Tag Archives: Reflection

Germany

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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

Education

See Me

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My thirteenth year as a teacher comes to an end this week. As all the years before it, it has gone quickly. There has been, as always, joy and sadness, disappointment and surprise, stress and smooth sailing. I keep track of seasons based on what we’re doing in school and refer to years according to the school calendar. In August I’ll buy a new pocket agenda.

There is a lot on this blog about teachers and teaching, about schools, students, and learning. I admit to loving, really loving, the work that I am privileged to do. If you ask me what I teach, I’ll give you the easy answer: I teach history, psychology, social studies, Theory of Knowledge. It’s true, but far more important to me is the human element. I teach young people and I watch them grow up for a little while. And then they go off into the world and I smile.

Last week I received an email from a student who I’ve taught since grade 10 who just completed grade 12. He is one of many students who has come to me over the years to talk about something that was on his mind, and one of a few who have written to me about it afterwards. What he said struck me and reminded me of things that matter. I wanted someone to see me and you saw me. I needed to talk and you listened.

Maya Angelou had it right: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

It’s not uncommon for me to raise an eyebrow at a student and ask, “You okay?” Or, when it works better, those words go on a sticky note that I pass to the student when moving around the room. I usually get a nod and sometimes a change in behaviour, and then we go on our way. Occasionally a student comes back to me later and I find out what was going on. Sometimes I receive messages, on a few occasions even years after the fact, telling me about a student’s feelings in that moment.

Young people are crying out to be seen and to be heard, and I think it’s not only young people. When we choose to engage, we don’t always know what our level of involvement will be. We don’t know what we’ll hear and therefore what we will be required to do. And we don’t do it for the possibility of thanks at the end.

To see a young person how they want to be seen, to sit across a table and pass a packet of tissues, to really listen to someone who just needs to talk – this is what I do. And I am so, so lucky to be able to give those moments and the accompanying feelings. This is all part of being a teacher.