Comparisons

Teaching is like traveling to another country. With each August countdown, there is a flurry of preparation, a mental whirlwind of checking and re-checking lists, sure---absolutely positive---I have forgotten some crucial item.

I lay awake the night before the first day of school as I do the night before a journey begins. Anxious. A thousand ‘what-if’s’ running around, bumping into one another in my mind, jockeying for position in the forefront of my brain. “What if I oversleep?” “Have I packed_________?” “Did I make that seating chart for second block World Studies?” “What was the word for ‘Thank You’?” “How will I deal with the myriad of mishaps on the first day of school that could make or break me for the semester depending on how I deal with them?”

Eventually, the confidence in myself as a resourceful traveler and a competent and resourceful teacher takes over and eases the traffic jam in my mind….each worrying ‘what-if’ finding its luggage on the baggage carousel and leaving the terminal of my head.

The alarm goes off and I am too focused, too busy to worry and stew on the ‘what-ifs’ of the night before. I have a new journey to begin today. There is a familiarity to this movement. It is a new kind of comfortable anxiety. It is the anticipation for the unknown ahead that is finally about to become the commonplace.

I focus on getting the necessary tasks done, checking in for my flight, making sure I have all my lesson plan materials for the first lesson of the year and then I wait. Wait for that first boarding call, that first bell to signal students to start trying to find my classroom.

The plane breaks through the clouds on its descent and I get my first glimpses of the new landscape that will be my home for the next couple months as my first students tentatively enter my classroom. The first view is still too distorted to be able to see what it will “really” be like---the area viewed from above is a patchwork quilt, the students still unknown and unrecognizable.

The bell sounds--signaling it is safe to remove your seatbelt and signaling the start of class—and I am full steam ahead. Again with the tasks of getting luggage, taking attendance, finding my lodging, finding a way to put the new faces with new names.

But in all the flurry and activity, in the back of my mind, I am taking in as much as I can. The license plates on the cars look different and the streets are narrower, that-girl-in-the-back-appears-to-be-easily-distracted-I should-move-her-seat-closer-to-the-front. The radio playing in the car lends a surreal quality to the normal activity of riding in a car, but it doesn’t sound familiar and the scenery flashing by I have never seen before, yet there is a familiarity to the people walking the sidewalks, living their lives. I am back in my classroom after being gone for a couple months and it is again filled with students and the teaching gig is familiar but it is all new faces I have never seen before….so it appears familiar, yet it is not. Again, there are a myriad of brief flashy thoughts that dart in and out of my mind as I go about my business of starting the journey, starting the school year.

That first night, I get into bed, exhausted, depleted from the effort it took to take EVERYTHING in, as much as I can all at once and still complete the tasks I had to do that day in beginning my new journey. With each successive night, I become less exhausted and more aware that I am less out of my element and more at ease in the surroundings.

After a couple weeks, I think back and reflect upon my first impressions…do I even remember them? What stood out as so different? It seems so ‘normal’ now. Were those first impressions of the city, of the students, correct or was I basing those impressions on a previous experience because it looked/sounded/acted the same? I have discovered how to navigate the new streets and alleys and I have learned everyone’s name and their personal quirks unfold daily before me.

Without me being conscious of it, a couple months have passed. Where did the time go? The anxiety is long, long gone and I am in full stride of living overseas or teaching in a high school and the newness has worn off. Right before winter break, everyone is chomping at the bit to have a week or so reprieve and have a chance to recharge and reevaluate how it is all going. After a couple months in another country, I want a break, a reprieve a chance to re charge. I don’t want to have to remember words if foreign languages, I don’t want to have to listen to high school students give excuses why they don’t have their homework, I don’t want to have to figure out the different system to send a letter, I don’t want to have to remind students to bring their books to class. The newness has worn off and I just want to be comfortable and in control of my life again.

Thankfully, this quickly passes and things turn to a more positive light and what was difficult before suddenly seems to be a breeze and everything just sort of falls into place with only the occasional road bump to break things up and make it a unique and interesting experience.

Before I realize it, I am at rehearsal for graduation reading the names of students that a few years earlier I wasn’t sure they would be walking across the stage or those that I can see great things destined for them. Before I realize it, I am packing my bags to return ‘home’, and yet this has become home.

It is bittersweet. I am happy to be returning to my family, to the States, to home and all things familiar and comfortable. I am happy that another school year has finished with its own unique successes and new relationships forged and deepened.

But.

In the back of my heart, I long to make the experience just a couple days longer, make one more connection, see one more light bulb go on. I realize that the closing of a chapter is happening. No matter how many times a student comes back to visit my classroom to say hi, or how many times I return to visit a country, it will never be the same. I close my classroom door for the last time and I step off the plane onto America soil. Already, as I get into the car to go home, I think……”next year”, “next trip”…..