Postcard from Athens

I guess Athens has always been a complicated place.

I mean, when you study that famed era known rhapsodically as “The Golden Age,” there was always a tension between the idealism of the young male athlete and the reality of the Athenian foreign policy that might announce the order to slaughter the men and enslave the women of a conquered “barbarian” polis.

And there is the complicated role that freedom and free will play in that nasty trial of Socrates. Whew—an unexamined life might leave you breathing still, I guess. And what do we make of the humanism of the Greek philosophy and the embarrassing misogyny of Aristotle and his posse? Oh, my head hurts.

In the last fifty years there have been furious exchanges over who should act as guardian to the revered statues once-found in the Parthenon—the British Museum continues to hedge its bets that more people the world over see them in comfy London rather than trek all the way to oh-it-is-a-different-alphabet Greece.

Then it was nail-bitingly worrisome as our 21st century Greeks crept toward that deadline in the summer of 2004 with half-finished venues and projects for the Olympics. It was fun to have the Olympics back in Greece for the first time since 1896, but would they be ready?

Oh, and let’s not forget the classic My Big Fat Greek Wedding (okay, one quick criticism of the movie: did they really want to give away the ending in the title of the movie???) with its complicated understanding of vegetarianism! Priceless Aunt Voula played by the estimable Andrea Martin, exclaims: “What do you mean he don't eat no meat?” The entire room stops, in shock. She solves the complicated mess, “Oh, that's okay. I make lamb.”

And of course, I have my own history of complicated-ness with Greece. Many of you know about the infamous 2005 trip with students that had many glorious moments and a few plate-shifting episodes.

So what better venue could there be for a conference on the un-complicated-ness of teaching and learning (!!!!!) than Athens…

Last week I went with a contingent of nine other colleagues from KA for a five-day conference in Athens.

In many ways I had been waiting for a chance to re-visit Athens, even though one dear person in my life thought I would never want to return to the scene of what became a rather difficult chapter in my life. But you know, that’s the thing about complicated affairs—you want to go back, take another look at something, and maybe even redeem a torturous period.

So off I went to walk in the footsteps of the great educators Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle!

The conference was hosted/organized by an organization that watches over international schools in the “Near East/South Asia” region of the world. So I had the chance to mingle with school leaders from Doha and Delhi, Islamabad and Bangkok. This was not the first time I have done a school leadership conference, but this was a bit more glamorous. In the old days of Hackley my marvelous friend Diana and I would take the train into Manhattan for a day-long conference and maybe get a mediocre box lunch outta the deal. You know, jetting off two hours away to Athens has an exotic feel to it!

The first impression about the 300 or so school leaders was how American this group is. All the speakers were from the USA and it felt like almost everyone was an ex-pat. Many of them talked of making their way around the world on the international school circuit, almost like high school jocks talking of the notches on their belt. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but I went to parties at glamorous Cristina’s house with her UN chums that were much more diverse and really international.

Anyway, the conference was right up my alley. The focus of the leadership conference emphasized how we as school leaders must put learning back in the center of the school enterprise. The keynote speakers all touched on this, helping us uncover our own assumptions about learning, articulating principles of learning, sharing the latest research on learning, helping us identify what our 21st century students need to learn, and inspiring us to recommit ourselves to life-long learning. The very first presentation was a dialogue—oh how very Socratic!—about what learning is not. Hmmmm….

Right across the street from our great hotel was a city park with the ruins of the Temple of Zeus from the 5th century of classical Athens. Yep, right there—just outside the hotel, across the street, and in that park.

Conferences, of course, are always a little complicated. Some of the speakers seemed heaven-sent, and some seemed redundant. But I always treat a conference like this with the mindset that if a good one-third of it is great and useful, then it has been a successful expense of time. And when a speaker is not moving me to nods and sighs, then I plan other things. Sooooo, when one Harvard professor kind of mumbled around for awhile, I made lists of things, working on everything from To Do Lists for my apartment, my department, my advisees, my Dean job, and Art History. I planned most of the upcoming term exam during a keynote address that just didn’t work it for me!

But much of the work of the conference was exhilarating—discussions about how to move faculty toward a greater understanding and articulation about the learning process—I guess you would have guessed that, given the theme. And there were some provocative discussions about how difficult it is to move the lumbering-elephant-of-a-school-as-a-bureaucratic-behemoth. What are our resistances to change? What are our visible and invisible commitments and competitions to change?

Several times I found myself walking around the Temple of Zeus—the park was gorgeous on the sunny afternoons—wondering about how a school can become healthier place, and how to get more faculty on board. I wondered if Plato had these same musings about his Academy back in the 4th century BCE??? Again, the complicated-ness that Athens fosters kept tugging at me about the dialectical tensions of schools.

But then in the evening—wheeeeeeee—let’s enjoy dinner and a little dancing and a little Opa!!!!! I’ll tell you, I remember when Anne and I were on the 2005 trip and we noted that almost every dinner was the same menu, but it didn’t seem to matter since the ingredients were so fresh, and each tomato was a revelation and each block of feta cheese velvety smooth! Every night I ordered the tzatziki, that seductive garlic-cucumber-yogurt spread—you know in honor of my friendship with Anne!

The last two weeks have been very busy—hence the lack of blogisodes. The comments of the last blog entry were followed by Parent’s Weekend, and then I had 24 college recommendations to write. Now, it isn’t October for me without a ton of college recs, but since these were the first ever for KA students, I felt a special burden to produce something that would stand as a testament to what these first two years have been like at the school, and how I envision that particular scholar in the continuum of scholars I have known and taught.

Since the recs were due officially the day I got back from Athens, I knew they had to be completed when I left for the trip, since I didn’t really want to be composing while sneaking trips to cute Plaka or hiking up the Acropolis to ponder the genius of the Parthenon. So I had a strict schedule to get those recs done.

Yes it was hard work to compose so many, but it was also a joy. Here was a chance to look back over the last 26 months since I joined this venture and to see how these students have progressed and transformed. Some of these scholars lean a bit more to the abstractions of Plato, and some a bit more to the concrete-ness of Aristotle, but none has simply been an example of stasis. Each has worked and moved and struggled and achieved.

Actually I guess it was appropriate to steep myself in their learning before going to the conference urging us to risk even greater degrees of learning.

Wait—I am remembering that heavenly-honey-sticky bite of baklava that first night—it is hard not to be transported if it is just right.

I will be back in a day with another postcard on my trip to the Acropolis and a trip to the Benaki Museum.

Just wait—I promise in a day I will be back!