Israel? It shouldn't.

Sometimes, at lunch, I get tired of pretending to be a grown-up, and sit with my kids. They’re always having fascinating deep philosophical conversations about the nature of being, and I’m inevitably greeted with a few cries of “dank, Miss” when I plop down at the table. It also lets me see who’s not eating enough, who’s sitting alone, who’s unexpectedly got a whole posse of friends that aren’t in my classes with her, etc.

So a few days ago I sat in the middle of a fascinating conversation. The Culture Club is planning an evening of international culture, and was trying to sort out where the kid from Sri Lanka would go. Not with the Chinese, Cambodians, and Vietnamese, of course—everyone could agree that was weird. The Turkish kid interjected that his country was equally lost—Europe, or Asia? Both, the students decided. But where to put Sri Lanka? Maybe he could do a dance with the one Indian kid? Decidedly not, he responded in clipped British tones.

Then somebody mentioned Israel. It didn’t fit in the Arab bloc—where should we put it?

“We shouldn’t,” answered a student. She takes Arabic as her first language instead of English, so I don’t teach her. I peered around curiously at her, while the Turkish student frantically made cutting motions across his neck at her.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It shouldn’t exist at all. Do you know originally, it was supposed to be in Madagascar?”

“Uganda,” I answered feebly, and left to turn my tray in. I couldn't think of a single response-- all of my thoughts were running around the treadmill of "wow, there's an actual person who wishes I didn't exist and told me so to my face." I had so many other thoughts I couldn't sift them-- obviously, there are Israelis who don't want Palestine to exist, and does this girl's level of anger justify the way she just tried to erase my identity, and what would have existed in this area without Israel-- Syrian Civil War? ISIS? Who knows.

As the highest-level English teacher in a school where the only other native-level languages provided are Chinese and Arabic, I tend to miss these demographics in my classes. I don’t often get to hear what they think. In both of my English classes, in grades 11 and 12, I only have one Palestinian/Arab-Israeli student each, while several Israelis share their opinions regularly. When we inevitably come up against issues relating to the conflict, theirs is a lone voice, or sometimes, a silent one.

While reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings this week, we started to talk about racial profiling. None of the kids were American, and so inevitably, they began to talk about their experiences in Israel. The Italian kid has trouble in airport security because of his passport stamps, while the Swedish girls said the blond sails straight through, the brunette gets stopped.

“It’s not great to say, but we really need racial profiling, because—“ the Israeli kids trailed off uncomfortably, wondering if they sounded racist. I wanted them to finish the sentence, and asked, “does it work? Have terrorist attacks, suicide bombs, vehicular rammings, and stabbings, gone down since it’s been implemented?” There’s too much the Israelis never say in our hyper-liberal environment.

The internationals were torn. “It’s a bad thing. But sometimes, for security, you need it,” was what they generally responded with.

The Arab-Israeli spoke once, but emphatically, against it. Racial profiling was harmful and unjustified, and just as in the book we could see evidence of Maya's complicated racial identity, it had repercussions in real life.

We moved on to the question of whether people of color can be racist, and the kids got embroiled in an exploration of systemic vs. personal racism.

While the discussion was interesting and the students passionate, I kept thinking how safe it felt. At the start of reading the book I’d asked the students whether it would make a difference that there were no students of African descent in that particular classroom. While it’s full of students of various ethnicities and who would be identified as “of color” in the greater world, nobody relates to this book as Maya’s race. The kids thought it was both a good and a bad thing, and didn’t seem to mind my asking them to be conscious of it as we read in class.

But in a week, we will all go up to Jerusalem, for three days of exploring the local conflict, and while I’m curious about how it will go, I feel deep anxiety about my role as a mediator and mentor.

On the second day there, we’re to split into investigative groups and tour on our own, preparing a presentation for the school at the end. I’ve been assigned to the group exploring “The Civic Status of East Jerusalem.” Predictably, all but one Israeli student has switched out, while Palestinians and Israeli Arabs have joined in large numbers. In our planning meeting, the other teacher leading pointed out to me how those same students who spoke so eagerly about the deprivations in East Jerusalem completely shut down when a Vietnamese kid asked about bias in our visits.

I have a lot of concerns going in:

·      I don’t really know anything about what civic status means in any city.

·      The Arab kids will feel uncomfortable sharing their true thoughts with a Jewish-American and an Israeli teacher leading.

·      The Arab kids will share some of their hatred for Israel, and spread it among the international students.

·      The one Israeli kid will sit as silently as he did in our planning meeting, for the entire trip.

·      The international kids will see only East Jerusalem, and hear only from Palestinians or Arab-Israelis.

·      While I will learn a whole lot, rarely having been in East Jerusalem, the kids from East Jerusalem who are so excited to show us their city will see nothing new and nothing that challenges their viewpoint.

·      Will I be able to emotionally care for my students? I’m worried that since I myself am unsure what my beliefs are, I will be busy processing, rather than able to watch out for them. Open-mindedness on my part will call for a lot of intentional thinking, and I’m worried that my choices are between actually processing and thinking about what I’m learning, and being there for my students.

·      Safety. Is it better for us to all speak English and pretend we’re all internationals or Arab locals, or for us to get a proper security guard who walks around with us? The Israeli kid and the Israeli teacher are both very Sefardi in appearance, and my accent and dress makes me seem American—will we be safe?

·      And so unfair that in the other groups, who will probably split their time between the two Jerusalems, the Arab kids don’t have to worry about safety with the same intensity that Jewish Israelis venturing into East Jerusalem do. I keep thinking of the questions that I'll never be able to ask if I want to let the Arab kids feel like they can share in our discussion group, and of how I can't truly investigate the question of one country supporting people within it that don't want it to exist or actively want to cause harm to its population. That's certainly not something they'll bring up on their own, but if I ask about it, will they close off completely?

I rode home with the Hungarian Global Politics teacher, who told me that it’s only natural I feel anxious—now I’m about to see the flipside of Israel that I ignored when I made aliyah, and as a religious Jew, everyone is going to assume certain things about my viewpoint. But I shouldn’t feel too anxious—I did not come to oppress, and in fact, in teaching at our school, I’m helping.

I left the bus uncertain what to do with what he’d told me. He said it as though these were things I already know and agree with, but I think my wide-eyed pondering is a foretaste of what I can expect in our Jerusalem trip.

Chief Botherer

One of the mainstays of the American classroom is a bulletin board with “Classroom jobs” posted on it. Some sorry kids are assigned to clean the whiteboards; others to collect supplies at the end of the day. I even used to make them fill out applications. But lately, kids just hop to and help out regardless. So today was the first day in this school that I created a class job.

“Stop there,” I told the kid who’d been reading Caged Bird aloud, a child who draws a grin just by raising his hand, because you know whatever he says is going to be entertaining.

“You know the way I kept interrupting you, asking questions about the book?” He nodded.

“So, when you call on the next reader, you’re going to be the main person doing that to them, asking them questions, bothering them. You’re chief botherer,” I told him.

They passed the role around from one to the next, at one point seeking clarification: “Just because she’s the chief botherer, doesn’t mean we can’t also bother, right?”

I was scandalized. “Of course not! You are ALWAYS allowed to bother.”

I think my classroom is starting to more clearly reflect relevant 21^st century skills. While graduates may not have whiteboards in ten more years, they will certainly still have to know how to bother. And the Winnie-the-Pooh undertones make me happy, too. Oh, bother.

A student who loves math sent me this poem:

The Fibonacci sequence has always been my favorite math… thing…, ever since I did a report on it in high school (thank you to the wonderful math teacher who taught me that math class could involve reading! And writing!), and I was not less excited to discover it in poetry.

It will have to wait as a warm-up for my classes, however, as I think our next warm-up will be inspired by the way a mischievous kid started answering today’s question in somebody else’s notebook. I’m going to have them all switch notebooks and write as the person whose notebook they have. I’m still thinking about what the question should be. Maybe what that person thinks of them? Hmm.

I joined the art class for their trip to the Tel Aviv art museum yesterday. Predictably, we had a lot of discussions about what art is. The curator showed us an exceedingly banal exhibit of photographs of flowers on tables. They were each recreations of the flower arrangements from photos of famous treaties. While cool history, it didn’t seem to suffice as art. Most of my kids thought so, and I quoted Oscar Wilde a lot.

Next, we explored a photorealism exhibit in which the artist had hidden tiny Easter eggs in the midst of intricate pencil drawings of nature and the city. One was of a building I’d passed on my way to the museum, and in the reflection of the window we noticed monsters, tombstones, and funny faces. The kids had actually met the artist, so they were excited to drag me around and point out all the cool stuff he’d told them.

At the end of the tour, we went to an exhibit on African-Israeli art, reflecting the African diaspora in Tel Aviv. There was one very cool short film that we arrived at halfway. At the end, the kids turned to me and said they had no idea what it was about.

“It’s a post-apocalyptic world," I explained. "Humanity has set off nuclear bombs, because we elected Trump and he’s going to start WWIII, and the soil is filled with radioactivity, so people fled underground, and now the political authorities have a vested interest in keeping people there. That’s why she got dragged out of the room by guards when she found the soil in the jar was arable.”

“What? No, Ms., that can’t be right.” They looked confused. Just then, the movie started again. Text across the bottom read: “Earth: Thirty years after World War III.” The kids turned to me in disbelief. “How did you know?” One protested, “but the film was made before Trump!”

I managed to convince them that while context clues are important, and reading lots can make you smart, they shouldn’t believe everything I say about Trump.

A kid came back from vacation with the obligatory Christmas present teacher mug, and while I’ve received a lot of mugs over the course of my teaching tenure, I’ve never received one I like quite so much. Here’s to many hours of reading and tea, for all my fellow lit-lovers.

Why I Might Commit Murder in the Next Few Hours

My winter break has been an odyssey through the depths of the Misrad Hachinuch, or Ministry of Education (MoE), here in Israel.

First, I’ve been struggling with getting my degrees recognized. In Israel, they pay by degree, so not having yours recognized is a prime pain in the wallet that my school has graciously made up out of pocket. I first sent my degrees to the MoE in June of 2016. They were returned to me four times. Most recently, they asked me to send them notarized copies of my AP scores. When I spoke to my contact at the MoE, I told him I didn’t have them—they were from high school, forgossake. But they’re mentioned on my college transcript, so the MofE needs original documentation.

“I don’t have it,” I told him. “My undergraduate university recognized it, what are you worried about?”

“Well, we need the official score report,” he answered. “To see how you did.”

“It says how I did. The scores are right there on the transcript!”

“Hm, oh, I see. But all the scores are 5’s. That’s not very good,” he told me.  

“It’s out of 5!” I bit my lip to keep myself from screaming.

“Oh. Well, we’ll try sending them again.”

Lacking faith in his messenger capability, I took a bus up to the Jerusalem MoE for the day and then sat in line, waiting to give the sympathetic American olah sitting in a boring office my degrees in person. I unfurled my degrees one by one and we forced them into the photocopier. After a tortured half hour of copying, signing, and double-checking, I took the bus back to Tel Aviv. As I disembarked, I got a text from my sister.

“You got smth from the Misrad Hachinuch.”

Sure enough, three authorizations that recognized my three degrees had been folded and forced into my post box, despite the loud letters on the envelope saying that it should not be folded. I thought about contacting the MoE to tell them they didn’t have to look at the degrees I just dropped off, but then I remembered there’s actually no way to contact anything other than an options machine in Jerusalem. Oh well. Their problem.

Simultaneously, I received a text from my contact at the MoE saying I’d been exempted from the Hebrew course for my license. Super exciting, and it only took four months! He attached a blurry, out-of-focus document to the whatsapp. I’m hoping I get it in the mail soon—probably folded into the shape of a swan in my mailbox.

The next day, I went to my introductory day of MoE courses on how to teach English for the Israeli curriculum. Although I’m not teaching the Israeli curriculum, I need it for my license. So I hopped a bus to Levinsky College, armored against boredom with five papers to grade, a kippah to crochet, and a book to read.

It wasn’t enough. I sat through five hours in which people with increasingly pathetic command of the English language read and then reread the syllabi to us.

We are English teachers. Why do they feel the need to read things to us? Why are we not trusted to understand them on our own?

The woman who is going to teach our course on teaching American and English literature started off this way:

“We’re going to use a particular critical method to study American and English literature because that’s what the misrad hachinuch mandates. Does anybody know which method?”

I’m sitting here thinking about it, because this is actually an interesting question. One critical method, and only one method? What could Israel want? My gut says reader response theory because it's the best for high school, but maybe there's some kind of historicist Zionist agenda, or a postcolonialist reading against the British for making our lives miserable all those years?

“We use an important critical method in literature. It’s critical thinking.”

Dafuq?

“We use critical thinking in literature.”

Wait! When do they not use critical thinking? What is happening in the rest of the Israeli curriculum? Is rote learning ever an option? Jesus.  

I’m three hours in and I might just commit murder so that I get to go to jail, and relieve myself of the mind-blowing monotony of this course. 

I Am Listening

For every teacher who ever felt helpless, and every student who ever felt hopeless:

I’m listening.

Thank you for trusting me.

How do you feel, right now?

If you ever… would you tell me first? Promise?

Do you want tea? Cookies? A listening ear? A hug? A poem?

Do you want happiness?

Do you want silence?  

Do you want one ear cocked towards you but all eyes averted?

Do you want nothing more than an occasional nod?

Do you want a deep and infinite abyss into which to drop your thoughts?

Do you want every word that has ever been written?

Do you want the words that haven’t?

I will write you joy, I will write your soul into happiness.

Do you want William Stafford’s thread and Mary Oliver’s forgiveness and David Whyte’s sweet darkness? I will read them all to you.

Do you want hordes of fiery letters, burning away the darkness?

Do you want oceans of cleansing words, washing away whatever stains your soul?

Do you want me to stand with a sword between you and your demons?

Do you want an army of caring to shield you from pain?

Do you want your nightmares unraveled and woven into dreams?

No, that is what I want.

Whatever you want, you must give it to yourself.

Whatever your soul, only you can write it.

Whatever your dreams, only you can shape them.

You have every potential and every word and every silence within you already.

You are exquisitely powerful.

In the meantime,

I have here, for you,

Tea.

A cookie.

A listening ear.

A hug. 
A poem.

To Every Man Who...

To every man who ever approached me when I didn’t want to be approached;

To every man who ever touched me without asking first;

To every man who ever shouted at me as I walked or ran or fled down the street;

To the first boy who ever called me a bitch;

To the stranger who stopped his car and took a picture of me through the open window when I was a teenager;

To the youth who grabbed my arm on my evening walk by Aker Brygge;

To the man who aimed his crotch at me on the bus so that it bumped me regularly, despite my well-positioned crochet hook;

To the older teacher who thought it was okay to wrap his arms around me from behind so that my neck pulsed in the crook of his elbow;

To the guy who came up beside me late one night on the Yarkon and slowed when I slowed and ran when I ran and only left when I whirled around in the opposite direction;

To the creepy colleague who walked into the principal’s office this week, saw me there alone editing a document, and said, “why, you look so pretty today, my principal”;

To the fellow poet who “bumped into me” at a poetry slam Wednesday night and then, apologizing, angled his body so that mine was squished into a corner and his leg against mine;

Congratulations. You now have a president who is a role model for your actions.

Congratulations. You are mainstream.

Congratulations. You are worming your way into my nightmares.

But:

To the first boy who ever called me a bitch: my best friend told me she was glad I was a bitch, it meant I was smarter than you (I was) and got things done (I did) and people listen to me (they do), and since then, I have never cared about being called a bitch.

To the stranger who stopped his car and took a picture of me through the open window: You started me thinking about rights and articulating to myself that others could not own an image of me without my permission—I advanced philosophically and morally because of you. 

To the youth who grabbed my arm on my evening walk by Aker Brygge: When I glared at you with all the fury I possess and you dropped my elbow like it was burning, I walked away with a feeling of power, and to this day am unafraid of walking alone at night.

To the older teacher who thought it was okay to wrap his arms around me from behind: You’ve been fired. I’m still here. And I’ve been promoted.

To the man who aimed his crotch at me on the bus so that it bumped me regularly: My boyfriend switched seats with me and refused to let me suffer, reminding me that men who view me as an object are not contagious.

To the guy who came up beside me late one night on the Yarkon and slowed when I slowed and ran when I ran and only left when I whirled around in the opposite direction: I am faster than you. I am stronger than you.

To the creepy colleague who walked into the principal’s office this week, saw me there alone editing a document, and said, “why, you look so pretty today, my principal”: I am not pretty. I refuse to be pretty.  You will see just how ugly I can be.

To the fellow poet who “bumped into me” at a poetry slam Wednesday night and then, apologizing, angled his body so that mine was squished into a corner and his leg against mine: I beat you in the poetry slam. I will beat you in every area, always.

My experiences are highly privileged. I have never been attacked by someone I could not fight off, never had to deal with more than casual sexism or, at the most, being touched by a stranger through my clothes. I have the blessing of nothing more than a residue of nightmares that pulse up again because a pussy-grabber was elected president. Many women don’t have the luxury of dismissing these sorts of moments in their lives, like I can.

My experiences made me stronger. They made me into the person I am today, a woman who travels alone abroad, who scores scholarships and grants, who competes and wins, who advances in the career she loves. If each moment made me tougher, more capable and resilient and powerful, then I wonder what four years of Trumped America will do to the women of America.

I find myself echoing Seth Meyers: Somewhere in America, someone’s daughter is our future first female president. And after four years of Trumped America, you men who grabbed and chased and pushed and hugged and bitched and bumped… you’d better be very, very afraid. Because we won’t be.

I Am Falling in Love With My Imperfections

Today I gave a student permission to be imperfect. She needed to hear it, and watching her relax as we talked gave me pause. Perhaps we should all be allowed to be imperfect. Not all of the time—after all, the pursuit of perfection occasionally slides into genius—but every so often, we need to just let things be.  I left my student with the intention of being imperfect, myself, for the rest of the day. I might even carry it over into tomorrow.

Yesterday, a shipment of books arrived at school. They came in bubble wrap, and my colleague and I went to town popping it. We jabbed it with scissors, twisted it together, and stomped on it gleefully. While joking around, I began thinking about what the headlines would say in different newspapers:

JPost: “East Jerusalemite goes on savage stabbing attack in school staffroom”

BBC: “Israeli Jew violently destroys shared resources”

Teacher Ed: “Teachers develop new bubble-wrap-popping curriculum as part of peace process”

It was none of those, just fun. Sometimes, popping bubble wrap is just popping bubble wrap.

Our school had its annual youth peace conference today. Students and teachers came from schools as far as Jordan and Gaza, as well as the West Bank and Israel. It was delightful to watch them all playing games together and settling down to serious workshops on peace and coexistence. But during an introductory session, I was jarred by one of our school’s Palestinian kids who said that his “struggle” (the ice breaker question) was “living with the enemy.”

I looked around. Was I the enemy? Were the other Israelis in the room? I don’t think of him, or Palestinians in general, as the enemy—is that a privilege that I have because I haven’t personally been attacked, only people I know? Or because I live in Tel Aviv and teach in a Palestinian-Israeli school and thus have the luxury of surrounding myself with people who insist that Palestinian terrorists are not representative of Palestinians? Or because I have the privilege of not feeling oppressed, merely attacked? Well. It brought back the reality of why we have this conference, and indeed, our school.

Today it rained for the first time since spring. Here, it always rains for the first time after sukkot, exactly when we start to pray for rain. There’s something about that that hits me right in my religious Zionism.  

This evening, my sister opened a conversation like this: “Do you know what the worst thing in the world is?”

I considered my recent history. “Being stuck in the bathroom without toilet paper? Running out of money on your rav kav while on the 186? Your physiotherapist forbidding running?”

Being one-upped, my sister had to take it to its natural place: “Genocide?”

“Nuclear holocaust?” I parried.

“Genocide is worse than nuclear holocaust because it isn’t fair.”

“Nuclear holocaust kills everyone, and it’s someone stupid’s fault. How is that not worse?”

“Because there’s no one around to notice it.”

“Genocide isn’t genocide without some bystanders. Is that it? Genocide is only bad if you’re around to hear about it and feel bad?”

It turns out the worst thing in the world was our other sister, who has not called or skyped or emailed in the past week. Yels, if you’re reading this, if you’re out there, please send a messenger pigeon.

Elizabeth Carlson, "IMPERFECTION"

I am falling in love
      with my imperfections
The way I never get the sink really clean,
forget to check my oil,
lose my car in parking lots,
miss appointments I have written down,
am just a little late.
I am learning to love
      the small bumps on my face
      the big bump of my nose,
      my hairless scalp,
chipped nail polish,
toes that overlap.
Learning to love
      the open-ended mystery
            of not knowing why
I am learning to fail
      to make lists,
      use my time wisely,
      read the books I should.
Instead I practice inconsistency,
      irrationality, forgetfulness.
Probably I should
hang my clothes neatly in the closet
all the shirts together, then the pants,
send Christmas cards, or better yet
a letter telling of
      my perfect family.
But I’d rather waste time
listening to the rain,
or lying underneath my cat
     learning to purr.
I used to fill every moment
     with something I could
          cross off later.
Perfect was
     the laundry done and folded
     all my papers graded
     the whole truth and nothing      but
Now the empty mind is what I seek
      the formless shape
      the strange      off center
      sometimes fictional
                                 me.

The Last Page

Question 1: (Fill in the Blank) The first page of the history book starts with “The…” The last page of the history book ends with “time.” 

That was the last exam I took in high school. I read the question, grinned, and set to work on my essay.

It was an exam that, in retrospect, was impossible for me to fail. It was an exam that said, “I believe in you. You will know what to write here. I don’t even have to give you a question; you will still come up with the answer.” With such encouragement, how could I write anything but a nuanced and detailed analysis of modern European history?

Four years earlier, the same teacher came up behind me during my first ever high school history exam, and asked me, as my pencil trembled in my shaking hand, “are you nervous?” Without waiting for an answer, she dug her fingers into my shoulders in a fierce simulation of a back rub, electrifying every ticklish nerve in my body. I spasmed hysterically in my seat, and, blissfully unaware of my discomfort, she whispered, “You can do it.”

And she kept saying it.

She was a teacher who gave me books.

Cowisms hung on her wall. They explained everything.

She introduced me to Woolf, to Bronte, to Margaret Atwood, to the Forsyte sagas and the world of fanfict by Jasper Fforde. She spent her free time talking with me about the books she’d given me. When I was kicked out of some other class, I wandered through the school to find her in the teacher’s lounge or library, to share literary sympathies, sure that eventually she would kick me right back into class. She left her classroom unlocked for me during lunch so I could lie on the floor and read. She gave me a few now-tattered pages that I still use: pages of literary questions, of literary terms, of poems.

In her class, we debated.  We debated God the most, and then our teenage idealized utopias, and the endings to our novels (it still upsets me to remember that Garret thinks Mrs. Mallard died of joy in “Story of an Hour”). We didn’t debate feminism. It was a given in her class. (How I wish she could have seen a female president!)

She pushed us. For her we wrote essays, memorized chapters, slept with the history book under our pillows. For her we gave speeches, acted out plays, and filled binders with notes on novels.  She was terrifying, and inspiring, and one day, when I lay feverish on the library couch, she used her free period to drive me home. I worked my hardest for her; even if it was a topic I didn’t care for, I couldn’t bear to disappoint her.

Often, when I stand in front of a classroom, I find myself channeling Mrs. Moskowitz. I had the most selfish of relationships with her: I was her student. I spent all those English and History classes concerned with what she could give me, with what she could push me to do. So it gives me the greatest satisfaction to pass on some of her essence in my own teaching; to demand greatness and foster debate and model feminism. And, most of all, to give students books, and to talk about them afterwards. For even after the last page, the story lives on.  

Baruch dayan emet. You will be missed, Mrs. Moskowitz.

Thoughts, Comments, Questions?

A teacher at the start of the school year has occasion to feel somewhat like Sisyphus, rolling a giant boulder of work up the hill. Of course, Sisyphus wasn’t interrupted by constant meetings, and probably would have lain down and cheerfully allowed the boulder to roll over him if he had been.

I am the worst in meetings. I think that having been a terribly disrespectful, misbehaving high school student makes me a better teacher, but when it comes to meetings, I’m at a disadvantage. I regress right back into terrible studenthood. I resist the notion of somebody having the right to bore me for a useless hour with every bone in my body. I can only hope that my sins of obvious inattention during meetings are paid for through the purgatory of attending them.

People are always asking me what the biggest difference is between the work environment in Israel and North America, and I think I’ve finally figured it out: North Americans have a written civilization, and Israel, an oral culture. The frustration I feel about face-to-face communication stems from a number of sources. Of course, as a literature teacher, I appreciate the written word. As an OCDP-er, I appreciate consistent records. As a busy person, I appreciate the ease of reading communications at my leisure. As a professional, I appreciate the written document over the muttered coffee-urn comment. And, as an inveterate introvert, I prefer having the option of not actually talking to anyone over the age of 18 during the course of my workday.

High school students, however, are pretty fun game. They don’t mind being asked metaphysical questions in the middle of their lunch break, and are always ready to pause to laugh at some terrible irony or test a ridiculous theory. They are both deeply cynical and incurably idealistic. They resent time-wasting as much as I do. I adore my particular batch of kids.

We’re reading Half of a Yellow Sun in my higher-level class, and steering though shoals of racist generalization as the students search for specific insights. It’s fascinating to watch the dynamic between the kids raised in Africa, and those from Europe or the Americas. Kids from both backgrounds are really sensitive about race while others barely seem to notice it, with varying results of brutal stereotype or sweet naivety.  

The new students only really begin classes next week. Many of the second years from Arabic cultures have expressed a worry to me; apparently, the number of Israelis is more than double the number of Arabic kids this year. What will the nature of the school be, if we don’t have an equal number of representatives from both sides? Excitingly, we have our first Gazan student, the first student who received approval from the Israeli government to study in an Israeli school.

Students took the English diagnostic exam today. Most students are aiming for a high level English class, and so nearly the entire junior class—about 70 kids—crammed into two classrooms and wrote their first essays. The Gazan told me earnestly, afterwards, that it was “a really great exam,” leaving me wondering what on earth does happen in Gaza that kids from there can say such things with a straight face. 

Today, when I asked a student for feedback, she started chanting with me: “So. Thoughts? Comments? Questions?”

“—Huh? Um, do I say that a lot?” I asked her.

“At least once a class,” she responded.

“…” I cleverly replied.

“It’s okay. We like it.”

I was relieved to hear that my mantra is a request for feedback, and even more that they like it.

Ah well. Back to grading my stack of sixty-five diagnostic essays. Cheers to the teachers of the world as they start their year. May the copier always function, may the testing organizations die terrible deaths, and may the classroom full of busily inquiring students still light up at a poem.