Postcards from Boston

Well…I can see that my return is met with stony silence. Well, you see, I have been traveling quite a bit this month, and somehow the blogisodes just didn’t get accomplished. In this shortest month of the year, I have been in Jordan a short time, in the classroom a short time. In fact, I have been absent from the classroom 8 school days this month since I have flown to Boston twice. Wouldn’t it have been nice if someone had just said, “Gee, in honor of all your hard work, just stay over in the USA in between those two job-related trips!” No—no one in the right authority suggested that!

So where have I been? Why have I been so incommunicado? Why when so much is going on in the world and in my school world have I been so silent?

Yes, I have been traveling. Strangely enough, the flight itineraries were both exactly the same! Two flights from Amman on BMI (British Midland International) and two flights from London Heathrow on Virgin Atlantic to Boston and two flights back and two flights back. The best news of the month is that Jet Lag, the phantom terrorist of international travel did not totally vanquish me.

The first trip was as a recruiter at a job fair in Boston. We went to Boston for five days; I came back for six days and then left again to Boston for six days with a delegation of students bound for Harvard Model Congress. Lots of packing and lots of time for grading in the air and lots of time to enjoy the in-flight entertainment on Virgin Atlantic (they have about 50 movies available and about 40 television shows—I might have just kept on flying with all the options up there!). Both trips were exciting and successful and I am happy to have my feet on the ground for a few weeks now.

The first trip came about rather suddenly when a month ago our headmaster asked me to join him and the Dean of Faculty to interview at the job fair in Boston. I have never done that before at a job fair, but I love interviewing people and so enjoyed the invitation. I had no idea how steady the work is, and there is virtually no time away from the job fair. Oh well, all in the name of school improvement!

Sheena and I fly together to London, and there we learn that our next flight is cancelled since the snow dance over Boston had just enjoyed another encore. Luckily, we weren’t stranded, just delayed 7-8 hours. As soon as we figured out our flight status, Sheena grabbed my hand and said, with a devilish look in her eye, “We are going to “Yo Sushi!” I knew that Sheena is a fiend about sushi, but here I saw her in her natural habitat. “Yo Sushi!” is a strange restaurant—part automat, part diner, part sensory experience, part dim sum meal, and partly like a scene in Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times. You sit at a diner-like counter in “Yo Sushi” and the little plates move right in front of you on a giant conveyer belt around the whole restaurant. It felt a little like being in Oz too, I think. Anyway, each plate is color-coded to a certain price, and there is soup, and sushi bites and chicken sate, and it all rolls grandly right in front of you—all you have to do is reach out and grab the plate! There is a sticker on the side timed so you know the “sell by/eat by” time for the freshness. This transfixed me and I just loved watching. I also loved watching Sheena stack up her plates. This woman can do a sushi room! I don’t know how long we stayed there but I felt like a child enjoying the “It’s a small world” ride at Walt Disney World. Food going by on a conveyer belt. Just take it. It all seemed magical!!

We arrived much later in Boston than we had planned, and sadly that evening was to be our little window of free time on this trip. However, we got to the hotel at 11:00 p.m. When I arrived I discovered that my bags had not arrived yet. Gulp. One of the things Sheena had emphasized about this job fair is that it is very professional and formal with men in suits all the time. I hadn’t traveled in a suit and I hoped my bag would catch up in time. I didn’t really want to conduct interviews in my oh-so-casual-and-comfortable travel Yo Sushi wear. As we drive to the hotel in Cambridge, the winter scene is unbelievable. The snow is piled up in drifts at least four feet high and the Charles River looks frozen solid. By the way, the bags would take over 48 hours to arrive…so much for trying to look professional and formal!

The way this job fair works is kinda like a 1930s dance contest. The ballroom opens at a specific time, and then the candidates have a specific time to try and secure as many interview times as possible. The recruiters make a banner announcing what openings are at the school, and the candidates whiz by (maybe they should be on roller skates??!) and look for their discipline/craft and sign up for 30 minute interviews—as many as they can (is there a prize?). It was indeed thrilling being in this ballroom. There were about 130 international schools—seriously from A to Z—from Argentina to Zambia, and about 450 candidates hoping for one of the thousand jobs available in these far-flung locales. Somehow, well, in my mind at least, it seemed like what the Miss Universe Pageant might be like, as Miss Brussels mingled with Miss Pakistan and Miss Korea and Miss Ghana. Oh, and Miss Jordan. (In a very pageant-like way, people kept saying, “Thank God I’m not from Egypt,” just like you might look at Miss Egypt and feel sorry for her hump!). Somehow this whole recruiting thing brought out all the old salesman like qualities in me when I went and peddled school candy or seeds or Christmas cards—what else did I sell as little boy?

After the dance contest is over, you start with the receptions so you can schmooze with the candidates and see who is interesting over cocktail hors d’oeuvres and drinks. I stood near the gorditas, a great appetizer which is an almond stuffed fig wrapped in bacon. Just wrap it bacon and honey, it’ll go.

Then the interviews began. Oh my. I have been interviewing people in some capacity for maybe 20 years. But I have never interviewed people for everything from art to theology (sorry, we have no Z courses available at our school!). Previously I had scanned resumes like a demon, well, actually similar to Sheena scanning the sushi at Yo Sushi! I looked at dozens of resumes, and as each person came for an interview I tried to be as well-prepared as possible for the interview.

I learned that at this job fair it was well known that many people left the job fair with a contract in hand, signed, and finito, the job search completed! I am one who often wants to mull a person over, but in this environment—again like the 1930s dance contests, speed is of the essence here!! So Sheena and I double-up with some interviews, and on some I fly solo. John, our headmaster, is across town at another job fair, madly going through stacks of resumes and interviewing as well. Each day he dashes over in a cab through the Boston Winter Wonderland to join in for a second interview on people we had liked. Hey, you know I just thought of a good idea for this job fair—maybe we can combine the job fair and “Yo, Sushi!” I could sit at a diner counter and the candidates could roll through on a conveyer belt. That’s how it felt actually!

So I met several couples that I enjoyed immediately. Amy and Clark. Oh—just so nice and interesting and perfect for us. They had interesting hobbies and know the boarding school life well. I think that was one of the reasons I was brought on the trip—I was to be the honest spokesperson about life at KA—I perfected my little spiel of how it is “hard but wonderful” so that no one came under any false pretenses. Remember we are there with schools from everywhere. Vienna—we ain’t! Then we met Diego and Alexa—she is a writer and they have lived in the Middle East before, and I loved their attitudes about school and professional development. And he could be a great counselor besides a Spanish teacher. Then Sarah and Jevon—here was a great young couple, one a math teacher and one a historian. They would all be perfect for us! That evening at the Schmooze Reception I put on my best schmooze persona. Oh, and apologizing for not being in a suit. But still—schmoozing up a storm! And the theme was burgers from around the world!! Oh, please, how great. It didn’t even seem to dawn on me that I hadn’t left the hotel that day!

We made offers to those three couples. We waited. We bit our nails, figuratively speaking. I learned also that the “thank you note” is not a dead art. After almost every interview the candidate would handwrite a note and stick it in our file. Notes on stationery! Well, my, my. The interviews continued. On Saturday I had 17 interviews in a row. With no food break at all!! Thank goodness the breakfast buffet was among the best in my life!!!!!

I enjoyed my interviews with a number of young men and women, eager to teach, eager to go abroad and see what life has to offer beyond our shores. I met this dynamic guy who reminded me of Chuck and Bowman, two of the most outstanding young teachers I have ever known. I met this young woman teaching in inner-city Washington, D.C. who just mesmerized me with her sharpness. I met a guy who studies Chemistry at Yale and was an eagle scout and does technical theater. I wanted all the good ones!! I met this sincere interesting IT guy from the Maldives, and an older man from Maine who wanted to go somewhere new and re-pot himself. Oh, and there was a young woman named Victoria—we decided she may be the most narcissistic person we had ever met! I met prospects for the art position—call central casting—you can guess that they were quirky and a little flaky, but interesting. We put a note up about an intern teaching economics and all of a sudden the frat boys lined up for interviews. These were long days, exhausting days, often 25 half-hour interviews a day days. That is a lot of active listening!!

I didn’t leave the hotel for 72 hours! But I managed a visit each day with a former student. They just had to trudge through the snow of Cambridge to get to the hotel. I visited with three young men, from three separate schools, ranging from the class of 2010 in Jordan, to 2002 from Hackley, to 1994 from Charlotte Latin. One is a freshman at Harvard, one is in Business School, and one teaches at Tufts. They were wonderful visits all. You would think the last thing I would want to do with my hour of free time is sit and “interview” former students. But it was delightful! Ghassan and Dan and Ethan provided me with real joy as I wound up this intense trip to Boston.

So, as the job fair ended on Sunday, we had some affirmatives and some rejections with our offers. We lost Amy and Clark (they saw me and hugged me saying, “you’re awesome, we just want to go to South America”) and Diego and Alexa and Kat, but we signed Matthew and John and Ali and Sarah and Jevon.

As the 1930s dance contest ended, I got back on the plane, knowing there was grading in my future and the repayment of dorm duties, and then I would unpack and pack again.

Perhaps I should just get on the conveyer belt and keep moving!