Words, Words, Words

Here we are at the end of June, the traditional day that I announce my summer vacation from blogging about my life in Jordan (and my “quirky style” as one friend put it where the blog is laced with sitcom allusions, Broadway lyrics, and Biblical references. I will try to work in each of those as I look back on this third year at KA!). There will be no trite announcement like, “I don’t know where the time has gone! My, my, the time has flown by!” If you have not spent time in the South, you may not know that the exasperated phrase, “My, my…” is just a euphemism for something far more coarse as heard in the North!

I rarely look back at old blog entries, and I probably should, for it would afford me some good laughs and reminders of all that has impacted and changed me over these three years. I started this blog at the behest of my supremely wonderful friend Judy, and here I am 36 months later, working on the 227th blog entry. Over the course of these roughly one thousand days, for whatever reason, I tend to write these blog entries in 3-page chunks…I guess my brain seems to work in 3-page chunks the way I conceive and teach a 45-minute class deftly. If you add up all those pages in the last three years, that’s about 700 pages I have tapped out on this laptop in these three years. That’s a lot of words! Lotta words…

At the end of the first year of our existence I wrote an overview of the year “From A-Z.” Then last year I wrote about how “parched” I was for a variety of things…this year, as I look back, I am amazed and full of wonder about the words involved in the creation and sustaining of KA. Given yesterday’s blog, you can tell I am rather upbeat about our enterprise, since yesterday’s entry was about the optimism I harbor about this project.

Moreover, the optimistic words in the viewbook about this school were one of the first things that attracted me to KA. Every school must create pretty picture books of propaganda to sell itself, but KA had some extraordinary words that compelled me to really ponder the big move there. First of all, in the very mission of the school they pledged that this school must work so that we “cherish one another.” Those words were in the very first speech our headmaster spoke to the faculty on August 1, 2007: “our success here will rest on whether we will cherish one another.” And the headmaster’s wife, the brilliant Meera, imagined that the school would hew to Five Guiding Principles, another way for words to command us towards the hoped-for success of this infant school. These principles are:
1. Respect
2. Responsibility
3. Love of Learning
4. An Integrated Life
5. Global Citizenship

As we spend more and more time on the accreditation process (which will take place next year) there is even more and more writing about the school—more words and more reflection on whether we do what we say we do.

In My Fair Lady, the iconic Broadway show about language, Eliza Doolittle at one point rages about how she is sick of “words.” All they do is talk the talk, and she loses her temper in the great song, “Words, Words, Words.” At the senior dinner the night before graduation, Meera offered a memorable speech about how our first-ever graduates will soon prove if we are more than just “words” at KA. The very author of those guiding principles declared that by themselves, those words are fairly static, as all words can be. She urged our seniors to take those words and put them into flight.

Our school is right in the heart of Bible country… just 20 minutes away is where Moses died…down the road 40 minutes from the school is the spot where John the Baptist got beheaded… …if you head down to the Dead Sea and turn right, about 50 minutes in total, you end up at the Baptism Site of Jesus…and then if you could cross the bridge quickly (not likely) in a wink or two you would find yourself in Jerusalem. It is not hard to juxtapose biblical allusions with any of our epic struggles—presumptuous, maybe, but not hard to do!

Let’s look at the Bible. The Bible is a talking book. It begins in speech. Commanding speech. Successful speech. Words that can make things happen. “Let there be light,” God shouts into the void. And the lights come on. These aren’t just any words—these are words with wings. Words with legs. Commanding speech. Successful speech.

The Israelites rendered their suffering in speech. In bondage in Egypt, oppressed and tormented, they cried out to God. And God heard their suffering. And God, speaking to Moses, told Moses to have a chat with Pharaoh, saying, “Let my people go.” The Bible is a talking book.

The Psalmist is the one who with words turns our insides out: whose words expose our ache, whose words render our bliss, our praise; whose words make palpable our defeat, our terror, our anger. The Psalmist is the one who turns our insides out.

After “Let there be light,” and “Let my people go,” Jesus is God’s next best word, and if you think about it, Jesus was himself a talker. He talked to fishermen, women, to Gentiles, Samaritans, to Pharisees, to lepers, the lame, the blind, tempters in the desert, storms, to God, and crowds on hillsides.

He healed with words: “Take up your pallet and walk.”

He freed with words: “Your sins are forgiven you.”

He saved with words: “You are without sin, cast the first stone.”

He conquered death with words: “Lazarus, come out!”

Is there more to all of this than just the words? How do we maneuver through all these words? One of the things the numerous committees in our KA Accreditation is trying to comprehend is whether we teach with the mission and guiding principles in mind. How and when do we teach to cultivate global citizenship, or respect or responsibility? How exactly do we model a love of learning and integrated life? Do we do those things? How do we go from pretty speech to successful speech? How do we get through the tangles of all these words? Are we failing in all of our words? Do we turn our students into latter-day Eliza Doolittles?

Back to the Bible: the Tower of Babel is of course, the story of the failure of speech, of confusion and cacophony and frustration and pandemonium. (And yes, there are days when we feel like fellow toilers on this tower at KA). Look around us, babble is everywhere. Shock jocks are babblers. Bloggers are babblers. (Gulp!) Babble is the sound of the serpent who engages Adam and Eve in gentle conversation, promising that this piece of fruit, this pill, this cosmetic, this Lotto ticket, this whatever will make you wiser, younger, slimmer, richer, stronger. Promise! Or as in Arabic, we would say, “Wallah!”

Three years ago I signed onto this project because I hoped that the story of KA is the answer to the Tower of Babel and to human babble. The triumph of KA will be the intelligibility of speech, of words that work, commanding speech…words that communicate…words with wings and legs, words that build and bridge.

Are we there yet? Who knows! I will be interested to see how our recent graduates fare in college, and of course, in life. The right words have been there for them, but it is up to them to give them wings and legs, to build and bridge.

This new year we will welcome a new headmaster. I would be hard-pressed to find a more beloved headmaster than our founder Eric has been, but at age 70, he decided it was a good time to retire from the headmaster game. We welcome a new man named John Austin, and I am eager to see what words he will mint and add to our collection of words. How will he inspire us to teach so that our words have wings and legs, to build and bridge?

And to the rising seniors, I have such affection for them. These were the students I taught in our inaugural year, as I struggled to find the right words to compel and inspire them to want to learn. I created a new course for this year really so I could have the opportunity to teach a bunch for the fourth year in a row. In this class of 17 I mandated a pre-requisite that you have to have had me before. In this class of 17, there are 6 students I will have taught twice, 3 students I will have taught three times, and 8 students I will have taught four times. Think of the mountains of words they have heard from me! I have designed this class to be like the old 1980s sit-com Head of the Class where a varsity team of precocious and exciting students tackle topics and explore in depth the wonders of history. It doesn’t have an AP test attached to it—it is simply an exercise to see if we can take our speech and see what we have. See if we can make things happen.

Thanks for your faithful readership. I will check in during July sometime to update you on the summer.

There—sit-com, Broadway, and Bible references—I done good.