Last Sunday at this time a remarkable event was wrapping up here at KA. I had just been witness, and part-time chaperone, as an international conference hosted by KA seniors came to a close.
I come from a long-line of event planners. My mother and her mother both conceived and managed numerous conferences, meetings, and events in their time, and I grew up in a household where it seemed a festival or gala was always underway. I had first-hand knowledge of the vision, organization, stamina, diplomacy and grit needed to execute a conference-like event.
For almost a year a group of students worked with my colleague Fatina to create a Model United Nations conference hosted by KA. Since I was not a part of the organization, I got to simply watch as they “hatched” their plans, or rather, a more apt metaphor, planted the seeds and nurtured their seedling project.
For the first two years of our school we sent delegates to other international MUN conferences, and it seemed that our young scholars thought they were ready to helm their own conference. Where would they do it? How would they get the word out? Who would be in charge of what? How would it be supported? Funded? Would students from outside the region come to the Middle East for a conference? Could juniors/seniors actually run such a complicated machine as a conference?
Fatina would give me reports from time to time as the planning continued. These students really wanted to pursue this, and usually over a plateful of warm cookies, they met at her house to figure out the logistics of creating a conference from scratch. As Fatina described it to me, it seemed like the work and planning of doing a musical (I suppose if I were remotely sporty it might remind me of trying to engineer an international tournament, but you know, you start from what you know!). In my time I have directed a dozen or so musicals, and it always felt like you were building a house on the ground with a tremendous crew, some committed, others less so, and then finally, you hoist that house off the ground and see what you have right at the opening.
Her crew imagined the tasks, and divided up the labor, doing everything from creating a logo and website, to securing the splashy Kempinksy hotel resort at the Dead Sea as the site for the conference, to thinking of both the style and substance of such a conference. They laughed about how the delegates (from hopefully around the world!) would convene at the lowest point on earth, for a conference with the highest potential.
Over the next six months the finance committee secured an impressive list of sponsors and schools began to show interest. Then as 2010 dawned Fatina faced the countdown as that seedling idea began to grow. It was almost time to actually host the conference. Do you have coffee breaks? Do you provide time on the beach for the delegates? Who will open the conference? Will His Majesty be able to visit the conference? Will we have enough busses for the transportation? Should we take the delegates to world-famous Petra or not-yet-world-famous Jerash? I enjoyed watching these students grapple with the decisions. You know, I love the process of watching something come together. Heck, I also love the coming-together. As a director of 60 drama productions and 30 school trips I am usually the one in the driver’s seat. Now I had the pleasure of watching from the sidelines the work and tremendous effort of my colleague and my students.
So finally, that day arrived. There were delegates from Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia, India, Israel, the United States, and Jordan participating! They really came. About 200 students descended on KA for the opening ceremonies. It really was an international event. I sat with a group from the Doon School in India, a venerable boarding school in the English boarding school tradition, over lunch on the first day, and enjoyed getting to know them over the next few days.
The keynote address at the opening was delivered by an exceptionally charismatic older gentleman who has spoken a handful of times at KA. He is a former minister with the government, former teacher, former really everything interesting in life, and a charmer. He spoke about how important it was for the delegates to be steeped in history (Yipee!! Smart Man!) and that History is geography in motion. He spoke eloquently about the last hundred years in the Middle East imploring the students to consider different perspectives as they approached their Model United Nations work.
As our guest spoke about the placement of this conference at the Dead Sea (another reference to the irony of being at the lowest point on earth, a sea called Dead,) right in the “cradle of monotheism” where “young minds will nurture the impulse toward peace and understanding.” In his inimitable way, he spoke again of where we all were—he bid us to look outside and think of this region, as he called it, right “at the sunrise of faith,” and urged the students to act in that manner of faith and dignity. To quote the hymn writer, “My Lord, what a morning!”
Of course not everything went smoothly. It rained. It rains maybe 8 times a year in Jordan. During this weekend conference, the heavens opened and it rained day after day. The trip to Petra had to be cancelled. The civil defense actually closed Petra! Petra is in a place like New Orleans, and is like a giant bowl, and when it rains, the water floods in. My friend Elizabeth actually was in Petra during this and spoke of the water coming up knee-high. So the poor guy in the Entertainment division of the conference had to keep vamping and rolling with the punches.
So after almost four days of committee work the whole conference moved back from the Dead Sea to our campus. The sun shone as the King arrived. (Can he control the weather?) His Majesty King Abdullah spoke to the students who had arranged the conference, traveled thousands of miles and worked through the position papers and hearings: “You are the new generation. You must seize the opportunities, chances and challenges to make the world better. We will create an environment in which you can surpass us.”
The eight student leaders in charge of the conference offered closing speeches, and they acquitted themselves magnificently. The poise, diction and commitment to this conference made it a pleasure to hear their words. Dana, the Madame President of the enterprise, and a natural orator and leader said “Our lives have been changed” from the work on the conference. She said that for her one of the most memorable moments in the conference came when a group wrangled over the semantics of what to call the place just across the Dead Sea.
Before I came to Jordan I would have not understood this dilemma. It is simply called Israel on every map I knew. But for the Jordanians, for my Arab friends, they want to call the area Palestine, and it is rooted in the problems and struggles of this region as to how to acknowledge it. I am sure for many of the delegates, the ones from outside the region, they perhaps had never wondered what to call this area. For them, for us, it may be simple.
“What do we call the country over there?” asked one of the delegates, as Dana recounted. Another delegate offered a humble answer, “Why don’t we call them neighbor?”
The fancy hotel was fun, the students dressed up in power suits wielding a gavel, all of that was fun, but it was exceptionally interesting to see the fruits of this seedling planted last year. It wasn’t my project at all, but I enjoyed watching the process of the process, admiring my students and all of the energy and effort Fatina expended at teaching our students how to organize an event.
An impressive feat, and an impressive seedling maturing into a mighty tree. An olive tree, perhaps, with the proverbial olive branch?
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Should it be this exciting??
In just a few minutes—yes, in fact, as soon as I hit ‘send’ and propel this blogisode out into cyber-space—it will be time to give my examination for the second term.
I forget when I started calling tests and exams, “celebrations of knowledge,” maybe 20 years ago I guess, but today it is a Celebration.
I love it when the exam writing is finished and the papers are copied and all I get to do is talk with students, help them figure out a few more things, and listen to them pontificate on the historical subjects.
I chose Saturday as my exam day months ago in large part of where I like to have exams at KA. I love the Dining Hall for the exam venue. And Saturday afternoon is the one time of the entire week when it is quiet and peaceful in the Dining Hall. Since I have 60 students in the AP Art History course I need a large space that accommodates them and makes for a secure testing environment. Some people choose the Lecture Hall, but, yeah, um, if you have sat in there you can see how easy it is to cheat there anyway. In the Dining Hall each student claims his/her own table; you get to spread out, and when the writing time comes you can hunker down, put your feet up on another chair, and create your own little isolated world where Clio, our beloved muse of History, can urge you on to greatness.
“The Big Dance,” the BIG AP test, is coming up in 67 days. Today I have constructed the exam to be the same length of time as the marathon test in May (3 hours and 5 minutes, and no, I don’t know why some test planner has made it 185 minutes instead of a rounded-off 3 hours) but it is only on the material from this term. This term we began with the paranoia and fever of Y1K (for those who remember the paranoia and fever of Y2K, well, well, well, it was remarkably similar—minus the TV cameras tracking the non-event—back in 1000 as in 2000) and the Bayeux Tapestry from Norman England. This little bit of embroidered propaganda (an army of seamstresses sewed and sewed for months and months!) worked miracles to create the images William (now called “the Conquereor”) wanted for his new subjects. We ended the term with the spectacular painting from 1819 by Gericault called The Raft of the Medusa. This was also a little number about national pride, but stemmed from Gericault’s desire to inform his Frenchmen about the ineptitude of the French government. Those are our bookends for the term and for the Celebration today.
So last week I spent probably a collective amount of 10-12 hours creating the exam. By that I mean I study the old AP exams of the last 18 years and snip and snip and put together an exam from old exams so my students become more and more accustomed with the language, the feel, the tone, the rigor of the Big Mama test in May. Typing multiple choice questions is among the dreariest of teacher activities, but, sigh, it must be done.
I am producing this exam here similar to how the AP test will be done starting this May. Gone are the slide projectors and the changing of the slides as each prompt progresses onward in the test. We now produce a booklet, in color, with the art works and the questions. I have to say, it is a beautiful test, just seeing the colored images and the challenging prompts.
Okay, since no will be checking the blog in the next 10 minutes I hope, I will divulge some of the exam. Just think—if someone happened to check the blog walking to the Dining Hall they could have a heads up…hmmmm…they are probably studying instead of googling me.
The exam is in two sections. The first section has 2 thirty-minute essays separated by 29 multiple choice questions ranging from 1000 to 1800. This is the most challenging and liberating part of the exam since the young scholar must whip through the rolodex of his/her mind to come up with art works to respond to the question. Essay #1 ask this: Many cultures use architecture to express or reinforce power and authority. Choose two works of architecture from two different art periods. Discuss how each work conveys power and authority.
And Essay #2 asks: Most cultures have made use of art’s narrative function. Select and fully identify two works that visually convey a narrative from two different art periods. Identify the subject of each narrative and discuss the means used to convey the narrative.
The second section is 9 mini-essays and 62 multiple choice. You need stamina to endure this baby.
The real fun though in preparing for the exam is watching these students absorb the information and engage with the art works and the historical forces and personages.
Yesterday I had a 2-hour study session and we worked on practice essay topics and about 20 students came and labored over about 8 short essays and 8 long essays to get in shape for the visual calisthenics of Art History exam.
We looked at a sculpture of Napoleon’s sister depicted as Venus. The question asked to name the art historical period and explain how the form and content conveyed its meaning. As we worked on this neo-classical work from the early 19th century, Omar, a young man with a great mind, offered an insight that was pretty stupendous. Omar said that ever since the Platonic Academy deemed Venus the “originator of Life,” any connection to Venus strengthened someone’s position and power. As Omar explained to the class, “Napoleon would benefit from his family being seen as deities and that powerful. That would help his power and authority as the leader of France.” How about that for going beyond the naming and dating of the art work?
And then last night as I graded tests from this week, I got a call from Dana, another great mind. Actually she called several times. I had told everyone to call me if they had “an art history emergency,” so I expected calls. But Dana did not call over and over begging for an easy test or whining. Oh, no. She called for clarification. She called to ask if I could send her better images of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. She called to ask about labeling some artists “Late Italian Gothic,” or “Proto-Renaissance.” She never once seemed angry that she was spending her Friday night deepening and broadening her already impressive knowledge.
During one of Dana’s calls for clarification a gaggle of shebab came over to discuss their last test from this week. None of the guys pandered or indulged in the whiny behavior that some teachers face. These guys came over to see how they were doing with this knowledge. Zack had the best test of the bunch, a neat 98% on what was a challenging test over 400 years. Ghayth had come over to check on his test—he had taken a second version of the test just to see if he might improve. Yes, he had reached the A level finally too. George lamented that his test was not his best, but while he always is at the top of the pile, he resolved that for the exam today he would be back on top. Never once did he grin and blame senioritis on a non-A test. Instead they looked at each other’s tests, congratulating each other on the successes, offering nuggets of wisdom about why someone had said that that painting looked like Frans Hals even though it was Pieter Brueghel, reminding them that while Adelaide Labille-Guiard had joined the Art Academy in France in the 1780s, Judith Leyster, since she was a woman, was not allowed admission in the mid-17th century.
I went over to brunch this morning to meet with a few more students who wanted to check on their short essays and make sure they understood how to attack these essays. I spoke with the sharp sharp Qxhna about why her explanation of “they got classical fever” was not as strong explanation of defining the values of the neo-classical age; George came up and said he hoped knowing about 5 different door jambs from the Gothic Age would take care of explaining the evolution of Gothic statuary. Swara and Abdullah were arguing over whether Duccio or Giotto was the better artist. Hamdi and Gaith just stopped by and we discussed why a wealthy English family would copy designs by Italian designer Palladio—what would a father and husband hope to project in the design of his home. And so on and so on.
In a couple days maybe this satisfied glow will fade—especially as I attack the mountain of exams and grade them! But right now, I am so, what? Hmmm…Pleased? Blessed? Invigorated? Overjoyed?
I guess the best word to choose is—sublime. We have been discussing this word this last week as we entered into the Age of—wait for the bulky, clichéd word—Romanticism. Romanticism is an umbrella term for about a dozen movements, but they are unified in a sense in the hope of reaching a state of…wait for it…sublime. Not just any old calm, or serenity, but that state of having struggled and despaired and hoped and worked and agonized—a state of bliss, of sublime.
The last couple days have been blissful helping students, answering the varied questions, reminding them of all they know, seeing their work pay off. The discussions were all about the work, their knowledge, their skills, their prowess in the byzantine-like tunnels of art history. Not a one bemoaned (in front of me at least!) the exam or why is it so hard?? They just rolled up the proverbial sleeves and went to work.
And on the first page of the two exam sections is my favorite phrase in Latin, a phrase that my grandmother taught me: Per Aspera Ad Astra…From the rough places, to the stars…
I will let you know how they did and their place in those stars. Time to walk over to the Dining Hall and give them exam!
In just a few minutes—yes, in fact, as soon as I hit ‘send’ and propel this blogisode out into cyber-space—it will be time to give my examination for the second term.
I forget when I started calling tests and exams, “celebrations of knowledge,” maybe 20 years ago I guess, but today it is a Celebration.
I love it when the exam writing is finished and the papers are copied and all I get to do is talk with students, help them figure out a few more things, and listen to them pontificate on the historical subjects.
I chose Saturday as my exam day months ago in large part of where I like to have exams at KA. I love the Dining Hall for the exam venue. And Saturday afternoon is the one time of the entire week when it is quiet and peaceful in the Dining Hall. Since I have 60 students in the AP Art History course I need a large space that accommodates them and makes for a secure testing environment. Some people choose the Lecture Hall, but, yeah, um, if you have sat in there you can see how easy it is to cheat there anyway. In the Dining Hall each student claims his/her own table; you get to spread out, and when the writing time comes you can hunker down, put your feet up on another chair, and create your own little isolated world where Clio, our beloved muse of History, can urge you on to greatness.
“The Big Dance,” the BIG AP test, is coming up in 67 days. Today I have constructed the exam to be the same length of time as the marathon test in May (3 hours and 5 minutes, and no, I don’t know why some test planner has made it 185 minutes instead of a rounded-off 3 hours) but it is only on the material from this term. This term we began with the paranoia and fever of Y1K (for those who remember the paranoia and fever of Y2K, well, well, well, it was remarkably similar—minus the TV cameras tracking the non-event—back in 1000 as in 2000) and the Bayeux Tapestry from Norman England. This little bit of embroidered propaganda (an army of seamstresses sewed and sewed for months and months!) worked miracles to create the images William (now called “the Conquereor”) wanted for his new subjects. We ended the term with the spectacular painting from 1819 by Gericault called The Raft of the Medusa. This was also a little number about national pride, but stemmed from Gericault’s desire to inform his Frenchmen about the ineptitude of the French government. Those are our bookends for the term and for the Celebration today.
So last week I spent probably a collective amount of 10-12 hours creating the exam. By that I mean I study the old AP exams of the last 18 years and snip and snip and put together an exam from old exams so my students become more and more accustomed with the language, the feel, the tone, the rigor of the Big Mama test in May. Typing multiple choice questions is among the dreariest of teacher activities, but, sigh, it must be done.
I am producing this exam here similar to how the AP test will be done starting this May. Gone are the slide projectors and the changing of the slides as each prompt progresses onward in the test. We now produce a booklet, in color, with the art works and the questions. I have to say, it is a beautiful test, just seeing the colored images and the challenging prompts.
Okay, since no will be checking the blog in the next 10 minutes I hope, I will divulge some of the exam. Just think—if someone happened to check the blog walking to the Dining Hall they could have a heads up…hmmmm…they are probably studying instead of googling me.
The exam is in two sections. The first section has 2 thirty-minute essays separated by 29 multiple choice questions ranging from 1000 to 1800. This is the most challenging and liberating part of the exam since the young scholar must whip through the rolodex of his/her mind to come up with art works to respond to the question. Essay #1 ask this: Many cultures use architecture to express or reinforce power and authority. Choose two works of architecture from two different art periods. Discuss how each work conveys power and authority.
And Essay #2 asks: Most cultures have made use of art’s narrative function. Select and fully identify two works that visually convey a narrative from two different art periods. Identify the subject of each narrative and discuss the means used to convey the narrative.
The second section is 9 mini-essays and 62 multiple choice. You need stamina to endure this baby.
The real fun though in preparing for the exam is watching these students absorb the information and engage with the art works and the historical forces and personages.
Yesterday I had a 2-hour study session and we worked on practice essay topics and about 20 students came and labored over about 8 short essays and 8 long essays to get in shape for the visual calisthenics of Art History exam.
We looked at a sculpture of Napoleon’s sister depicted as Venus. The question asked to name the art historical period and explain how the form and content conveyed its meaning. As we worked on this neo-classical work from the early 19th century, Omar, a young man with a great mind, offered an insight that was pretty stupendous. Omar said that ever since the Platonic Academy deemed Venus the “originator of Life,” any connection to Venus strengthened someone’s position and power. As Omar explained to the class, “Napoleon would benefit from his family being seen as deities and that powerful. That would help his power and authority as the leader of France.” How about that for going beyond the naming and dating of the art work?
And then last night as I graded tests from this week, I got a call from Dana, another great mind. Actually she called several times. I had told everyone to call me if they had “an art history emergency,” so I expected calls. But Dana did not call over and over begging for an easy test or whining. Oh, no. She called for clarification. She called to ask if I could send her better images of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. She called to ask about labeling some artists “Late Italian Gothic,” or “Proto-Renaissance.” She never once seemed angry that she was spending her Friday night deepening and broadening her already impressive knowledge.
During one of Dana’s calls for clarification a gaggle of shebab came over to discuss their last test from this week. None of the guys pandered or indulged in the whiny behavior that some teachers face. These guys came over to see how they were doing with this knowledge. Zack had the best test of the bunch, a neat 98% on what was a challenging test over 400 years. Ghayth had come over to check on his test—he had taken a second version of the test just to see if he might improve. Yes, he had reached the A level finally too. George lamented that his test was not his best, but while he always is at the top of the pile, he resolved that for the exam today he would be back on top. Never once did he grin and blame senioritis on a non-A test. Instead they looked at each other’s tests, congratulating each other on the successes, offering nuggets of wisdom about why someone had said that that painting looked like Frans Hals even though it was Pieter Brueghel, reminding them that while Adelaide Labille-Guiard had joined the Art Academy in France in the 1780s, Judith Leyster, since she was a woman, was not allowed admission in the mid-17th century.
I went over to brunch this morning to meet with a few more students who wanted to check on their short essays and make sure they understood how to attack these essays. I spoke with the sharp sharp Qxhna about why her explanation of “they got classical fever” was not as strong explanation of defining the values of the neo-classical age; George came up and said he hoped knowing about 5 different door jambs from the Gothic Age would take care of explaining the evolution of Gothic statuary. Swara and Abdullah were arguing over whether Duccio or Giotto was the better artist. Hamdi and Gaith just stopped by and we discussed why a wealthy English family would copy designs by Italian designer Palladio—what would a father and husband hope to project in the design of his home. And so on and so on.
In a couple days maybe this satisfied glow will fade—especially as I attack the mountain of exams and grade them! But right now, I am so, what? Hmmm…Pleased? Blessed? Invigorated? Overjoyed?
I guess the best word to choose is—sublime. We have been discussing this word this last week as we entered into the Age of—wait for the bulky, clichéd word—Romanticism. Romanticism is an umbrella term for about a dozen movements, but they are unified in a sense in the hope of reaching a state of…wait for it…sublime. Not just any old calm, or serenity, but that state of having struggled and despaired and hoped and worked and agonized—a state of bliss, of sublime.
The last couple days have been blissful helping students, answering the varied questions, reminding them of all they know, seeing their work pay off. The discussions were all about the work, their knowledge, their skills, their prowess in the byzantine-like tunnels of art history. Not a one bemoaned (in front of me at least!) the exam or why is it so hard?? They just rolled up the proverbial sleeves and went to work.
And on the first page of the two exam sections is my favorite phrase in Latin, a phrase that my grandmother taught me: Per Aspera Ad Astra…From the rough places, to the stars…
I will let you know how they did and their place in those stars. Time to walk over to the Dining Hall and give them exam!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Grumble. Chuckle.
You know it’s gonna be a bad day when it is already a bad day by 7:30 a.m. Come on! The proverbial writing is on the proverbial wall!
By around 9:00 a.m. today I had invented a phrase for how bad of a day it was—GrumbleChuckle. I was already grumbling by that time so much that I had to chuckle as to how bad of a day it could be in just a few hours.
Two of my students are performing in a play in Amman, and so they are unable to take a test with the rest of their class on Thursday afternoon, so flexible man that I am, we looked at alternative times so that the test could still happen for them. It turned out with their rehearsal schedule that the only time was at 6:50 a.m. this morning.
Doing tests before school is a mixed bag of success: twice it has worked this year; twice the students have not shown up. Hmmm…I don’t like those moments. Especially when I got up early to do a favor.
I had sent an email yesterday reminding them of their obligation. I mentioned in class how I important it was to show up for such plans…one of them supposed to come this morning had been one of the failures earlier in the year…hmmmm….
So I got up about 20 minutes earlier than usual, was dressed and ready to receive the young scholars by 6:45 a.m.
No shows.
About 30 minutes after they should have arrived, and should have been neck deep in the Baroque period of art essays, I had a frantic knock on my door from a colleague. “There’s damage in the dormitory and boys aren’t in their rooms!” I quickly learned as the colleague and I went out exploring. I followed trying to assess what the damages might be, who and to where the young boarders might have made off, and a sneaky suspicion that the day just might not recover from its shaky start.
I knock on the door of a proctor and discover several students who do not reside in this single room. Stony silence greeted me as I asked if they had spent the night there, what they were up to, and if they knew about any damages. The replies, especially from one, was that typical senioritis-y apathy yucky you don’t matter stance and tone. Oh, great.
And it wasn’t even 7:30!
They assured me that they had gotten up early to study theology together. As brash comic Judy Tenuta used to bellow in her comedy routine, It could happen!!!
I noticed a half hour later that my early-rising theologians did not make it to morning meeting. Of course not.
I was enjoying a cup of coffee in my usual spot at 8:30 when those same boys came in requesting a late slip. I inquired why they hadn’t made it to morning meeting when they had obviously been awake and ready to greet the morn. The same one who had had the chip-on-his-shoulder conversation with me earlier just dug it a little deeper with a caustic, ”I was cleaning up the damage you told me I should have been responsible for.” In the next few minutes he made such an impression on one of my colleagues that when he left the room, she felt compelled to call his mother and report on his disrespect. She countered that people at the school do not treat her boy well. By the way, later in the day I followed up with a colleague, he had lied to me. He did not clean up the damage.
Okay—time for class…always the saving grace. Students had prepared presentations on artists from the Romantic period and they did a strong job…maybe all the evil spirits had dissipated. Grumble. Chuckle!
And the Lord taketh away…
Then I had one of those encounters with an administrator that just makes you giggle if you would happen to be watching it on Youtube. I was told that I must accept that a certain course count as a history department requirement for graduation even though it is not a history course. It reminded me of one of those old jokes like, “A guy walks into a bar with a duck on his head.” I don’t even know why it reminded me of that except it just seemed to be absurd to be having the discussion, and that as head of the department I should determine what does and what does not count as a history course towards graduation requirements. Double Grumble. Chuckle?
I don’t know, it just felt if I walked 15 feet someone said something or did something that caused the grumbling to increase, so naturally the sardonic chuckles became a throbbing bass line.
On and on and then the class that often is the coup de grace for behavior et al. Two students “confessed” that they had done a presentation (“Really, I thought I was going to get the presentation done, really!”) and one boy is absent. I had told the class that no excuse short of being in the middle of surgery counted for an absence.
During the day the two errant early-morning scholars professed disbelief that this had been the agreed upon day…sure…
It just continued, and let’s just say I muttered Grumble Chuckle fairly regularly.
Oh, I should tell you of the audacity of this one student who simply logged onto a website and just read aloud from the site as his presentation!
At the close of school I pondered the day. I needed a lift. I needed a distraction and a smile.
I looked at my phone list and made a call to New York Kate. We love her! She wasn’t in.
So I called dear Margie, dear friends, and parents of a superstar former student from the class of 2000.
We hadn’t talked in months and months. Margie picked up, and as we talked we picked right up where we had left off.
I learned her son Joseph is engaged. We talked about the old days. We talked about the weather and the snow and the books we have read, the TV shows admired, and just sat back and enjoyed a Grumble-free conversation. Just great.
Earlier this morning I had a conversation about “bouncing back.” Obviously the Grumble Chuckle days come along—no question, but how do you bounce back? We mused about how as we age, the bouncing is probably a little more difficult.
I told them about this great episode of Monk I watched recently wherein character Randy Disher shares his philosophy of life. Monk had asked Randy how he was so good-natured all the time, and essentially implied that Randy had a gift for “bouncing back.”
Randy shared how during one case he had had an epiphany. He had seen a bumper sticker that changed his life. It read, Happiness is a choice. Randy had decided then and there to be a happier person. Now Randy is a little like Barney Fife, but still, you have to admire his pluck and smile.
Our pessimist friend Adrian Monk reminded Randy that that bumper sticker had been found on a car that was wrecked and the owners murdered. So where was the happiness?
Oh, Mr. Monk—what a sourpuss view of life!
Of course if I could wish for my life to be perfect, it would be tempting—but I would decline, for life would no longer teach me anything.
As for tomorrow, hope springs eternal.
By around 9:00 a.m. today I had invented a phrase for how bad of a day it was—GrumbleChuckle. I was already grumbling by that time so much that I had to chuckle as to how bad of a day it could be in just a few hours.
Two of my students are performing in a play in Amman, and so they are unable to take a test with the rest of their class on Thursday afternoon, so flexible man that I am, we looked at alternative times so that the test could still happen for them. It turned out with their rehearsal schedule that the only time was at 6:50 a.m. this morning.
Doing tests before school is a mixed bag of success: twice it has worked this year; twice the students have not shown up. Hmmm…I don’t like those moments. Especially when I got up early to do a favor.
I had sent an email yesterday reminding them of their obligation. I mentioned in class how I important it was to show up for such plans…one of them supposed to come this morning had been one of the failures earlier in the year…hmmmm….
So I got up about 20 minutes earlier than usual, was dressed and ready to receive the young scholars by 6:45 a.m.
No shows.
About 30 minutes after they should have arrived, and should have been neck deep in the Baroque period of art essays, I had a frantic knock on my door from a colleague. “There’s damage in the dormitory and boys aren’t in their rooms!” I quickly learned as the colleague and I went out exploring. I followed trying to assess what the damages might be, who and to where the young boarders might have made off, and a sneaky suspicion that the day just might not recover from its shaky start.
I knock on the door of a proctor and discover several students who do not reside in this single room. Stony silence greeted me as I asked if they had spent the night there, what they were up to, and if they knew about any damages. The replies, especially from one, was that typical senioritis-y apathy yucky you don’t matter stance and tone. Oh, great.
And it wasn’t even 7:30!
They assured me that they had gotten up early to study theology together. As brash comic Judy Tenuta used to bellow in her comedy routine, It could happen!!!
I noticed a half hour later that my early-rising theologians did not make it to morning meeting. Of course not.
I was enjoying a cup of coffee in my usual spot at 8:30 when those same boys came in requesting a late slip. I inquired why they hadn’t made it to morning meeting when they had obviously been awake and ready to greet the morn. The same one who had had the chip-on-his-shoulder conversation with me earlier just dug it a little deeper with a caustic, ”I was cleaning up the damage you told me I should have been responsible for.” In the next few minutes he made such an impression on one of my colleagues that when he left the room, she felt compelled to call his mother and report on his disrespect. She countered that people at the school do not treat her boy well. By the way, later in the day I followed up with a colleague, he had lied to me. He did not clean up the damage.
Okay—time for class…always the saving grace. Students had prepared presentations on artists from the Romantic period and they did a strong job…maybe all the evil spirits had dissipated. Grumble. Chuckle!
And the Lord taketh away…
Then I had one of those encounters with an administrator that just makes you giggle if you would happen to be watching it on Youtube. I was told that I must accept that a certain course count as a history department requirement for graduation even though it is not a history course. It reminded me of one of those old jokes like, “A guy walks into a bar with a duck on his head.” I don’t even know why it reminded me of that except it just seemed to be absurd to be having the discussion, and that as head of the department I should determine what does and what does not count as a history course towards graduation requirements. Double Grumble. Chuckle?
I don’t know, it just felt if I walked 15 feet someone said something or did something that caused the grumbling to increase, so naturally the sardonic chuckles became a throbbing bass line.
On and on and then the class that often is the coup de grace for behavior et al. Two students “confessed” that they had done a presentation (“Really, I thought I was going to get the presentation done, really!”) and one boy is absent. I had told the class that no excuse short of being in the middle of surgery counted for an absence.
During the day the two errant early-morning scholars professed disbelief that this had been the agreed upon day…sure…
It just continued, and let’s just say I muttered Grumble Chuckle fairly regularly.
Oh, I should tell you of the audacity of this one student who simply logged onto a website and just read aloud from the site as his presentation!
At the close of school I pondered the day. I needed a lift. I needed a distraction and a smile.
I looked at my phone list and made a call to New York Kate. We love her! She wasn’t in.
So I called dear Margie, dear friends, and parents of a superstar former student from the class of 2000.
We hadn’t talked in months and months. Margie picked up, and as we talked we picked right up where we had left off.
I learned her son Joseph is engaged. We talked about the old days. We talked about the weather and the snow and the books we have read, the TV shows admired, and just sat back and enjoyed a Grumble-free conversation. Just great.
Earlier this morning I had a conversation about “bouncing back.” Obviously the Grumble Chuckle days come along—no question, but how do you bounce back? We mused about how as we age, the bouncing is probably a little more difficult.
I told them about this great episode of Monk I watched recently wherein character Randy Disher shares his philosophy of life. Monk had asked Randy how he was so good-natured all the time, and essentially implied that Randy had a gift for “bouncing back.”
Randy shared how during one case he had had an epiphany. He had seen a bumper sticker that changed his life. It read, Happiness is a choice. Randy had decided then and there to be a happier person. Now Randy is a little like Barney Fife, but still, you have to admire his pluck and smile.
Our pessimist friend Adrian Monk reminded Randy that that bumper sticker had been found on a car that was wrecked and the owners murdered. So where was the happiness?
Oh, Mr. Monk—what a sourpuss view of life!
Of course if I could wish for my life to be perfect, it would be tempting—but I would decline, for life would no longer teach me anything.
As for tomorrow, hope springs eternal.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
“Excuse me…”
When last we visited, I was enjoying an off day that was long in coming. Not a spectacular day at all, say at the Dead Sea, or climbing on the pyramids in Cairo, just a day lounging around and grading and not expected to be in charge of anything all day. Not even expecting anything special of the day.
In the afternoon I called up Hamzeh and Elizabeth—and asked if they wanted a little Chili Ways snack in Madaba. Both of them agreed, so off we jumped into the little mediocre Opel I drive here, and headed for a little Coney action.
Elizabeth and Hamzeh are an interesting pair with whom to spend an afternoon. I mean, first of all, the brain cells alone between the two of them make them academic champions, but they represent something so important to me in my life story. Elizabeth was among the first students at Hackley with whom I connected, and while we only spent that first year of mine there working on plays (she was a senior and soon off to Harvard) together, we created three plays together, and the roles she essayed were as varied and complex as the chapters in her life. She came back to Hackley several years after college, and then has come to Jordan, so this bond forged 13 years ago continues to reward me. And Hamzeh has been one of the premier enjoyments of my time at KA. In our three years together it is simply one of the best relationships I have known in education.
All of that is just background and happy baggage as we careen into Madaba for a mundane Friday afternoon snack at Chili Ways. Two of my best experiences in education sitting around with me, laughing, gorging ourselves on the hotdogs with the chili and cheese—same as my comfort food in Cincinnati.
As we came to the end of our snack a very smiley young man came up to our table from across Chili Ways, and politely said, “Excuse me!” As we turned to him, he purposely said, “Excuse me. I heard you speaking English, and I like to speak English. May I speak English with you for a little while so I can improve my English?”
His mother—back at their table—said, “I hope you don’t mind, but he so enjoys meeting new people. He won’t take much of your time.”
We welcomed him to our table and we introduced ourselves. It turns out he lives in Madaba, a few blocks away, and he wanted to ask us questions. He apologized if his English was not very good. What was he thinking? He had great English skills, and even more, a charming smile and a charismatic personality.
After we exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes he went back and whispered something to his mother. She all of a sudden said, “Of course,” to him, and she shyly presented herself and asked if she could serve us tea in their home. “It is a very short walk, and we would be honored to have you in our home.”
Our new friend Jeris introduced us to his sister (much shyer than Jeris, but then so would most people in the world be a bit more shy than this personable young man) and told us that we could go home and see his house, and meet his dog, and speak English some more.
Elizabeth and Hamzeh and I followed them down a back road of Madaba, and Jeris continued chatting us up, asking questions, making sure he had good grammar, exact syntax, and used good vocabulary words.
We spent the next hour or so with Jeris and his lovely mother Neda, and it was one of those little moments of serendipity.
Jeris is in the 7th grade at the National Orthodox School in Madaba. He likes movies, playstation, and the piano. He loves writing stories. He wishes his dog Charcoal didn’t bark so loudly because he worries that Charcoal frightens away friends. He hopes to travel someday. He wants to meet many people. He is working on a British accent since people always like people with British accents. He doesn’t really like History class, but he thinks he would if he had me for a teacher. He thought I was nice. Jeris had no problem sustaining a conversation! He was a born schmoozer and lover of life!
As we talked with Jeris, or rather, we three took turns talking with Jeris so we could also talk with the mother, we asked her if she knew anything about KA. She had a vague idea about it but it seemed like a school out of their reach. We talked about the scholarships available for students at the school, and Hamzeh talked with them about how the school has been for him these three years.
We had tea—we might have stayed for dinner, but our little Chili Ways snack group had some other plans. Our joyous time at Jeris’ house reminded me of a book I had just read about in a magazine, a book with the quotidian title, How Coffee Saved My Life and Other Stories of Stumbling to Grace.
We had stumbled onto this joyous boy named Jeris, and delighted in an afternoon of chatting and hoping about his future. It coincided with the title of stumbling into grace.
Grace is one of those topics, you know, I don’t know how you figure it out, or explain it, or make sense of it even. It is like an epiphany—you don’t even see it coming sometimes, and wonder if you will experience it again after the rush of discovery. But grace may just be when I am offered love and joy in the time and place least expected. Grace interrupts and overwhelms with its irrationality and abundance.
It was just a brief respite of a snack, with two people who represent two of my most rewarding experiences, meeting a stranger who is only a stranger until you feel the warmth of that precocious smile and hearty laugh. As we stood to say good-bye to our new friends in Madaba, Neda, the mother, asked that we return. “We are the only yellow house on the block, and we have the loudest dog! Please come back again.”
Later in the week Elizabeth spoke with Neda about Jeris applying to KA for our summer program and about thinking about his enrollment in the future.
Directing Elizabeth all those years ago, as the tortured mother in Flowers for Algernon, then the elegant, but aging, sophisticate in I Hate Hamlet and finally the brutal racist Juror #10 in Twelve Angry Jurors was such a treat. And here we are all these years later, working together as class deans, striving to bring substance to the KA style, and bonding over the coneys in faraway-from-Manhattan Madaba.
Hamzeh is another generation of student, on another continent, but one more link in the chain of students who have blessed me. Besides his scholarly prowess, indeed, even more important than that, he is a young man with such honor and integrity that I think he is showing me the way. And he likes the cheese coneys at Chili Ways. Imagine when I get to introduce him to the coneys at Skyline Chili in Cincinnati!
And then there is this Jeris. Maybe he is the next generation of student for me. Or maybe just a charming afternoon helping him hone his English skills.
But certainly moments of grace. Yes, grace is when I am offered love and joy in the time and place least expected. Even Chili Ways! Grace interrupts and overwhelms with its irrationality and abundance.
Where do we go next?
In the afternoon I called up Hamzeh and Elizabeth—and asked if they wanted a little Chili Ways snack in Madaba. Both of them agreed, so off we jumped into the little mediocre Opel I drive here, and headed for a little Coney action.
Elizabeth and Hamzeh are an interesting pair with whom to spend an afternoon. I mean, first of all, the brain cells alone between the two of them make them academic champions, but they represent something so important to me in my life story. Elizabeth was among the first students at Hackley with whom I connected, and while we only spent that first year of mine there working on plays (she was a senior and soon off to Harvard) together, we created three plays together, and the roles she essayed were as varied and complex as the chapters in her life. She came back to Hackley several years after college, and then has come to Jordan, so this bond forged 13 years ago continues to reward me. And Hamzeh has been one of the premier enjoyments of my time at KA. In our three years together it is simply one of the best relationships I have known in education.
All of that is just background and happy baggage as we careen into Madaba for a mundane Friday afternoon snack at Chili Ways. Two of my best experiences in education sitting around with me, laughing, gorging ourselves on the hotdogs with the chili and cheese—same as my comfort food in Cincinnati.
As we came to the end of our snack a very smiley young man came up to our table from across Chili Ways, and politely said, “Excuse me!” As we turned to him, he purposely said, “Excuse me. I heard you speaking English, and I like to speak English. May I speak English with you for a little while so I can improve my English?”
His mother—back at their table—said, “I hope you don’t mind, but he so enjoys meeting new people. He won’t take much of your time.”
We welcomed him to our table and we introduced ourselves. It turns out he lives in Madaba, a few blocks away, and he wanted to ask us questions. He apologized if his English was not very good. What was he thinking? He had great English skills, and even more, a charming smile and a charismatic personality.
After we exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes he went back and whispered something to his mother. She all of a sudden said, “Of course,” to him, and she shyly presented herself and asked if she could serve us tea in their home. “It is a very short walk, and we would be honored to have you in our home.”
Our new friend Jeris introduced us to his sister (much shyer than Jeris, but then so would most people in the world be a bit more shy than this personable young man) and told us that we could go home and see his house, and meet his dog, and speak English some more.
Elizabeth and Hamzeh and I followed them down a back road of Madaba, and Jeris continued chatting us up, asking questions, making sure he had good grammar, exact syntax, and used good vocabulary words.
We spent the next hour or so with Jeris and his lovely mother Neda, and it was one of those little moments of serendipity.
Jeris is in the 7th grade at the National Orthodox School in Madaba. He likes movies, playstation, and the piano. He loves writing stories. He wishes his dog Charcoal didn’t bark so loudly because he worries that Charcoal frightens away friends. He hopes to travel someday. He wants to meet many people. He is working on a British accent since people always like people with British accents. He doesn’t really like History class, but he thinks he would if he had me for a teacher. He thought I was nice. Jeris had no problem sustaining a conversation! He was a born schmoozer and lover of life!
As we talked with Jeris, or rather, we three took turns talking with Jeris so we could also talk with the mother, we asked her if she knew anything about KA. She had a vague idea about it but it seemed like a school out of their reach. We talked about the scholarships available for students at the school, and Hamzeh talked with them about how the school has been for him these three years.
We had tea—we might have stayed for dinner, but our little Chili Ways snack group had some other plans. Our joyous time at Jeris’ house reminded me of a book I had just read about in a magazine, a book with the quotidian title, How Coffee Saved My Life and Other Stories of Stumbling to Grace.
We had stumbled onto this joyous boy named Jeris, and delighted in an afternoon of chatting and hoping about his future. It coincided with the title of stumbling into grace.
Grace is one of those topics, you know, I don’t know how you figure it out, or explain it, or make sense of it even. It is like an epiphany—you don’t even see it coming sometimes, and wonder if you will experience it again after the rush of discovery. But grace may just be when I am offered love and joy in the time and place least expected. Grace interrupts and overwhelms with its irrationality and abundance.
It was just a brief respite of a snack, with two people who represent two of my most rewarding experiences, meeting a stranger who is only a stranger until you feel the warmth of that precocious smile and hearty laugh. As we stood to say good-bye to our new friends in Madaba, Neda, the mother, asked that we return. “We are the only yellow house on the block, and we have the loudest dog! Please come back again.”
Later in the week Elizabeth spoke with Neda about Jeris applying to KA for our summer program and about thinking about his enrollment in the future.
Directing Elizabeth all those years ago, as the tortured mother in Flowers for Algernon, then the elegant, but aging, sophisticate in I Hate Hamlet and finally the brutal racist Juror #10 in Twelve Angry Jurors was such a treat. And here we are all these years later, working together as class deans, striving to bring substance to the KA style, and bonding over the coneys in faraway-from-Manhattan Madaba.
Hamzeh is another generation of student, on another continent, but one more link in the chain of students who have blessed me. Besides his scholarly prowess, indeed, even more important than that, he is a young man with such honor and integrity that I think he is showing me the way. And he likes the cheese coneys at Chili Ways. Imagine when I get to introduce him to the coneys at Skyline Chili in Cincinnati!
And then there is this Jeris. Maybe he is the next generation of student for me. Or maybe just a charming afternoon helping him hone his English skills.
But certainly moments of grace. Yes, grace is when I am offered love and joy in the time and place least expected. Even Chili Ways! Grace interrupts and overwhelms with its irrationality and abundance.
Where do we go next?
Friday, February 19, 2010
29 minutes on one sentence…
No, there have been no blogispodes for over a week…it was one of those weeks where going to get a haircut proved too time-consuming until this morning. The conveyer belt, or perhaps, roller-coaster of KA life, just sped up a little this week. In fact—and you can see this sit-com reference coming a mile away—I felt so much like Lucy when she and Ethel tried their hand at candy making in that classic “Job Switching” episode. I laugh every time as Lucy gets overwhelmed and starts shoving the undipped chocolates anywhere she can squirrel them away! And then when that foreman lady comes in, okay, I think I even know her name—I think it is Verna Felton—whether I am right or not is just kind of weird that I might know her name, and yet, things like physics and car repairs elude me…anyway, that great moment when who I think is Verna yells out, “Splendid. You’re doing fine!” And she calls out, “Speed it up a little!”
Actually, I didn’t know that reference was coming until I typed out the words “conveyer belt” up there and then I laughed because that’s when the inevitable reference hit me!
Oh, my…this day off is needed today. Obviously!
So in the last week I started a play, and while it is a play I have directed before, I discovered that I did not have in Jordan my “bible” of the play, with all my blocking in it, so I have to re-do that work. It’s fun work, but what with the added time crunch of rehearsals and a spate of disciplinary brouhahas this week…it was a conveyer belt of preparing for class, teaching class, meetings, play preparation, rehearsals, and trying to manage the disciplinary issues. Each moment was squeezed for the maximum benefit. Not complaining—I just felt like Lucy!
My friend and colleague Steve went to the US for a conference recently and I taught one of his classes for a week. I had visited them before to teach for 2 days a few months ago, on Greek art, but this was an extended visit, and it was a challenge, and refreshing.
First of all, the course is not an AP course, which just means you do not have to keep one eye on the clock and one eye on the calendar the whole time (I know—the image doesn’t really work, I may just want to have an eye on the board, and the students too, but hey, I do have four eyes after all). This is an introduction to world history course to 9th graders who are in what we call an “EES” program (say it aloud and you get the point). It is “English Enhancement Seminar,” and it is meant for our students for whom English is still a struggle and not as natural for second-language speakers. The goal is to really focus on the skills of language acquisition so that the courses are more manageable, and they can eeeeeeeeeeeeeease (EES) into English and KA better.
This class for a week took me back to my first year at KA. In the last two years I have had to go much faster since I was teaching them AP classes. But these guys are still adjusting to so many classes in English. For many of this class of 18 before coming to KA they might have had only one class a day in English (that would have been English class) and now they have all their classes save Arabic and Theology in English. The amount of reading and writing and speaking and understanding and processing must give those neurons in their brains a work-out!
So I walk in and many of the guys yell out, “Habibi!” the guy-talk that actually means, “dear one.” Mr. Steve had assigned them a five-page excerpt of a textbook chapter for the week as we explored Medieval Life in Europe around 1000. First of all, they wailed and moaned and smiled and agonized over the assignment of five pages for a week. Mr. Steve must have been out of his mind, they guessed!
He had asked them to start the packet and read the first page. Many of them had written over dozens of the words on that first page with Arabic so they could get a handle on what the chapter contained. I didn’t doubt that they had spent time on it, but I remembered back to days where I had to do the same kind of spade work in French and German, and even if you have all those words there as helpers, somehow the actual meaning of a passage can elude you.
I asked a couple questions about the “feudal relationships”, explained in the chapter, and in their sweet way they looked so frustrated, and I realize we needed to do that spade work. I asked Laith, this eager sharp young man to read the first sentence. Here is the first sentence of the chapter:
As the Carolingian Empire disintegrated and as attacks by invaders devastated the lands, a new political system known as feudalism developed in Europe.
As he read the sentence, I read the mood in the room. They just didn’t understand this combination of words. They had read the page, or at least most of them—I could tell these two boys in the corner did not intend to read, ha! they remind me of the Middle School colleague at Hackley who refused to read any books I assigned the History Department to read! I digress…
They had translated the words, but it was like saying just sounds really. That sentence was so dense. I really wouldn’t have thought about it, but if you read that again, if you don’t know it well, or understand the context, that sentence—that first one of the chapter—is a dead-end for the whole chapter, for the whole lesson, for the whole week!
So since I didn’t need to watch the syllabus as hawkeye-like as in an AP course, I decided we couldn’t proceed, we daren’t proceed, until we all understand that first sentence.
So, as you would surely have guessed from the title of the blogisode, we spent 29 minutes chewing apart every noun, verb and adjective in that sentence. The one thing they knew for certain was where Europe was since Steve had just done a unit on geography. We worked with what they knew, and figured out that sentence. I told them stories about Charlemagne (he, of the opaque adjectival word Carolingian), I explained how and when Charlemagne came to dominate Frankish Europe (they knew that phrase from the whizbang geography lesson of Steve’s). I used a chess board to explain how the game of chess actually mirrors feudalism, and we started to tear down and build back up that concept.
I asked them if they knew the word terrorism. I asked it nicely. I didn’t accuse them of being terrorists, but really, if the word comes up in the Middle East, it’s not unlike talking about communism in the USA—a metaphorical cold breeze suddenly chills the air. I explained about the Vikings and their intrusions, or rather, terrorist intrusions to Frankish Europe over the course of centuries and we discussed the fear that would underlie a society subjected to such terrorist attacks. They explained to me how such fear would prompt the adoption of a system that protected and created a structure to manage the fear.
After 29 minutes, at the end of that first class, they understood that first sentence. It was clear. They knew the words, they embraced the context, they waved those verbs around, they welcomed the Carolingian era, and they understood that first sentence.
It was good work, hard work actually, trying to move carefully and not insultingly, but thrillingly to make that strange passage familiar. They were amazed that they could understand a sentence so well! (I didn’t have the heart to remind them they had many, many more sentences to go—I couldn’t touch that amazement!).
In the aftermath of that first day with them, I thought about the sensation of being amazed. I was talking to a writer last night who came to be a teacher for one year here, and he asked me why I didn’t teach in a college. I said, “They don’t radiate amazement as much. I watch a student at this age, and they will allow themselves to be amazed.”
Theologian Dorothee Soelle once wrote, “To be amazed means to behold the world and, like God after the sixth day of creation, to be able to say again for the first time, ‘Look! How very good it all is!’”
Last night, when this conveyer belt slowed down finally and I could watch a movie, I picked one I had watched last August, I picked Julie and Julia (in honor of Meryl Streep’s Oscar nomination!). This movie is a delicious comedy about two women who have an amazed response to food and cooking. La Streep plays Julia Child, who is living in Paris in the mid-1950s, going to cooking school and beginning to write the cookbook that will make her famous. Amy Adams is Julie, a New Yorker who 50 years later decides to cook the 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days and write about her experiences in blogisodes. Both story lines show the process of finding one’s calling through creativity.
I love this movie’s spunky celebration of the spiritual practice of enthusiasm—both characters are exceptional mentors of this quality—and its portrait of personal transformation arriving in the midst of everyday activities. Both women allowed themselves to be amazed, even at something so simple.
Actually, I didn’t know that reference was coming until I typed out the words “conveyer belt” up there and then I laughed because that’s when the inevitable reference hit me!
Oh, my…this day off is needed today. Obviously!
So in the last week I started a play, and while it is a play I have directed before, I discovered that I did not have in Jordan my “bible” of the play, with all my blocking in it, so I have to re-do that work. It’s fun work, but what with the added time crunch of rehearsals and a spate of disciplinary brouhahas this week…it was a conveyer belt of preparing for class, teaching class, meetings, play preparation, rehearsals, and trying to manage the disciplinary issues. Each moment was squeezed for the maximum benefit. Not complaining—I just felt like Lucy!
My friend and colleague Steve went to the US for a conference recently and I taught one of his classes for a week. I had visited them before to teach for 2 days a few months ago, on Greek art, but this was an extended visit, and it was a challenge, and refreshing.
First of all, the course is not an AP course, which just means you do not have to keep one eye on the clock and one eye on the calendar the whole time (I know—the image doesn’t really work, I may just want to have an eye on the board, and the students too, but hey, I do have four eyes after all). This is an introduction to world history course to 9th graders who are in what we call an “EES” program (say it aloud and you get the point). It is “English Enhancement Seminar,” and it is meant for our students for whom English is still a struggle and not as natural for second-language speakers. The goal is to really focus on the skills of language acquisition so that the courses are more manageable, and they can eeeeeeeeeeeeeease (EES) into English and KA better.
This class for a week took me back to my first year at KA. In the last two years I have had to go much faster since I was teaching them AP classes. But these guys are still adjusting to so many classes in English. For many of this class of 18 before coming to KA they might have had only one class a day in English (that would have been English class) and now they have all their classes save Arabic and Theology in English. The amount of reading and writing and speaking and understanding and processing must give those neurons in their brains a work-out!
So I walk in and many of the guys yell out, “Habibi!” the guy-talk that actually means, “dear one.” Mr. Steve had assigned them a five-page excerpt of a textbook chapter for the week as we explored Medieval Life in Europe around 1000. First of all, they wailed and moaned and smiled and agonized over the assignment of five pages for a week. Mr. Steve must have been out of his mind, they guessed!
He had asked them to start the packet and read the first page. Many of them had written over dozens of the words on that first page with Arabic so they could get a handle on what the chapter contained. I didn’t doubt that they had spent time on it, but I remembered back to days where I had to do the same kind of spade work in French and German, and even if you have all those words there as helpers, somehow the actual meaning of a passage can elude you.
I asked a couple questions about the “feudal relationships”, explained in the chapter, and in their sweet way they looked so frustrated, and I realize we needed to do that spade work. I asked Laith, this eager sharp young man to read the first sentence. Here is the first sentence of the chapter:
As the Carolingian Empire disintegrated and as attacks by invaders devastated the lands, a new political system known as feudalism developed in Europe.
As he read the sentence, I read the mood in the room. They just didn’t understand this combination of words. They had read the page, or at least most of them—I could tell these two boys in the corner did not intend to read, ha! they remind me of the Middle School colleague at Hackley who refused to read any books I assigned the History Department to read! I digress…
They had translated the words, but it was like saying just sounds really. That sentence was so dense. I really wouldn’t have thought about it, but if you read that again, if you don’t know it well, or understand the context, that sentence—that first one of the chapter—is a dead-end for the whole chapter, for the whole lesson, for the whole week!
So since I didn’t need to watch the syllabus as hawkeye-like as in an AP course, I decided we couldn’t proceed, we daren’t proceed, until we all understand that first sentence.
So, as you would surely have guessed from the title of the blogisode, we spent 29 minutes chewing apart every noun, verb and adjective in that sentence. The one thing they knew for certain was where Europe was since Steve had just done a unit on geography. We worked with what they knew, and figured out that sentence. I told them stories about Charlemagne (he, of the opaque adjectival word Carolingian), I explained how and when Charlemagne came to dominate Frankish Europe (they knew that phrase from the whizbang geography lesson of Steve’s). I used a chess board to explain how the game of chess actually mirrors feudalism, and we started to tear down and build back up that concept.
I asked them if they knew the word terrorism. I asked it nicely. I didn’t accuse them of being terrorists, but really, if the word comes up in the Middle East, it’s not unlike talking about communism in the USA—a metaphorical cold breeze suddenly chills the air. I explained about the Vikings and their intrusions, or rather, terrorist intrusions to Frankish Europe over the course of centuries and we discussed the fear that would underlie a society subjected to such terrorist attacks. They explained to me how such fear would prompt the adoption of a system that protected and created a structure to manage the fear.
After 29 minutes, at the end of that first class, they understood that first sentence. It was clear. They knew the words, they embraced the context, they waved those verbs around, they welcomed the Carolingian era, and they understood that first sentence.
It was good work, hard work actually, trying to move carefully and not insultingly, but thrillingly to make that strange passage familiar. They were amazed that they could understand a sentence so well! (I didn’t have the heart to remind them they had many, many more sentences to go—I couldn’t touch that amazement!).
In the aftermath of that first day with them, I thought about the sensation of being amazed. I was talking to a writer last night who came to be a teacher for one year here, and he asked me why I didn’t teach in a college. I said, “They don’t radiate amazement as much. I watch a student at this age, and they will allow themselves to be amazed.”
Theologian Dorothee Soelle once wrote, “To be amazed means to behold the world and, like God after the sixth day of creation, to be able to say again for the first time, ‘Look! How very good it all is!’”
Last night, when this conveyer belt slowed down finally and I could watch a movie, I picked one I had watched last August, I picked Julie and Julia (in honor of Meryl Streep’s Oscar nomination!). This movie is a delicious comedy about two women who have an amazed response to food and cooking. La Streep plays Julia Child, who is living in Paris in the mid-1950s, going to cooking school and beginning to write the cookbook that will make her famous. Amy Adams is Julie, a New Yorker who 50 years later decides to cook the 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days and write about her experiences in blogisodes. Both story lines show the process of finding one’s calling through creativity.
I love this movie’s spunky celebration of the spiritual practice of enthusiasm—both characters are exceptional mentors of this quality—and its portrait of personal transformation arriving in the midst of everyday activities. Both women allowed themselves to be amazed, even at something so simple.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Next stop…KFC…Kuwaiti Fried Chicken
Earlier this week the ominous reports began to filter in—there might be a snowstorm this week in the kingdom.
I have lived in places that get snow forever, but here in the desert it does take on a quasi-mystical quality to ponder the onset of snow. Our headmaster announced that meteorologists had confirmed there was a chance for snow. Would school be cancelled?
It seemed strange that snow would visit us, much less disrupt the rhythm and flow of a boarding school where on most nights 75% of the students are boarders.
But the prospect of snow creates mania. However—that mania is hardly indigenous to Jordan! When I lived in North Carolina, certain kinds of cloud formations sent my southern brethren and sistern to the local grocery stores—they had seen the “bread and milk sky” (say that please with the proper southern accent it requires!) and they needed to load up the provisions of bread and milk for the duration of winter! The first year I taught in North Carolina school was cancelled for a week in January, 1987 due to a snow storm. Most days you could find everyone at the mall killing time until it was “safe” enough to traverse the roads back to school.
On Wednesday—the morning of what might be the storm of the century—students started yelling in the halls around 10:00 that school was cancelled for the following day. Oh, the excitement of it all!
Then as lunch started many of the students who live in various parts of Jordan were whisked away to be sent home in school vans to get them home before the storm hit.
(We are a fully functioning boarding school—our own little community, albeit monastery-like…)
As lunch began, I recognized the “Henny Penny” mood as rumors coursed through that school was cancelled the following day, and maybe indefinitely (!!). Our headmaster announced that a plan would be pronounced shortly. Soon however, some of the staff went from table-to-table canvassing students as to what their plans were. Their plans? What was the school plan? Was everyone going home? Several Saudi students said they were flying home until winter was over. They were calling the airlines!
Oh, the sky is falling!
Hackley was not immune to such mania either. The bus companies practically control the educational system and on days when it was feared that snow might come that night, bus companies sometimes announced early dismissals to get students home, and the mania would start sometimes as early as 10:00. I actually went around the halls occasionally on those days, yelling out and warning to Henny Penny. Why not—it was fun to add to the cacophony.
I went to Lubna’s office and we checked online the best weather service for Jordan. It said that there was a 30% chance of snow that evening.
30%!
Oh my…Henny Penny has found a safe home.
The official word finally came. Students could leave at 6:30 on buses but any boarder needed to call home and check with a Student Life Office dean about the permission. We braced ourselves (actually I did less bracing, I was going to be in class) for the onslaught of maybe 200 calls in the next hour or so to manage.
I managed to teach my remaining class, although students checked the skies every few minutes in case a missile of snow dropped to earth.
When 6:30 came Henny Penny had packed her suitcase and some students had suitcases that looked more appropriate for Spring Break than a night at home (followed by a weekend). The official word was students would be notified if school was cancelled. Yes, Henny Penny, school was not yet cancelled, just precautions being made. If school was not cancelled everyone would have to be back on a bus at 7:00 a.m. the following day to come back and have that scheduled day of classes.
At 6:30 it was cold—maybe 40 degrees. My, my, Henny Penny, your feathers would be mighty chilly in such temperatures.
The decision to be made was—would there be school the following day? Would it be prudent to go home for the evening in Amman, just to come back very early the following morning? Some students figured—come on, it’s a boarding school, we live here, there will be school!
So a hardy group stayed on campus. By the way, one of my Mohammad students stopped and asked if I was going to stay in Amman. I asked why—I lived here at the monastery, errr, on the campus. He thought it might be more fun for me to get a hotel room in Amman for the storm.
At dinner there was that mood that prevails on snow days. You know—you shouldn’t do anything you normally would do. If you should practice the cello, work some math problems, read your novel for English, learn some German artist names for Art History, of course you don’t do any of those things—it’s a snow day! (Remember, not yet officially!) So you linger at dinner longer and have one of those inane conversations you have on snow days. Conversations that are not about business, or have an agenda, or are on your To Do List.
I joined a table and we discussed how businesses in the Arab world often change well-known American business names but are not really a franchise of the American business. So, in lazy snow day fashion, you go around and share your findings. I shared the grocery store named “Biggly Wiggly” modeled on the American store, “Piggly Wiggly.” Abdullah shared that there is a coffee shop named “Stars and Bucks,” another shared that a hamburger place called “Softee’s” is purloined from the American “Hardee’s,” and so on. My favorite contribution was a student who had lived in Kuwait and told of the chicken place there with the familiar KFC in big, bold neon lights, and then the actual name in smaller print, Kuwaiti Fried Chicken. Ha!
The following morning I got up about 6 to get ready for school. I looked outside and the ground was bone dry and the sun was just starting to emerge from its battle with the moon. Oh well. So much for Henny Penny and her mania. It was time to get ready.
After my shower I noticed a message on the cell phone. An SMS had gone out to the KA community—“Due to inclement weather, classes will be cancelled today, Thursday, February 4.” Henny Penny won!
Of course only 80 students had remained on campus anyway. We have 100 full boarders. That means that not only did the five-day boarders get outta Dodge the night before, 20% of the seven-day boarders had hightailed it away too! I guess the powers that be wisely figured you can’t fight the Henny Penny madness! No school! I feel for those administrative decisions—you cannot win (unless your last name is Penny).
As you might imagine, it was a beautiful day—it was sunny for much of the day, and almost no precipitation at all! But lest I think this is a Jordan Phenomenon—I remember a day at Hackley when a hurricane was forecast and people worried about the roads and the drainage problems of the parkways, and school was cancelled the day before. Ahhh…it turned out to be one of the most perfect sunny days in the Hudson Valley in my memory!
About 8:30 Ghassan called me and asked if we should have class. Really? He said about a dozen art historians were on campus. Let’s have class! Why not?! I sent out an email offering to have a class, but no one should feel obligated to show up. (I made jokes about the frostbite one might incur, and don’t forget to shake the snow off your boots as you came into class…why not mock the Lack of Snow Day a little.) I emphasized that no one should feel punished to come to the class, or feel punished to have to miss the class. (Abdullah emailed back and said the only one being punished was me!)
So at 11:00 I convened a class about the complexities of 16th century Antwerp. We discussed the world’s first stock exchange, the mad rush of ships in the harbor, the cabal of world trade in the “Wall Street” district, and the Flemish-Protestant chafing under Catholic Spain. We analyzed 9 art works by Pieter Brueghel, the first two being winter landscapes!
Fourteen young men and one young woman came to this extra class. They braved the “storm of the century” and bucked the trend of not doing anything important on a Snow Day. It was really just like any other day in this school, a reminder of how blessed I am to have a group of students who show up and profess interest and mine their curiosity.
Right now…a new morning…and another sunny day!
I have lived in places that get snow forever, but here in the desert it does take on a quasi-mystical quality to ponder the onset of snow. Our headmaster announced that meteorologists had confirmed there was a chance for snow. Would school be cancelled?
It seemed strange that snow would visit us, much less disrupt the rhythm and flow of a boarding school where on most nights 75% of the students are boarders.
But the prospect of snow creates mania. However—that mania is hardly indigenous to Jordan! When I lived in North Carolina, certain kinds of cloud formations sent my southern brethren and sistern to the local grocery stores—they had seen the “bread and milk sky” (say that please with the proper southern accent it requires!) and they needed to load up the provisions of bread and milk for the duration of winter! The first year I taught in North Carolina school was cancelled for a week in January, 1987 due to a snow storm. Most days you could find everyone at the mall killing time until it was “safe” enough to traverse the roads back to school.
On Wednesday—the morning of what might be the storm of the century—students started yelling in the halls around 10:00 that school was cancelled for the following day. Oh, the excitement of it all!
Then as lunch started many of the students who live in various parts of Jordan were whisked away to be sent home in school vans to get them home before the storm hit.
(We are a fully functioning boarding school—our own little community, albeit monastery-like…)
As lunch began, I recognized the “Henny Penny” mood as rumors coursed through that school was cancelled the following day, and maybe indefinitely (!!). Our headmaster announced that a plan would be pronounced shortly. Soon however, some of the staff went from table-to-table canvassing students as to what their plans were. Their plans? What was the school plan? Was everyone going home? Several Saudi students said they were flying home until winter was over. They were calling the airlines!
Oh, the sky is falling!
Hackley was not immune to such mania either. The bus companies practically control the educational system and on days when it was feared that snow might come that night, bus companies sometimes announced early dismissals to get students home, and the mania would start sometimes as early as 10:00. I actually went around the halls occasionally on those days, yelling out and warning to Henny Penny. Why not—it was fun to add to the cacophony.
I went to Lubna’s office and we checked online the best weather service for Jordan. It said that there was a 30% chance of snow that evening.
30%!
Oh my…Henny Penny has found a safe home.
The official word finally came. Students could leave at 6:30 on buses but any boarder needed to call home and check with a Student Life Office dean about the permission. We braced ourselves (actually I did less bracing, I was going to be in class) for the onslaught of maybe 200 calls in the next hour or so to manage.
I managed to teach my remaining class, although students checked the skies every few minutes in case a missile of snow dropped to earth.
When 6:30 came Henny Penny had packed her suitcase and some students had suitcases that looked more appropriate for Spring Break than a night at home (followed by a weekend). The official word was students would be notified if school was cancelled. Yes, Henny Penny, school was not yet cancelled, just precautions being made. If school was not cancelled everyone would have to be back on a bus at 7:00 a.m. the following day to come back and have that scheduled day of classes.
At 6:30 it was cold—maybe 40 degrees. My, my, Henny Penny, your feathers would be mighty chilly in such temperatures.
The decision to be made was—would there be school the following day? Would it be prudent to go home for the evening in Amman, just to come back very early the following morning? Some students figured—come on, it’s a boarding school, we live here, there will be school!
So a hardy group stayed on campus. By the way, one of my Mohammad students stopped and asked if I was going to stay in Amman. I asked why—I lived here at the monastery, errr, on the campus. He thought it might be more fun for me to get a hotel room in Amman for the storm.
At dinner there was that mood that prevails on snow days. You know—you shouldn’t do anything you normally would do. If you should practice the cello, work some math problems, read your novel for English, learn some German artist names for Art History, of course you don’t do any of those things—it’s a snow day! (Remember, not yet officially!) So you linger at dinner longer and have one of those inane conversations you have on snow days. Conversations that are not about business, or have an agenda, or are on your To Do List.
I joined a table and we discussed how businesses in the Arab world often change well-known American business names but are not really a franchise of the American business. So, in lazy snow day fashion, you go around and share your findings. I shared the grocery store named “Biggly Wiggly” modeled on the American store, “Piggly Wiggly.” Abdullah shared that there is a coffee shop named “Stars and Bucks,” another shared that a hamburger place called “Softee’s” is purloined from the American “Hardee’s,” and so on. My favorite contribution was a student who had lived in Kuwait and told of the chicken place there with the familiar KFC in big, bold neon lights, and then the actual name in smaller print, Kuwaiti Fried Chicken. Ha!
The following morning I got up about 6 to get ready for school. I looked outside and the ground was bone dry and the sun was just starting to emerge from its battle with the moon. Oh well. So much for Henny Penny and her mania. It was time to get ready.
After my shower I noticed a message on the cell phone. An SMS had gone out to the KA community—“Due to inclement weather, classes will be cancelled today, Thursday, February 4.” Henny Penny won!
Of course only 80 students had remained on campus anyway. We have 100 full boarders. That means that not only did the five-day boarders get outta Dodge the night before, 20% of the seven-day boarders had hightailed it away too! I guess the powers that be wisely figured you can’t fight the Henny Penny madness! No school! I feel for those administrative decisions—you cannot win (unless your last name is Penny).
As you might imagine, it was a beautiful day—it was sunny for much of the day, and almost no precipitation at all! But lest I think this is a Jordan Phenomenon—I remember a day at Hackley when a hurricane was forecast and people worried about the roads and the drainage problems of the parkways, and school was cancelled the day before. Ahhh…it turned out to be one of the most perfect sunny days in the Hudson Valley in my memory!
About 8:30 Ghassan called me and asked if we should have class. Really? He said about a dozen art historians were on campus. Let’s have class! Why not?! I sent out an email offering to have a class, but no one should feel obligated to show up. (I made jokes about the frostbite one might incur, and don’t forget to shake the snow off your boots as you came into class…why not mock the Lack of Snow Day a little.) I emphasized that no one should feel punished to come to the class, or feel punished to have to miss the class. (Abdullah emailed back and said the only one being punished was me!)
So at 11:00 I convened a class about the complexities of 16th century Antwerp. We discussed the world’s first stock exchange, the mad rush of ships in the harbor, the cabal of world trade in the “Wall Street” district, and the Flemish-Protestant chafing under Catholic Spain. We analyzed 9 art works by Pieter Brueghel, the first two being winter landscapes!
Fourteen young men and one young woman came to this extra class. They braved the “storm of the century” and bucked the trend of not doing anything important on a Snow Day. It was really just like any other day in this school, a reminder of how blessed I am to have a group of students who show up and profess interest and mine their curiosity.
Right now…a new morning…and another sunny day!
Monday, February 1, 2010
…and be Mary…
Here it is, the first day of February! I had decided over the weekend that I would write a blog entry about how even though it was a full month since New Year’s Day, and a month since I got on a plane back to Jordan I would remind the world of the promises and the hopes that are invested so naturally on New Year’s Day. Oh, the resolutions and the intentions and the smiles and the hopes of early January! Remember, I wrote early last month that we needed to look the New Year “right in the eye” and make it all better. I was going to write today about how the spirit of the New Year was right here in my pocket, and I could take it out and smile at it as if it were still January 1 or 2 or 3. I was going to write about Friends (the actual collection of people I know, not the great sit-com) and feel all warm and fuzzy so that you on that cold continent over there might have a warm fire in your psyche after the blogisode about Friends.
But then today happened.
I mean, it’s not really an unusual day when teaching adolescents and trying to manage, or help others manage, the stresses of school life.
Well, actually, it did have an unusual start. And I am still trying to figure it out. Mondays are the one day when we do not have School Meeting at 7:55 a.m. (and I happen to have first period free) so I can toddle about the apartment or go have a leisurely cup of coffee with Lubna before jumping into the fray.
I noticed this morning that there was something strange under the front door of the apartment, and I just assumed our zealous maintenance guys had some great ooooooooze on the floor of the dorm trying to get it clean.
I open the door to check on the sludge-y stuff that I suspect is cleaning product, and notice that I have about a dozen egg shells on the floor, and notice that I have the detritus of egg all over the door. Hmmm…my door had been egged in the middle of the night! What had happened? The strange thing is that I thought about last night, I remembered that the dorm had been unusually quiet at bedtime, and I saw not a soul in the hallway after Lights Out. I hadn’t had a confrontation with a derelict young man, and frankly, no name popped into my head of who might have done it. Except that I teach school, assign work, and wave a magic gradebook over people’s lives.
I can’t remember any other time in my career that I was egged. So, strange. Just a strange start to the day. You know, you don’t want to take it personally, and I know the seniors feel the stress of senior year (seriously, every senior year has been stressful…I am sure Moses complained to his buddies about how no one in the palace really understood, and when the pharaoh was a little boy, no one had the stresses of being a senior like he had them) and are cross about life, but oh well. I would rather have had a western omelet instead.
But the day was one of a succession of odd chats: taking someone aside and quietly and calmly discussing infractions or missed obligations. The young man who disrupted science class endlessly, and the young man who didn’t understand why he couldn’t just go into town alone and do what teen-agers need to do, and the colleague who was stressed about how no one understands how hard it is to be away from friends and family, and the colleague who didn’t know why we weren’t friends on Facebook (seriously!). I had a student who needed to go over the grading of a test, sure that his A- was really an A and then I had the student who needed chastising because of a nasty email he sent to a teacher telling him how much he hated him. I ate lunch by grabbing a piece of fish and walking around the Dining Hall trying to find the two errant seniors who needed to turn in their Senior Jackets to me because some people thought the nicknames on the jackets the young scholars had chosen were inappropriate (actually six jackets had been deemed inappropriate, but four of them have been successfully recovered by Jacket Hunter Johnny). Oh and I had a couple of meetings and a couple of classes. We discussed doctrinal differences between Catholics and Protestants and the ensuing wars (“My chalice is golden and expensive! My chalice is simple and made of wood! Let’s fight!”). Everything was testy today!
So I need something other than the cheesiness extolling the virtues of friendship.
Let’s face it—I need a little levity, and well, maybe I need to make fun of a couple of people!
Over the thirty-one months of blogging I have resisted—for the most part—mocking my Arab friends’ English. It just isn’t fair! And remember, they are operating, thinking, debating, writing and acting in a second language. So I never culled gaffes and used them as fodder in the blog. But a little chuckle might lighten the mood on this February 1st.
Administrators send emails all day long—I mean that’s what they do, and 99.9% of these emails have great English grammar and vocabulary, but there is one who ends many, many emails with something that gives me the giggles. In Administrator-speak, I have learned that when one is peeved at a colleague, one tends to end an email (a.k.a. rant) with the phrase “please advise.” Well, this one administrator—stop me, okay, it’s just a chortle, always ends such emails with “please advice.” Okay, a little chortle—what’s the harm?!
There was another email advising the reader that an important matter was still unresolved. The pronouncement read, “The matter is still bending.”
Now, actually I can explain that gaffe, I think. In Arabic you don’t have a “p” sound. For example, if you are lost in Jordan, trying to find your way to Petra, you just stop and beg, “Wein Butra????” See, if you say the P in Petra, you aren’t really local. Cool, no? So I think the mistake was that the impulse is not to say a p like in pending. Well, that demystifies the comment, I guess and takes away any of the risible effect for which I long!
But my favorite gaffe actually reminds me of how interesting and profound little tiny mistakes can be. Okay, this came from a student’s test last week on the Renaissance. There was an art work and the prompt asked the students to analyze how the work exemplified the intellectual concerns of the era. The student commented how the piece was from Venice, and went on to comment about the trials and tribulations the Venetians endured as their economy suffered and collapsed in the second half of the 15th century (If you are dying to know why, well, it is simple, the recently-triumphant-in-Constantinople -Ottomans closed down the shipping lanes to and from Venice, I guess to teach those cocky Venetians a thing or two about control.
The mood in Venice might have been one of panic, since a major source of their wealth suddenly vaporized. But in an unusual response, the Venetians decided to throw up their hands and throw themselves a party of sorts. Their art turned quite escapist, rather risqué, and bacchanalian. I described in class that the Venetian artists adopted the mantra of “Eat, drink and be merry…for tomorrow we may die!”
We looked at a number of art works by Titian and Giorgione and Bellini that supported this theory. Indeed the work on the test called on just such knowledge.
So I am reading this excellent response from a student and the student writes that in Venice they adopted the idea that one should “Eat, drink and be Mary!”
It is just a homonym—a simple little spelling error—but it made me laugh. Instead of merriment, the directive is to be Mary! The Virgin Mary? Mary Magdalene? Mary, Queen of Scots? Mary Todd Lincoln? Mary Astor? Stop me!
So I laughed. I didn’t have the heart to let the student know the gaffe (Annunciation, anyone??), but it actually made me think that it is a pretty good pep talk.
I thought of Mary, the sister of Lazarus in the New Testament. Mary is the gentle hostess—gracious, attentive, a listener and responder to the people and the hubbub buzzing around her. Her personality isn’t showy, but she is purposeful and sensitive to the frustrations and fears of those around her.
Maybe that is what this day needed—a total out-of-the-blue reminder that when it seems like chaos, why not just calm down, “eat, drink, and be Mary.”
But then today happened.
I mean, it’s not really an unusual day when teaching adolescents and trying to manage, or help others manage, the stresses of school life.
Well, actually, it did have an unusual start. And I am still trying to figure it out. Mondays are the one day when we do not have School Meeting at 7:55 a.m. (and I happen to have first period free) so I can toddle about the apartment or go have a leisurely cup of coffee with Lubna before jumping into the fray.
I noticed this morning that there was something strange under the front door of the apartment, and I just assumed our zealous maintenance guys had some great ooooooooze on the floor of the dorm trying to get it clean.
I open the door to check on the sludge-y stuff that I suspect is cleaning product, and notice that I have about a dozen egg shells on the floor, and notice that I have the detritus of egg all over the door. Hmmm…my door had been egged in the middle of the night! What had happened? The strange thing is that I thought about last night, I remembered that the dorm had been unusually quiet at bedtime, and I saw not a soul in the hallway after Lights Out. I hadn’t had a confrontation with a derelict young man, and frankly, no name popped into my head of who might have done it. Except that I teach school, assign work, and wave a magic gradebook over people’s lives.
I can’t remember any other time in my career that I was egged. So, strange. Just a strange start to the day. You know, you don’t want to take it personally, and I know the seniors feel the stress of senior year (seriously, every senior year has been stressful…I am sure Moses complained to his buddies about how no one in the palace really understood, and when the pharaoh was a little boy, no one had the stresses of being a senior like he had them) and are cross about life, but oh well. I would rather have had a western omelet instead.
But the day was one of a succession of odd chats: taking someone aside and quietly and calmly discussing infractions or missed obligations. The young man who disrupted science class endlessly, and the young man who didn’t understand why he couldn’t just go into town alone and do what teen-agers need to do, and the colleague who was stressed about how no one understands how hard it is to be away from friends and family, and the colleague who didn’t know why we weren’t friends on Facebook (seriously!). I had a student who needed to go over the grading of a test, sure that his A- was really an A and then I had the student who needed chastising because of a nasty email he sent to a teacher telling him how much he hated him. I ate lunch by grabbing a piece of fish and walking around the Dining Hall trying to find the two errant seniors who needed to turn in their Senior Jackets to me because some people thought the nicknames on the jackets the young scholars had chosen were inappropriate (actually six jackets had been deemed inappropriate, but four of them have been successfully recovered by Jacket Hunter Johnny). Oh and I had a couple of meetings and a couple of classes. We discussed doctrinal differences between Catholics and Protestants and the ensuing wars (“My chalice is golden and expensive! My chalice is simple and made of wood! Let’s fight!”). Everything was testy today!
So I need something other than the cheesiness extolling the virtues of friendship.
Let’s face it—I need a little levity, and well, maybe I need to make fun of a couple of people!
Over the thirty-one months of blogging I have resisted—for the most part—mocking my Arab friends’ English. It just isn’t fair! And remember, they are operating, thinking, debating, writing and acting in a second language. So I never culled gaffes and used them as fodder in the blog. But a little chuckle might lighten the mood on this February 1st.
Administrators send emails all day long—I mean that’s what they do, and 99.9% of these emails have great English grammar and vocabulary, but there is one who ends many, many emails with something that gives me the giggles. In Administrator-speak, I have learned that when one is peeved at a colleague, one tends to end an email (a.k.a. rant) with the phrase “please advise.” Well, this one administrator—stop me, okay, it’s just a chortle, always ends such emails with “please advice.” Okay, a little chortle—what’s the harm?!
There was another email advising the reader that an important matter was still unresolved. The pronouncement read, “The matter is still bending.”
Now, actually I can explain that gaffe, I think. In Arabic you don’t have a “p” sound. For example, if you are lost in Jordan, trying to find your way to Petra, you just stop and beg, “Wein Butra????” See, if you say the P in Petra, you aren’t really local. Cool, no? So I think the mistake was that the impulse is not to say a p like in pending. Well, that demystifies the comment, I guess and takes away any of the risible effect for which I long!
But my favorite gaffe actually reminds me of how interesting and profound little tiny mistakes can be. Okay, this came from a student’s test last week on the Renaissance. There was an art work and the prompt asked the students to analyze how the work exemplified the intellectual concerns of the era. The student commented how the piece was from Venice, and went on to comment about the trials and tribulations the Venetians endured as their economy suffered and collapsed in the second half of the 15th century (If you are dying to know why, well, it is simple, the recently-triumphant-in-Constantinople -Ottomans closed down the shipping lanes to and from Venice, I guess to teach those cocky Venetians a thing or two about control.
The mood in Venice might have been one of panic, since a major source of their wealth suddenly vaporized. But in an unusual response, the Venetians decided to throw up their hands and throw themselves a party of sorts. Their art turned quite escapist, rather risqué, and bacchanalian. I described in class that the Venetian artists adopted the mantra of “Eat, drink and be merry…for tomorrow we may die!”
We looked at a number of art works by Titian and Giorgione and Bellini that supported this theory. Indeed the work on the test called on just such knowledge.
So I am reading this excellent response from a student and the student writes that in Venice they adopted the idea that one should “Eat, drink and be Mary!”
It is just a homonym—a simple little spelling error—but it made me laugh. Instead of merriment, the directive is to be Mary! The Virgin Mary? Mary Magdalene? Mary, Queen of Scots? Mary Todd Lincoln? Mary Astor? Stop me!
So I laughed. I didn’t have the heart to let the student know the gaffe (Annunciation, anyone??), but it actually made me think that it is a pretty good pep talk.
I thought of Mary, the sister of Lazarus in the New Testament. Mary is the gentle hostess—gracious, attentive, a listener and responder to the people and the hubbub buzzing around her. Her personality isn’t showy, but she is purposeful and sensitive to the frustrations and fears of those around her.
Maybe that is what this day needed—a total out-of-the-blue reminder that when it seems like chaos, why not just calm down, “eat, drink, and be Mary.”
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