“They Carry Themselves Differently”

One of the most moving short stories I know is a work by Tim O’Brien called, “The Things They Carried.” I discovered it about a decade ago and taught the story a couple of times in a U.S. History course. It is about the Vietnam War, but instead of resurrecting the old debate concerning whether the United States should have gone/should not have gone to war, it is a deceptively simple story about what our American soldiers in Vietnam carried with them. It began with a laundry list of the physical things they carried in the packs on their backs, and the weight that they produced. Then the story moved into the social and emotional baggage that also weighed them down as they lived and fought in the Southeast Asian jungle. As a historian always wondering what a particular moment in time must have felt like, this story helped me better understand what all humans carry with them. As I travel back and forth from Jordan to the United States now (three trips in all last year) I am interested in what people carry, and also, since I am a sociological voyeur at heart, how they carry themselves.

Last night at a “TGITh” dinner (remember—our workweek ends on Thursday, with the weekend as Friday and Saturday) my wonderful KA friends Tessa, Rehema and Linda and I enjoyed a calm dinner out at our old standby restaurant, Haret Jdoudna, in nearby Madaba. Naturally we talked about the very long orientation and first week of classes experiences (a substantial 11 day stretch with nary a break) and among the witty, sage, catty, frank, reflective comments, Rehema marveled about our “old” students, the pioneers of KA: “they just carry themselves differently now.”

There are many exciting things about a first week of school. Certainly you can’t help reliving your own childhood experiences—for me dashing off to Westwood Elementary School, Gamble Jr. High, and then Western Hills High School. I always wore a blue shirt from K-12 grade on the first day. I learned from my new colleague Nancy that she has enjoyed blueberry muffins every first day of school for her entire life—student and teacher life—and that is quite a record since Nancy is entering her 41st year of teaching. On those fabled first days there are hopes that you will finally get it right this time (!). There are the butterflies in your stomach about the new, unknown students, whether as peer, or classroom charges. But there is that serendipitous experience of seeing familiar faces. I went through K-12 grade with two friends over that long haul—David Thornton and Kathy Gardner. Every Wednesday after Labor Day we greeted each other from the clamor of kindergarten days to the sophistication and authority of senior year at West High. I’m sure someone noticed how we changed over time and how we carried ourselves, but we were far too interested in other more meaningful pop cultural or friendship concerns.

Rehema is right. The marvel of the week has been the maturation of our students from last year. They do carry themselves differently. I jotted down just a few examples of how in this first week they have come back to KA—so different from the beginning of last year’s experiment in the Middle East.

There is one young woman, the daughter of a great history colleague, who just came back from an August conference to Boston, an international conference called “Woman to Woman” and she announced to her family that her mission in life is to be a bridge between the Middle East and the West. My colleague said, “That’s not the same daughter who started here last year! She said she had a mission in life! Who knew it could happen?!”

Another prickly and often exasperating student, very close to that same colleague, went to see her the other day and said, “Have you gotten any complaints about me yet this year?” My friend thought about it and realized that no, she had not. He responded, “No, of course not. I’ve changed.”

Yesterday in morning meeting before the whole school a student who last year was such a shy student, gave a solo presentation about the meaning of Ramadan to him, with powerpoint (of course), but more importantly, a winning smile and smooth confidence.

I met with a student the other morning to whom it had been suggested she could not handle my AP History class. She asked if I would give her a week to prove that she could do the work. I did not hesitate to give her a chance. The encounter reminded me of another such request back in 1992 from a kinda shy student named Karen. Karen went on to succeed in that class and prove her mettle as an excellent scholar. At the conclusion of the next day’s class this young woman stayed after to ask questions—not things she had not gotten through or understood in the fast pace of class, but questions that revealed her curiosity and need to continue along our discussions of the 17th century Dutch and Chinese. I told her then there was no need for a “waiting period.” She is going to be golden. My “Karen” of the 21st century!

After the third day of class, another shy young man stopped me and said, “I really like that you are trying to get us to understand what’s going on. I have to work on that. I think that’s what’s really important—we have to understand things.”

I spied one of our juniors, now a proctor in the freshman dorm, walking side-by-side with a new 9th grader. Our veteran student is at least a head taller than the young guy, but from their body language, the older guy was happily explaining something and the freshman looked so relieved to have a kind junior to look up to.

It has made the first week of school even more exciting than usual to see and hear these examples. In my first day of real class (after the introductory day where I try and explain what AP means and scare/intrigue/excite/support/inspire them) I hoped to spend the whole class on one Vermeer artwork, a painting I had never taught before. I wanted to see if they could keep their attention for so long on just one thing, and also to keep digging just on one source. A great day. That night I gave them a tricky assignment. I gave them some excerpts from the great novel by Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible, and asked them to read the passages and extract from them some lessons they may learn about what it takes to be a great historian. Not easy at all. I reminded them not to write a summary. I know what happens in the passages.

I had 13 boys come one-by-one to visit me—very little whining—mostly seeing if their thought process was going okay. I had a 30-minute discussion with a boy that any teacher would probably sigh and go, “oh yes, he’s a bad boy.” He had found a terrific quotation and was working on how to transform that concrete quotation into a strong abstract insight.

I have a handful of sophomores who had me last year and requested to take the AP course this year. They sit in class smiling away, knowing that this work just transforms you. One of them had an interesting approach to the assignment. He decided to brainstorm on what the hallmarks of a great historian might be, and then seek out in the passages for examples of his thoughts. Another told me he fixated on the title alone for awhile, and especially the word, “bible.” He said, “A bible, or a Koran, is a sacred text—you don’t mess with that. But we have to be careful not to think of a history textbook as a Bible. We need to challenge that text.” All I can say is wow. I wish I had had that insight!

Indeed they do carry themselves differently now—but the year is not just about our old students. And not everything is perfect! We are talking about a school—with adolescents and lots of idealistic adults. On the very first day of school someone pulled two fire alarms during the third class, sending the campus into a tailspin. Everyone assumes it must be a new student. After all it never happened once last year, and as we know, our old students “just carry themselves differently now.” Maybe.

And on the first day in my one AP section, as I am enjoying the beauty of my own spoken words, a new girl offers very loudly: “I don’t know what all this worry about college is. Everyone I know just sleeps through high school and then they go to the college they want to. What’s the big deal???” Oh—how delicious! How charming! What an interesting choice in how to make your first impression! I remembered the all-mighty words of the wise philosopher Barney Fife, who uttered to his boss Andy Taylor, “Andy, you’ve got to nip it in the bud!” Kinda fun to have a smack-down on the first day.

And on the third day a different new girl, about 10 minutes into our lesson, closed her notebook, put her pen and then her head down on her desk. I waited a little bit, and went and said quietly enough, “You may want to re-think staying in this class if you’re tired. We don’t have time to be tired in an AP class—we have 10,000 years to learn! And if you’re tired on the third day, I wonder what it will be like for you after 30 weeks.” The next day she came and apologized. I told her what got me the most was that she closed her book—she ended her engagement and involvement in class. “Be careful about what that statement looks like to a teacher,” I said. We had a nice chat. I think I noticed that she was carrying herself a little differently after that.

Oh—it’s great. It was an exhilarating week. But I am reminded of a comment made once by university professor and biographer Fawn Brodie: “Housework is a chore. Climbing a mountain is difficult. But teaching school—now that’s real work.”

And so on the 12th day they rested…