’ll be working with along the way. There’s no teaching without you.

Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think. – Hanna Holborn Gray

Photos, travels, musings, and ideas on education by someone trying to make the world a better and more peaceful place