I have spoken many times about some of the benefits and
drawbacks of working in an international school community and living abroad.
There are a lot of things that I miss about the good ole US of A but there are
some truly great career opportunities that I would have never been afforded the
opportunity to have if I had stayed in the states.
One such opportunity took place last week. Early in the
year, I was approached by my principal and he asked me if I would like to go to
a conference on the school’s dime. He said it would be a great chance to
network, see another school, and learn about some of the new and innovating
things that were being done around the world with regards to educational
technology and innovating teaching practices. He had me at “on the school’s
dime.” I had been to conferences before as both an attendee and a presenter and
I have enjoyed most of them quite a bit. When I found out that they were going
to send me to Brazil for this conference, I had to bite my lip from screaming
with excitement like a Hunger Games fan girl at the sight of Jennifer Lawrence.
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| Hello Cotopaxi, my old friend |
When the time to leave, we got picked up from the school and
taken to the airport. The ride there was relatively uneventful with the
exception of seeing my good friend Cotopaxi (Neck of the Moon) Volcano out of
the plane window. I was about eye level with its snowcapped peak so that was
pretty sweet.
When we got there we were immediately whisked away in a van
to our hotel. The next day we took a shuttle to the school hosting the
conference and boy was the campus fantastic. If that school in Sao Paolo ever
wants two great educators, we are there. It was flushed with green space (a
rare commodity in Quito), fantastic passionate teachers and beautiful
buildings.
Now rather than go into this post in a chronological way, I’ll
go about it in a thematic way. I want to discuss the city briefly before my
rant which you’ll see in a minute.
Sao Paolo is one of the most beautiful big city I’ve
ever seen. There are huge parks, great restaurants, friendly people, and
fantastic food. The city has its share of logistical problems, but what city of
20+ million doesn’t?
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| Not a bad campus |
Our first full day was chock full of sessions and a lot of
learning. We networked with teachers and
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| Brazilian BBQ, in Brazil |
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| Some learning took place too |
We ended up at a hole in the wall bar/club that was
absolutely packed but a ton of fun. After about an hour there, MTV (is that
still a thing?) camera crews came in to do a special on nightlife and bars in
Sao Paolo so that was cool. It’s truly a unique and fun experience that
galvanizes a group when you look around you and realize that even if you tried,
not one person in the whole city could possibly communicate with you. It
creates a very US vs. THEM team building thing and was a great experience.
The next night after conferences, we all went to a great
restaurant that had Brazilian Hibachi, for a lack of a better term. They brought
out plates of thinly sliced beef and a large hotplate and you cooked your own
meat on a scalding slab of iron. After yet another example of Brazilian meat
which nearly brought me to tears of joy, we sauntered back to our hotel and got
some rest.
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| Great music |
The last full night we were there, our whole crew went out to
a Brazilian Jazz club. This was one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever
had. I’ve been to jazz clubs in New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and Miami
but never before have I seen a scene like this. The music itself was what made
it unique. Brazilian Jazz (or at least this band) is unlike anything else I’ve
ever heard. It’s hard to describe and when I do I won’t do it justice, but it
was like a combination of jazz, rock, blues, Turkish music, and maybe a little
blue grass. On our way out of the club I bought a CD of the band for 30 reales
(about $3) and went on my way.
On our way to the cab we were all (including our bosses)
accosted by some “Lady-Boy” prostitutes as our cab driver Jackson described
them. They were…very different. That’s all I’ll say about that.
On our last afternoon we were in Brazil, before we left for the
airport, a few of us took a cab to the bohemian part of town to look at some of
the famous street art. Apparently it’s a big deal in Sao Paolo, which I hadn’t
heard before. As we were walking we came across some truly amazing work that you
couldn’t help but be in awe of. The detail and creativity that went into pieces
as small as a sheet of paper or as large as a 7 story building was
awe-inspiring.
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| Brazilian street art was something else... |
All in all, the food, music, night life, layout of the city,
and art made the city truly remarkable.
As far as the conference went, that was tremendous as well. The
presentations were well organized and thoroughly researched and the school fed
us very well. They even brought in a local street artist to do graffiti with us
and an instrument-less band to do a demonstration. Yes I said instrument-less
band. I guess I can’t really describe it well but the gist is lots of varied
clapping, whooping, and stomping. It was pretty cool.
Anyway, we went session by session and heard all about some
of the technology focused on education as well as new ways people were approaching
the concept of education. As I write this I reflect back on the first posts we
made about why we wanted to pursue international education. Both Shannon and I
felt that the constant testing and boxing in of teachers by micro-managing bureaucrats
was getting to a point where it was going to break the education system. I
truly believe education will improve worldwide and also in the public sector of
the United States. However, I also believe it’s going to get worse before it
gets better. It was a stifling and uncreative environment and she and I had
about enough of it. The environment for teachers to be learners and to be
innovative and try new things was not there. I don’t mean that as a slight to
my administration because I loved both principals I worked for in the states.
(Shout out to DS and DJ) Rather, my frustrations came from passionate and
visionary administrators who could see the education system broken, being
simultaneously hamstrung by requirements and enforcement of the WRONG
practices. Nothing teachers or administrators or even school boards do with
regards to education is meant to damage students. I truly believe that all recent
education change comes from a place of good intentions but at the same time the
things that are being done are the wrong things.
Throughout the year so far, I have gone out of my way to avoid
doing a compare and contrast post about teaching and schools in private
international schools and US public schools. They aren’t the same thing at all
and to compare them would be to do a disservice to the people I work with now,
the people I have worked with in the past, and my own personal struggles,
ideas, and time spent on improving my practice. They are not the same thing. That
doesn’t make one better or worse than the other; they are just different.
The reason I am saying this is to briefly touch on the point
that while I came to international teaching as a method to escape some of the struggles
I listed above. I ran into my own struggles at my new school and they left me a
bit frustrated as well. I suppose it was foolish to attempt to escape one
problem and expect to not find different ones.
Again, I am rambling but there is a point. While I was at
this conference, I found myself and my enthusiasm for the institution of
education renewed. The mere fact that I was surrounded by teachers and school
administrators who were trying to make meaningful change filled me with hope.
Schools around the world are not only researching and pushing for new theories
and educational practices, they are implementing them. Funding, school board,
lobbyist initiative, textbook/testing money be damned!
I heard from teachers and schools who were not bound by the
same broken restrictions that frustrated me to no end in the US and forced me
to seek professional asylum on a new continent. I heard from teachers and
administrators who effectively said “Screw it, if literally tearing down all of
our walls and rebuilding them in the name of concept with some potential MIGHT make a difference in student
learning, we’re going to do it!” I heard from teachers and administrators who
had the bravery and creative minds to toy with the idea of saying “F----- you
college administrators and your expected standardized test requirements, we
have intelligent students and we’re going to challenge them in the way we want
to challenge them because it is the best thing for the student and the person.
You’re going to take them anyway.” And they did.
I am usually not one for hyperbole and I try to focus on the
pragmatic and logical approach to everything I do, but being at that conference
felt like being at the forefront of a revolution. I felt like hope was not lost
in the name of restrictions or funding. People were are making changes. They
may work, they may not, but they are trying. They are experimenting. They are
empowered to do that by other supportive and innovative educators. I want to be
a part of that and while my current school and international teaching in
general harbors some unique difficulties and problems, this is where the battle
is being waged. The battle for education reform began in the US in small
pockets of independently funded charter and private schools and is now taking
place in international schools that have the bravery to shun conventional wisdom
and the flexibility to pursue the OTHER
for better or worse. I want to be a part of it. We aren’t there yet but we’re
going to get there.
Rant over...
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