Blogging my way to sleep

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Blogging my way to sleep

14 November 2010

Today is a Sunday.  I took a nice long evening walk with Rahul after dropping Aaliaa off to a party and had a nice pizza dinner date on a joint by the street in the island. It was rewarding to accomplish a few things in the office for an hour or two today. Saturdays are usually the toughest, it’s the cathartic day after a week of intense multi tasking in challenging times of the organization/school.  Meeting human and non-human needs can either stir creative juices or whip one dry and crusted. Saturdays are days when laundry, dishes, cooking, sweeping etc. are also begun. It always takes more energy starting tasks than finishing them, just as a launching rocket uses more fuel than its entire trip in the atmosphere or beyond. It is always a gift to have family and friends back home or around the world whom I could ring anytime for a chat or a real conversation.

Tomorrow, of course, is a Monday.  I will be printing out documents needed for the coordinator’s workshop in Spain. I will be looking at essays and correcting tests. I will start writing reports and getting scores on the sheets. I will have my classes to prepare or better yet, learn what to teach the children. I will have meetings with the leadership team every day, and once a week in addition, brainstorming how to finish each day as smoothly as possible. I will have a glance of my daughter during morning and lunch breaks. I will be on duty to chaperone lunch or post lunch or the outdoor/indoor morning break. I have documents after documents to read for the workshop in 4 days. In a few months, the papers, the walls, the leaders, the teachers, the students, the parents, the numbers have to be ready for the accreditation. The In-school workshop is finally over. The days and nights of printing and binding and organizing papers are finally over for that part; not to mention the e-mailing back and forth with the workshop leader from the Netherlands and ensuring his flights, transportation, snacks, lunch and hotels are taken care of.  I would have to say that my three job milestones would be the MYP IN-SCHOOL WORKSHOP, THE MYP COORDINATOR’S WORKSHOP AND THE MYP ACCREDITATION.  I call them milestones, because it takes miles before these stones appear again.

The real milestones however, happen every day.  I am currently teaching grades 7, 8 and 9 after 2-3 years of teaching grades 11 and 12 Psychology. It is a shift. I have taught MYP 3-4 years ago but taught totally different content though not courses, except for Study Skills. Yes, I am learning with my students every day.  I am learning with my colleagues. Every week is an All- School meeting and MYP Team meetings. An agenda may be decided according to urgent and important, or important but long term and needs to be started somewhere. I still have to send my second MYP newsletter to parents. 

Despite my daily mile long lists of things to do, I feel most accomplished, when in a week, I could sit with a teacher or two to work with them in their writing, planning or unpacking an academic document. When I have reached out a hand and help someone make something challenging a little bit easier; not because it is a difficult task but just because someone is there with them to go through something new and unfamiliar. It is also very rewarding when I can share a trick or two in cooperative learning activities that could integrate learning with fun and games.

At the end of the day, when I am tired and beaten, I still find it extremely rewarding to work with individual students who are willing to walk an extra mile to learn something extra, strengthen and improve their understanding, either in a project or an academic task or simply find the strength to finish something when someone sits with them, knowing they are not alone in having to face the process of reaching the final destinations. It makes me feel, I do what I came here to do.

More powerful than any of the above, is when a student or two or more, honor me with their tears and open hearts and let me in, into their joys or sorrows. Spending hours talking with them about friendship, family or self-esteem and identity, are, I feel more important than anything that I could teach them in the classroom.

One of the gifts of this organization, is its strong parental involvement. As challenging as it may sound for others, I love working with the parents here who are actually involved in their children’s lives. Coming from a boarding school, this is a treat, to have parents to support teachers with their students/kids. Being a parent makes it extra easy for me to empathize on their parental worries or excitements or fears.

It all sound meaningful and good, but none comes easy. By the time sometimes starts to become easy, I hop to another new thing, and then whine that things are way too challenging.

 I am stretched every day.  Working with human beings is always a stretch. With all these, come the whole nine yards of human emotions, mental challenge and mortal physical fatigue, coming from all sides. It feels like the fall of Rome, many of times when all sides come at the same time and need to be dealt with. With these in the last three months too, are summer, fall and winter all in a few weeks from the sun setting at 9pm to 4pm. I have worn open sandals, closed shoes, rain boots, rain boots with fur, snow boots to ultra snow shoes with thermal layers. All these feel like an entire sun’s revolution all in a single rotation.

Sometimes I amaze myself at my audacity to constantly push myself towards the cliff of constant change and then end up blaming no one but myself for it. After college, I went straight to taking over my mother’s kindergarten school in the mornings while teaching in a college/ or colleges in the afternoons. Then I went off to marry, have a child and flew to India to teach Middle School and High School for 3-4 years and be an MYP Coordinator for a year. In each of those years, I would feel like breaking, every time I stretch myself an extra mile, I would wonder when I could ever just have a life, swim in the sea, row in rivers and backpack around the world living in tents or boats. I would have many nights and days dreaming of no homework jobs like waiting on tables or scooping ice cream in some joint somewhere in Canada or Australia and say “Howdy! Would you like a strawberry or a chocolate, two or three scoops?” ; Or perhaps grape or apple picking! Weird huh? But I am seriously jealous of people that I would meet in some of my few expeditions in India, Thailand, Nepal or Cambodia, who actually do these things.  And then, I would have these weird days, when I get excited over what course I could take for my PhD, what book I could write or which school I could sponsor in some country in Africa. I would also at times, rave about ideas in starting experiential schools in the villages in the Philippines. You know, first class education brought to the grassroots, funded by volunteer efforts of fellow children or youth around the world. I could get very dreamy at times but I think that’s all I do, I dream and dream and dream and once I have reached those dreams I get frustrated, because another dream pops out of my head all of the sudden and then, once again, I haven’t realized that dream yet. It never ends.

Now, I have brought myself and my family to Norway as an MYP Coordinator and an MYP teacher, after I started on this hype on Robin Sharma's "Leading without a title" book and had a quest on finding world class leaders.

I must go to sleep now and dream of ticking off as many “to do list” as possible by tomorrow. It’s time to read a book to Aaliaa and put this other restless soul to sleep.