Year 3 in Review (Shannon)

Well it’s that time of year again where we take a moment to reflect on our school year - the successes, the challenges, the new learnings, the ups and downs. Having completed our third year here in Saudi and my 13th year teaching, I can say that I have settled into a secure feeling of pride and confidence with my craft. I’m feeling myself to be in a professional stride right now and have enjoyed the experience of teaching 9th and 12th graders simultaneously because I can see the beginning and ending stages of the high school life cycle. What I love about teaching 9th grade is the freedom and flexibility of topics to teach, more opportunities for creative writing and watching students develop some skills for the first time. What I love about teaching seniors is the intellectual engagement and the opportunity to watch students on the cusp of adulthood coming into their own. After three years in Saudi I can say that I am comfortably settled in, if not a little bored most of the time.

As of this moment we’ve decided to stay put for the foreseeable future and not make our usual summer journey home to the States - at least not right now. There are so many complicated factors that factored into that decision, but it’s still very difficult to accept. When I think of not getting to go home and spend the summer with my friends and family, I’m overwhelmed with sadness, so mainly I’ve been trying to not think about it too much and just tell myself it’s “not yet.”

When looking to the silver linings of the quarantine situation, I can say I’ve been getting to read more
often; I will get to put some extra time and care into curriculum planning for next year, many organization and beautification projects around our house; and of course a great amount of extra family time. And this has been the best part, obviously. We both get to spend the whole day with H, we are watching him learn new skills and new words every day; and we are just really enjoying our extra time together as a family. When I see and read about what’s happening to other families in other parts of the world, I realize what a blessing this time is and so I’m make a conscious effort to enjoy every moment because eventually there will be a day when we must go to work all day and then we will look back to this time in our lives with nostalgia.

I think our school did an excellent job of rolling out our distance learning plan and maintaining academic continuity for our students - at least for those students that tried to stay engaged. And I can say I’ve learned a few new skills in terms of recording lessons and holding virtual meetings. But virtual teaching is not fun and I don’t like it. I miss the students and their energy, and the dynamic of a classroom that just cannot be replicated online. I miss popping my head into my colleague’s classroom to ask a quick question or tell her a funny story. I miss my beautiful classroom that I spent so much time designing and decorating and making it just right for students to feel happy and comfortable and open to learning. And I just miss “going” to work every day. I do hope that when the next school year begins we can go back to campus and start off on the right foot. I can’t imagine doing the first day of school routine online. But I guess if this experience has taught us anything it's that we need to be prepared for anything and be able to think and adapt on our feet.

Of all the trips we went on this year - Ireland, Florence, Turkey and Greece - I would rank Ireland as being the most beautiful, Florence as having the best food, Turkey as having the coolest vibe and energy, and Greece as being wonderful simply for the fact that my family was there.

And since we will have to keep ourselves occupied for a while, I have some new baking frontiers attempt including: tiramisu, strawberry shortcake, eclairs and continuing to experiment with bagels. We’ve also been on a roll with our family fitness routine of running two to three 5Ks each week, so we’ll need to keep up with this as well, especially if I”m going to be doing a lot of extra baking!
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All in all, I’m feeling good about the end of this year. And while I wish we could have had a proper ending to the year, and be on a plane home to the US for the summer, I’m just feeling so thankful that I and my family are healthy and safe and comfortable and I know that we will get to be together again soon.

Year 3 in Review (Justin)

What a year huh? Every year since we've began our journey living and teaching overseas has ended with a year in review post where we take a moment to reflect on the events, people, and adventures that have mattered most to us. I have come to think of it as my most favorite post every year because it allows me to/forces me to reconcile with the positives and negatives and really take a break from the day to day task managing that life often becomes and forces me to paint in a broad brush that provides great perspective. It has been an exercise in reflection and the journey that has brought us here. Each school year serves as a natural breaking point, a measurable chapter in our story to reflect upon. So that brings me to this year's reflection; what a doozy.

So when we came back from last summer, we were in great spirits. We had just spent some time in the UK and Ireland and with family. We did the beach house thing, spent some time in Florida and got to introduce H to so many of his family members and friends.

When we got home, we returned to a home that was set up. We had our furniture, we knew our compound facilities well, we knew the local area and had our favorite spots to shop, eat, and hang out. We had friends here and for the most part, we were teaching the same courses, and many of the same students as the year before. In fact, for me I had the opportunity to teach a cohort of students for the third straight year, which was new for me and something I really relished. I had grown quite close to the senior class and was ready for a great year. Yet, not everything was stagnant. Shannon and I each had some slightly modified roles at work with regards to differentiation and leadership opportunities. It was just enough "new" to keep it interesting and enough or returning normalcy to make it a smooth transition. The mere notion of revisiting this idea of stability is laughable to me right now.

But alas the year went on. We had H's first birthday and celebrated with tons of cake and friends and

had a great time. Then we had his first Halloween. Then he learned to walk! All was normal in our little bubble of child rearing suburban bliss. Then our first suggestion of a weird year kicked up and we had a trip planned to Beirut cancelled due to political unrest and country wide protests. We quickly rebounded and set up a lovely trip to Italy where we had a great time, amid some stress and difficulties. Still, we had some great food, got to see some sights, and explore more of Italy that we hadn't seen in the past.

The following months brought us to Turkey where we got to explore Istanbul with H and see some truly amazing things. We were floored by the food and how friendly the people were. After we left Turkey we were able to meet up with family in Greece and see even more stuff. Spending Christmas with family was an absolute highlight for me. Little did we know that would be our last trip for a while.

During January and February we watched the COVID crisis from afar, as a news headline like any other. Then we kept watching as it morphed into something that could potentially impact us on the periphery by canceling trips to East Asia then more and more as it turned into something that was present in Saudi and then we were on 24 hour lockdown. In retrospect, it was like watching a storm from far away, imagining what it would be like to be under its cloud until the moment where the first rain drop hit and even though we were watching the whole time, the rain surprised us.

The months that followed were a little hectic. Our jobs changed. We went from teachers in a classroom feeding off of the energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity of our students to something else. Our school handled this challenge as well as any school I've heard about to their credit. The plan was laid out before school stopped for us, and we never had to revisit it and start over from scratch. It is to admin's credit that our school handled it so well. Still it was hard for us. It was hard to be sapped of that energy of being in a room with curious students. I miss the ancillary stuff. I miss talking to a kid about their performance in a sporting event, concert, play, or even just what they liked on Netflix. The casual, relationship building stuff fell by the wayside in favor of module writing and written feedback. It turned the teacher-student relationship into exclusively an academic transaction based relationship. That sucks. I look forward to that going away.

But we adjusted. We adjusted as our roles and positions in school changed and the challenges of going to a distance learning plan. We adjusted in going from full time teachers with daycare help to full time teachers without daycare help.  We made schedules, we adjusted as our access to parks, gyms, playgrounds, restaurants,  weekly pickup games, and running clubs went away. And a weird thing happened. We had this resurgence in resolve and closeness with the family. Maybe that's not the best way to put it because we never really lost that or had it wane. But maybe an amplification of those things is a better way to phrase it. Every day is exhausting but rewarding. We lost the freedom to go where we want when we want and to be close to people but now we have the unique opportunity to spend time with family in such pivotal years. We won't look back one day and say "Should I have taken more time off when H was 1?"

We've taken our resolve as a chance to focus on helping each other get through these weird times. We've taken it as a chance to upgrade our living space, while finding fun ways to bridge the gaps lost to quarantine. We still have weekly movie nights with friends. But now instead of watching together and laughing, we deliver dinner to each other and watch at the same time and text our way through the movie making jokes and sharing in the experience and absurdity of it all.

As the weeks of the school year wound down, we struggled a lot with the decision whether or not we
wanted to go on one of the many repatriation flights back to the US for the summer. There were a ton of things to consider like cost, quarantine measures, the health of family members we wanted to visit, additional quarantine, socially distanced visits, day to day outlooks, the consideration of what a quarantine in a hotel room would look like for 2 weeks with a 1 year old, and the outlook of the healthcare system in the US and COVID19. It is super tough and we went back and forth on the decision. For now we are planning on seeing how things plan out. The idea of not seeing our families and friends breaks our hearts. The idea that they will go another year potentially without seeing H is even worse. But given the circumstances, we decided that it's best to wait and see how this all plays out, and to take solace in the recently discovered resolve and appreciation for the things that are going well.

In final thoughts, we have been somehow simultaneously thriving and struggling. We miss our families and friends in the states. We are going to miss out on farewells with friends we've made who are departing for other schools and other countries. We feel a significant sense of loss for the unceremonious departures of students, teachers, community members who deserve to be celebrated. With that perspective, our challenges are not as bad.

For now, we look forward to continuing to build on the progress we've made and in the challenge of continuing to navigate this global pandemic together. We count the blessings we have of a home, our health, and the happiness of our little family. We're thankful for the adventures that we had this year, and here's hoping for a fun summer and a better year next year.