Reeling the boys back in

Last week we finished Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak in the tenth grade. It's a story about an American girl who gets raped at an end-of-summer party before her freshman year of high school. Melinda's sarcasm and candour create a poignant narrative which ... did very little to keep the 15-year-old boys' attention. 

Monica and I figured this might draw them back in:

The ten minute opening of Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet worked magic, real magic, on these boys. The image of their faces during the viewing should go in the dictionary next to the word "rapt". 

Lest they think they're in for another quarter of discussing feelings, (widespread misconception: "R&J is purely a love story") Monica thought to start with a shoot-out at a gas station where the frame showing a close-up of Tybalt's face as he says "Peace? ...Peace?", as if trying to remember when and where the concept was ever relevant, fairly wraps a hand around the back of the viewer's head and jerks it toward the screen. 

They loved it. 

Thank goodness again for Monica, because I have never read Romeo and Juliet. (I hope the students don't know just how sincere I am when I tell them: "You don't have to understand every word in Shakespeare - just appreciate the beauty of the language!!") The play is required reading for all ninth grade Britons, so Monica has taught it dozens of times. 

Once again, I am thrilled, thrilled to be a teacher in this day and age, when I can buy this film on Amazon Instant for $9, and use it next period from my computer, and take screen shots of key moments (the images above) and print them for the students to analyse during group work. 

I simply can't imagine how teacher taught this text for the past 400 years....

January blooms

6:30 - Leave the house and walk through the sun bathed garden with Monica.

6:45 - Ask for a lid for my coffee at a sidewalk vendor in the town center. Denied.

7:00 - Pile into a shared taxi with 7 Palestinian women, all dressed in hiking gear, some with full makeup and glamorous jewellery. 

7:15 - Bounce along, using my elbow as suspension for my coffee cup, bathing in the unbelievably animated Arabic dialogue going on around me. I heard a lot of "very! very! very! yes very!"

7:30 - arrive where the morning's hike began.

9:30 - stop for a break.

11:00 - stop for picnic brunch and tea boiled over a fire in a kettle I love.

12:00 - arrive home in time to observe some of the Palestinian Model United Nations sessions going on at the Boys' School. Proud of my students in full dignitary mode!

3:00 - Nap.

Eat in public, make friends

The faculty community at FBS is friendly. It is not unusual, however, for me to enter the staff room, make a cup of tea, and leave without exchanging more than minimal Mar7aba's (hello's) with my colleagues. They are often engaged in Arabic conversation, and even if they're not, we have little to discuss and are generally not well acquainted.

Today I warmed soup for lunch and sat down by myself in the part of the staff room which is a thoroughfare. It was break time, and people walked through frequently. Not one person, from the stoic guard to the shy history teacher to the tech support person with whom I have never exchanged words, passed me without making warm eye contact and wishing me a hearty "Sa7tain!" I've never had so much pleasant attention in my life! (except when I was in the hospital for my 16th birthday, perhaps). I wonder if my students would be so attentive if I just carried a box of food around with me all class?

Other reasons today has been splendid:

1. Round table discussions are hard. Since Christmas I've been shunning the typical rows in our classrooms and arranging my 15 student literature classes (three) in circles. Knowing when and what to write on the board, when to go to the text, when to respond to one comment in more depth, when to refer back to another student's point, when to get as many ideas on the table as possible versus when to stick with a good idea for a while...

the responsibility of making these spontaneous decisions has made me nervous about each class. Sometimes the questions I ask fall flat. Sometimes people don't share with their partners. Sometimes their factual recall is just wrong. Sometimes I get the feeling they know the book much better than I do.... in which case I'm always grateful that I can still play teacher while saying "Who thinks they know the answer?" or "Do we get any clues from the text?"

Today's class went really well. Everyone spoke. They did partner work. We talked about the plot of the book, got their opinion on characters, talked about omniscience vs. lack of self knowledge, talked about allegories for revolution, and began to develop an idea of what absurdity looks like in literature. It was very exciting, and they seemed truly engaged. It was thrilling.

2. We're going to have an art and lit magazine at FBS! Aware that tenth graders often suffer the Sophomore Slump having outgrown the novelty of the freshman year, not yet bearing the glamorous cross of the junior year workload, not the prestige of seniorhood, I thought that creating an editorial board completely from tenth graders for the school's new lit and art magazine would grant them something of their own.

At today's interest meeting about serving on the editorial board, email addresses spilled onto the back of the sign-up sheet. And I had feared a tepid response. I can't wait to get down to reading submissions. The voice these students have is remarkable.

Interested in helping finance the printing of our final product? Let me know!
mmarstaller@rfs.edu.ps

Be the teacher you want to be

Monica is a volunteer who has returned this semester to the FBS campus to intervene in the English classes.

Within the first few minutes of our acquaintance, she asked which classes I teach and how they're going. I explained my enthusiasm for the 11th grade, and my touch-and-go relationship with the tenth grade. Before three minutes were up we had established that she would volunteer in my tenth grade classroom this semester.

I have a daily devotional reader that I keep in my desk drawer at school, and on Tuesday the message read:

"Today I speak less and notice more. The Divine is continually seeking to communicate through us and as us."

My Friends, the Divine is communicating with me through and as Monica. I have never had such a clear instance of God walking into my life (classroom). And as Quakers believe that our understanding of God is based on our lived experience, my experiences in the classroom with Monica will play a large role in my understanding of God's will for me.

Perhaps God is nudging me towards teaching. If this were a random job from which he wanted me to bounce to something completely different, why would he have placed a  woman with 30+ years of teaching in Central London public schools at my side? For free?

Three days with Monica have been revolutionary. Monica offers parables and maxims about teaching with the clarity of another great teacher who walked this land bringing Good News...

This week during one of our talks I was fretting about how to mete out discipline. In her response Monica said, "Be the teacher you want to be."

Today the teacher I want to be is one who

-returns reading quizzes within one or two days
-sends people out in the hall for five minutes, and when they come back, treats them like everyone else
-laughs along with students when something funny happens in the classroom
-avoids using the overhead projector for notes whenever possible, and lets the content come from the book and the students.

Tomorrow, as I start The Unbearable Lightness of Being with the 11th grade, I want to "speak less and notice more." Monica shows me how to boldly solicit the students' raw reactions. Blow-the-barn-doors-open questions like "What do you think?" have seemed a Pandora's box to me, but in the past three days more students have responded to that question than to whole series of detail-oriented reading questions.

It seems fitting that a Quaker teacher let God communicate "through and as" the students. After all, we are all ministers.

"What canst thou say?"

Power Hungry

This morning, each additional hour of power is a gift! Ramallah is engulfed in a storm which alternates rain, sleet, hail, downy snow, and a fog so dense and luminous it gives the impression we have already died and ascended to the pearly gates.

I feel rather desperate about the likely loss of power. All my electronics are plugged in, and I am prepared to turn screen brightness down to the minimum setting to conserve battery power once the fateful hour arrives. 

Storefronts downtown are shuttered. The air is, for the first time since my arrival in August, completely clear of the sounds of traffic. A candle wavers on the coffee table. 

I’m amazed by my own fear of the loss of power. It will be cold. I won’t have internet. I won’t be able to keep my Skype date with my sister. The refrigerator will die. Water will run weak and cold. How will I survive? 

Last night I visited my neighbour Elizabeth, Friend in Residence at RFS. We discussed the storm and the psychological state it has thrown us into. She pointed out that the refugee families down at Kalandia, and the Bedouin families in neighbouring villages, woke up without any hope of power or internet today. Can I adopt their attitude? Can I muster some perspective, and recognise that I will be ok through this storm? 

School starts on Monday, and part of my mind is preparing for the unpredictable storms this quarter will surely bring. I might have blustery classes, blustery interactions with students or parents, stormy results on a quiz I thought the class was prepared for… I will be ok. 

Storms in our faith journeys (and teaching is my faith journey right now) are like storms in nature in that they are beautiful in their destructive energy. Sometimes there is the clatter of lightning in the classroom, but I see with better clarity when the clouds clear. Even when I feel shipwrecked by the storms, God washes me up on a new shore and I realise I do have the tools I need to be ok. 

Each hour is a gift, even if we do lose power. Each hour is a gift because it’s a reminder that we have what we need, and that no matter what storms rage, we’ll be ok. 

IOChristmas

Yesterday I finished my exams with my eleventh graders. This was their first official assessment for the International Baccalaureate Diploma which they will get at the end of next year. Here's how it works:

They come into the room, and are given a poem or an extract from a piece of literature that we have read this semester. For us, that meant either a Langston Hughes poem or an extract from Shakespeare's Macbeth. They have 20 minutes to annotate the piece and decide what the most important elements of language and style are, and what message the author/poet conveys with those elements.

Then they give an 8-minute oral commentary, which is followed by a two-minute discussion of the piece (I ask them questions).

They all arrived on time, they all had prepared, they all made it through the commentary without breaking down. No small feat considering that English is their second language! I'm very proud.

So my head is full of literary elements. For example, Kelly Clarkson uses anaphora in the song drifting through my headphones right now. (Repetition of a word at the beginning of consecutive lines)

The Cafe where I'm sitting now.

This Christmas I'm gonna risk it all
This Christmas I'm not afraid to fall

There is also situational irony in Ramallah: A 96% Muslim city has a massive green and red Christmas tree downtown. I offered to take a picture of a Muslim family in front of it the other day.

I also can't read anything without annotating it. Even the menu on a restaurant, I want to mark up with notes on imagery, effective descriptive language and hyperbole (exaggeration).

Friend in Residence Elizabeth Dodd gave me some straw ornaments to decorate our advent wreath with. This afternoon will be a Christmas Cookie making festival at the Swift House! Good thing I can get Philadelphia cream cheese here, for the tender dough of my favourite cookie.

Season's joys to you!

God speaks through podcasts

Twice now I've received divine counselling through podcasts of This American Life.

1. Two weeks ago I had a disastrous class with the tenth grade section I teach. There was singing. There were airplanes. There was no learning happening (actually that's false. I learned quite a bit). By the end of the class I was desperate for the students to leave so I could deflate and collapse into a chair. Having expected to have such classes, such experiences as a rookie teacher, doesn't make them much easier to digest.

That afternoon, a beautiful Ramallah autumn afternoon, I went for a walk around the track at the Boys School, one of the most beautiful sports facilities in the city. As I started out I wheeled through the TAL episodes loaded onto my iPod, looking for something that would distract me from my thoughts of the rough day.

There was an episode called "Fiasco!" complete with exclamation mark. Perfect, I thought. And so it was.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/61/fiasco

This alternately uproariously funny and thought-provoking episode chronicles situations that, like my class, disintegrate into fiascos. The episode explores what exactly constitutes a fiasco, and as I walked around listening to Ira and friends identify "a breakdown of social conventions" I nodded vigorously, imagining my class which didn't resemble a class by the time the bell rang. And indeed, a fiasco is achieved when the production underway no longer follows its own conventions-- when it is unrecognisable as what it ought to be. Since that day, I have set the bar low: "Was today's class a fiasco?" If I can answer no, it was a good day. So far I have been able to answer "no" everyday.

This week, despite the lack of full blown fiascos, discipline has continued to be a challenge in this class. It's exhausting to police these students as closely as I have to at this point. Yesterday I went to the gym looking, again, for some distraction from discipline worries and curriculum planning doldrums, and the podcast that came on was called "Is this working?"

http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/special/538_bleeped.mp3

It turned out to be about discipline procedures in different kinds of schools in the United States, and featured other teachers talking about extreme discipline circumstances, and how much they learned from them, once they picked themselves up from being blindsided at first. I know I'm dealing with what first-time teachers everywhere deal with, but by golly it was good to hear it from the horse's mouth.

Speaking of horses I galloped on a horse today on the streets of Ramallah! I have never before galloped. Here is how my galloping lesson unfolded: "Hold the reins in one hand."

That was it, then we were off to the races. It's remarkable how much the horses head goes down and out in front of you when he is galloping.