The last bag of pita

Last night when I left the house to go to Laura and Adam's house for dinner a warm and thrilling wind was agitating trees and trash. I fairly bounced along, peering down side streets at bakeries where, during the week, pitas tumble down steep conveyor belts and are stuffed, still hot, into bags. (The other day one overeager pita overshot the landing bay and leapt to the ground. It was swept up and immediately eaten by the pita-packer.)

It was Friday, and the usually-lively bakeries were silent and shuttered. I was almost through town when I passed a tiny grocery store that often has a wooden box outside it with bags of pita. Lo and behold, there was one bag left. I bought it for three shekels and continued my jaunt to Laura and Adam's house.

I was so charmed by this quest, by the fact that it was warm and windy, by the fact that there was only one bag left, by the fact that I could buy the pitas in Arabic, and, (this accounts for the bounce in my step) the fact that I didn't have school the next day. This moment made me feel satisfyingly settled.

The big event of the day was going to Bethlehem to watch Sam and Olivia run in the Right to Movement 10k race. Here they are in front of the separation wall.

Pathway

Last week the Ministry of Education closed schools on Thursday because of inclement weather in the forecast. Thursday was beautiful. I felt that in that moment I learned something essential about the way weather threats are regarded in by officials. 

So this week, when people warned about thigh-height snow, I raised an internal eyebrow. 

Friday morning looked like this:

Elizabeth called me and asked if I wanted to take a traipse through the town to Jean's house. Yes, I did. So on went the plastic bags inside my polyester black boots which water soaks but doesn't ruin, and went out to the street to meet her. 

Huge tractors were driving past, manned by exceedingly pleased-looking Palestinians, who were shoving snow around in no particular pattern. (On the way back from Jean’s we saw that someone had been doing donuts in the parking lot which is usually crammed with buses going to Jerusalem and the villages.)

We ploughed our own path, leaving some of the first footprints in central Ramallah where the only establishment open was a coffee cart, whose operator emphatically and with much gesticulation entreated us to “go slowly, slowly”. 

I feel as though I need to take that advice to heart in my mental and spiritual life as well. It shocks me how easy it is to run ahead of the present day, seeking answers about what will happen long from now - what subjects will I be teaching? What will I do this summer? What will be the next thing after Ramallah? Will I be a teacher all my life? Will I live abroad for longer, or return to the U.S.? 

Slowly, slowly.

Yesterday the morning Daily Word reading spoke to my condition. 

“Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” - Proverbs 3:17

I know I’m taking this verse wildly out of context, but the feminine pronouns seemed to refer right to me, reminding me that God will lead me on ways of pleasantness, and that every pathway open to me is a path of peace. I cannot make wrong decisions when I’m paying attention to where I can be of the best service today. 

Elizabeth has proper boots and hat.

I have to say, I love that being of service today involves reading up on Albert Camus’s relationship with Algeria, in preparation for class discussions of The Stranger this week.

I’ll be treading more paths through snow today, trying to remember that I don’t need to see where my foot will fall meters or miles hence. 

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.