“So. You asked that we cover a current event each time we
meet. You guys will pick them from now on, but for today I chose one right near
us that is critical and I think one of the most important things in the world right now. Here are pictures of Kos, Greece, where 140,000
Syrian refugees have arrived since the start of the Syrian conflict.” I showed
the class a picture of people waiting to be processed, of a young girl smushed
in a crowd, of a circle of men protecting a young woman with a baby from the
crowd.
“What is the international responsibility
for refugees?”
As students answered, they for some reason automatically
identified their home country. In a conversation about borders, even the most
sympathetic automatically became nationalists.
“As a German, I think we are inexcusably racist. Imagine it was your family…”
“In my country, where I am a Polish, I think they’re
suffering in the refugee camps and shouldn’t come to countries where there
aren’t enough resources for the citizens. They just want free money…”
“I’m Dutch, and I visited the refugees in my village, and
believe me, if they wanted free money, they wouldn’t do it this way…”
“I’m Palestinian, and I think the world is pretty much based
on capitalism, and the market won’t accept refugees, there’s no financial
benefit, so people don’t care like they should…”
“I’m from Moldova, and people in countries where refugees
are coming are suffering, like Turkey, the Turkish are suffering from the
refugee problem…”
“I’m Turkish, and I’m not suffering. I’m proud of my
country. I’m proud that we’re helping…”
“I’m Israeli, and Student X and I” (gestures across the room
at a Palestinian student) “went to south Tel Aviv at the beginning of this week
and helped with the refugees from the Sudan and Eritrea that are there, and we
saw how hard it is for them but also people who live there are not happy to
have them…”
It was difficult not to identify their opinions with their
nationalities. I closed out the discussion with the questions from Hillel: If I
am not for myself, who is for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? What are
we as people if we see suffering and don’t reach out to help?
Next week, the Polish student will lead a discussion on body
image and models. I am looking forward.
So, my school is a small model UN. The largest contingents
are of course Israeli and Palestinian, since the mission of the school is peace
here, but students come from Albania, China, Brazil, the Sudan, Yemen, Vietnam,
Morocco, Austria, Afghanistan, etc, and there’s even a Ghanaian student from
Denmark who got incredibly excited when I spoke to her in Norwegian.
The one American approached me today for a heart-to-heart
conversation about retaining her values in the midst of so much cultural chaos,
and in the comfort of our conversation I was reminded of how much ease cultural
knowledge provides. My sister gave me an example from a Palestinian writer who
moved to America and said that when he enters a restaurant there, he feels
blind—in Israel he would immediately understand all of the subtext of the
workers and words. Living internationally I feel muffled at times, as though
I’ve lost one of my senses—all of the intuitive culture knowledge I have in
America is suddenly gone. But that’s the point, and slowly but surely I’m
becoming culturally literate here.
I’m the personal mentor for about twenty second-year
students. Their issues are both your typical teenage issues, and also unique.
There’s the student who thinks he’s too cool and so has nobody he can confide in, the student
who hasn’t seen his home or family in a year because flights cost too much, the
student who came to Israel from Palestine thinking he was going to get the
education Israel owed him and now says his views of Israelis are complicated
and softened, the other kid whose family can’t tell the secret of where he is
since if it was known he was in Israel, they’d be in danger, the kid who speaks
every language and quietly straddles peer groups, the kid who spoke for a solid
half hour about school stress, and the kid who wanted to know whether he could
eat the food in the teacher’s lounge.
The staff here are a delightful motley. Our principal has
masses of positive energy—today she left the staffroom and then returned a
second later to wish me a good weekend with more force—she felt she hadn’t said
it with enough heartfelt strength the first time. I’ve buddied up with the
British biology teacher my age who made aliyah at the same time I did and whose
dry British common sense is like an oasis in the midst of Middle Eastern
emoting. I eat lunch every day with the Palestinian economics teacher whose son
is in my English class and who has a rare soul of genuinely kind humor. We’re
planning the Christmas pageant together; who better than a Jew and a Muslim to
organize it? There’s also the conservative American expat, the blended Israeli+insert
nationality teachers, the wise IB grandma, and the bubbly Israeli natives. It’s
odd to work in such a functional environment.
My classes: I’m teaching a second-year English Language
& Literature course in which the students are beginning to subside from
panic to appreciative trust. Today they started to review their course texts
through the lenses of historical methods of literary criticism. They are very,
very intelligent and driven, and while I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the
poor suckers who picked post-structuralism, they didn’t go into it blind, and
listening to one explain it to the other in a pedantic Israeli accent gave me
mad kicks.
 |
| Our campus |
I administered a diagnostic to my higher-level class. Around
30 kids crammed into a room that used to be an office, and scratched out essays
on an excerpt for an hour. In my standard level, students jumped up to figure
out who had the other half of their quote, and I was delighted to watch them
milling and meeting and trying to guess. As they went around the room
introducing themselves and explaining their quote, I was also able to do some
basic gauging of their English verbal and reading skills: highly varied. We had
a good talk about what respect looks like and what they’re going to do with
their one wild and precious life (Mary Oliver as first writing assignment for
the win). At the end of the class, we were all energized. Man, but I’ve missed
teaching.
I still really miss my students in my old school. I miss the
strength of their personalities which shine forth on the first day, and the
battle of classroom management, and the sense of every single second mattering.
Here, it’s a different sort of challenge. I’ve been given the gift of the most intelligent,
highly motivated students ever—my shot to see how far they can go. But I miss
the urgency.
Excitingly, my school is sending me to an IB extended essay
workshop in Warsaw this October! The other option was Dubai, but unfortunately
it was in April, and thus too late. I’ve already been to Warsaw. Still, travel
is travel, and I’m grateful both for the chance to figure out this EE thing
from the experts before I attempt to coordinate it for my entire school, and
the chance to pop over to Europe on a funded trip.
It’s going to be a good year.
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