an exciting stew

On Friday the returning students, the 280 veterans of KA, return to campus for the beginning of the teaching year. On Saturday all of the new students descend upon our grassy campus here in the middle of the Moabite desert. Last week I worked with all of the new faculty, six in my department, and this week, we welcomed back the veteran faculty. It is always exciting greeting old friends and forging new relationships.

Since inevitably I will talk about the progress, and the trials and the tribulations of the school year, let me introduce you to my all-star line-up in the History and Social Studies Department:

Barry is the most senior of the new teachers, hailing from Canada, and having worked abroad for the last 11 years in both Costa Rica and then Damascus, Syria. He obviously loves talking about teaching, and has that great twinkle in his eye as we discuss the challenges and excitements about working with our students.

On the other end of the seniority spectrum, I have two recent college graduates joining the team. Gabi is also Canadian and comes to us to teach AP Psychology. She had been in the Math Department briefly last week, but Barry talked to her and urged her to move over to our nest since we have four brand-new teachers, and I do love the mentoring of young teachers. Gabi is interested in learning about the Middle East, and has the naivete most of us remember from our first year in Jordan. Eager to learn, and eager to work, she is gonna be fine! Charlie, our other recent college grad, is exceptionally knowledgeable in the history of the region—he majored in Middle Eastern Studies (and speaks Arabic!) and helped out at KA in the two summers before the school even opened. His excitement and verve remind me of other newbies Andy and Chuck, teachers who quickly became outstanding teachers.

Emily and I had several great phone interviews last spring—a strange way to hire faculty, surely, but with the distance of her California job at Berkeley and KA in Jordan, we cannot always meet candidates in person. She is just as exciting in person, however, and she and her husband have moved here so she can teach World History. In just 10 days it is obvious how much she likes to plan and organize—important qualities for tackling that massive course!

Steve is a newbie to Jordan, but not to me. I had hired him at Hackley in 2002 to teach Middle School history, and he ably joined that great team of historians. Steve is part of a wave from Hackley this year (three new ones plus me, the old guy, and two more part-timers coming later in the year!) designed to oust the Deerfield monopoly! No, but when Julianne went to assemble her team here in Jordan, she wanted Steve on board since she found him to be a dynamite worker and colleague in the Middle School at Hackley.

The last of our new hires, Anabel, kind of fell into our lap. In June I learned that a colleague was not going to return—ouch—how do we fill the vacancy quickly and effectively??? Well, a letter turned up in Headmaster Eric’s box from an American ex-pat working in the Public Health field in Amman who fancied teaching (I loved the part in her cover letter about how since her parents had been teachers, “naturally, after college, I had no desire in entering the family business”!). We met Anabel, instantly enjoyed her personality, and thought she would round out our department nicely. She is as enthusiastic and curious as one hopes a new teacher can be, and she has already been in Amman for a year and adjusted to life in our neck of the woods.

These six join my veteran co-founders of the department, Jordanian born Fatina, and Lebanese-born Yasser, and mid-western Johnny in creating an exciting stew of collegiality. Like any good stew, it improves with age, as it melds the flavors and strengths of the ingredients. One easy thing to note, we laugh a great deal in the department office, and as old-time comedian Milton Berle once noted, “Laughter is an instant vacation.”

We have been working together in these last 10 days discussing the contours of our courses and where each ought to begin. One of the exercises we did was brainstorming about what we want our students to be like at the end of the school year. I asked them to privately make a list of 5-10 abilities they hope our student-historians will have as the year winds down 10 months from now. I then asked them to privately make a list of 5-10 attitudes they hope our student-historians will display at the close of our enterprise next spring.

Maybe every department faces this same dilemma, but we so often spend so much time on the content of our department with all the history—don’t get me wrong, I adore the content of a history course—but we don’t spend nearly enough time and energy on what particular skills we wish to hone, and what personal qualities we wish to cultivate in these classes day after day.

After 10 days together, our department has already cohered in a blissful way. We range in experience from teaching for nearly 35 years to 0 years! Sometimes when you do these exercises, someone just rolls his or her eyes since this exercise hardly counts like setting up your room or finding all the cords and remotes for the wireless machinery tech gadgetry one needs for the dog and pony power-point shows of contemporary education. Collaborative exercises are always an interesting test to see how a department’s momentum and readiness to explore new territories will be. But this exciting stew of our department engaged in a lively discussion. We shared our findings, and these are some of the answers offered by the department:

What are the abilities and attitudes we hope our students possess by the end of the year?

Abilities
• To know what a thesis statement is
• Collect information
• To organize and write a persuasive essay/research paper
• To have original responses to class material and homework
• To speak in front of a group
• To read a document critically and understand “point of view”
• To present material in front of a class
• To analyze information
• To understand and succeed at group work/collaboration
• To be able to connect between different periods of time
• To be able to compare civilizations
• To be able to listen
• To be able to ask questions
• To be able to see the past in the present issues of today’s world
• To communicate findings
• To be able to walk in the shoes of someone from a different time
• To attain a confidence in the classroom enough to speak, argue, and debate
• To be able to read more effectively, and power-skim
• To be able to detect change over time
• To be able to relate the history to their lives

Attitudes
• Love of learning (actually enjoy history!)
• Trust the teacher
• Devil’s advocacy
• A sense of wonder about what another age “felt” like
• Empathy!
• Be open to living with, and studying new cultures
• Creativity
• Understand and accept constructive criticism
• Curiosity to fill in the gaps we didn’t cover
• Motivation
• Non-judgmental work with peers
• Inquisitiveness
• Hunger for more knowledge
• Enthusiasm about peers’ insights
• Deference to class cohesiveness and community
• Desire to further discussion of historical issues outside of class
• To think of history not as something only in the past but a discipline that allows us to reflect on our present—not just dry facts/figures only
• Confidence
• Kindness to each other
• Willing to take risks
• Self-respect
• Not afraid of change!

Of course, the challenge…now comes the part that makes this education biz a never-ending fascinating, never-boring venture—how do we get our students to this point?? How do we get them to be these people?!?!

These 400+ students who arrive in the next few days will fill our classes, and how do we train them to produce these desired results? How do we create the assignments and the projects and the questions that nudge them toward these abilities and attitudes? How do we model the behaviors and the mindsets that might inspire our adolescent charges to become such fine, interesting, thoughtful social scientists?

That is the key! That is the beauty of figuring out this puzzle of education…

I then offered some insights to the department I gleaned this summer from a book and movie I enjoyed earlier in the month, and tomorrow, we will see what is in store for “an exciting stew, part deux” blog entry (catch the little rhyme? I wonder if the French has anything to do with the sequel to today’s blog entry? I wonder if I am as mysterious and suspenseful as I think I am???)

Tune in tomorrow…