She’s a Mil

I started attending a Quaker meeting a few months ago. I tried the Salvos but I just don’t think the main stream church is for me at this stage of my life. I am just loving the Quaker meetings though. We are a small group (only 6 of us) and all of us except one are pretty new to Quakerism so we have been reading a book of different readings called Quaker Basics. Obviously it is all about Quakerism and what the Quakers do and stand for. There is some really interesting and inspiring stuff in it and after the meeting in silence we have breakfast and sit and discuss the readings.

Last weeks reading were really profound for me and spoke directly to a situation I have been having at work. A student of mine a few weeks got a little frustrated with another student in the class who had answered a question he had posed. This is something I encourage in my classroom, I like creating a space in which we all learn together and from each other so I asked him stay back and talk about his problem. I was nervous as this student has also always been quite cold with me as well. However we had the most amazing conversation. He started off quite aggressively telling me that he came to class to learn English from me. He said that in Africa the teacher teaches and the students learn. If the students know so much then they don’t need to come to class he argued. He also said that he didn’t like group work. He told me that the other students in the class were rascist, that he has been studying with them for a year now and they hadn’t talked to him before, only now in my class. I was secretly pleased with this revelation, one of things I have most enjoyed is watching the students build friednships and learn about each other’s culture but obviously it is hard for him so I asked if he would prefer to work with the other Sudanese students. He said he wouldn’t. He is from a different tribe to most of the Sudanese in Alice and in my class and it was this other tribe that came into his village and murdered his parents and older brother. I was obviously shocked but his coldness with me was starting to make more sense. I listened to him as he told me his story, and he calmed down as he did so. He told me about how he came to Australia and his wife and children still in Sudan.

Since then I have thought about him a lot. About his life of course but also his thoughts on my teaching. While I have to say he seems to be a lot better in class since our chat I have been really struggling to work out how I can be the sort of teacher he wants without changing my style completely. Not only do some of the other student’s report to like it but I think it is actually a leads to more learning than a totally teacher centred approach. Not to mention I think it is really the only way I can be, While I was battling with this in my head I read this in the Quaker book. The author is actually a teacher as well, who does traning with other teachers about their strengths and weaknesses so it speaks directly to my problem but I think it works in all areas of life too.

“I ask the teachers to help each other to see that our limitations and liabilities are the flipside of our gifts, how our weaknesses are the inevitable trade offs we must make for having the strengths we have. When I understand my limits as trade offs for my strengths, something new and liberating happens within me. I no longer want to have my limitations fixed for to get fixed would be to compromise or destroy my gift. Instead I want to learn to acknowledge, embrace and live more gracefully within my limitations. So I will never be a good teacher for some students but perhaps I can find a way to keep the situation from souring.”

Yesterday I helped one of my students write a resume. He is going for a job as a cleaner at the hospital but they wanted a resume. Having no one else here to ask he asked me if I would help him and I agreed. In the process of creating his resume we had the most profound conversation.

He is an Afghani man who arrived in Australia 3 months ago. He fled the Taliban in 2000 and then spent 9 years getting here (illegally) through Pakistan and Indonesia. I couldn’t understand everything but he kept saying “guns” and “dogs” and “Taliban very bad” I think he was trying to tell me that the Taliban treat people like dogs and that they held him at gunpoint and took his business from him. He told me all this as I tried to piece together his work and education history which as you can imagine having spent the last 9 years as an illegal refugee is fairly sparse. His education history isn’t great either, 8 years at primary school then military training for 10 years where he mostly learned to read and write. I ended up deciding it was probably better to not put in anything. I think most employers would be fairly put off by someone who had primary school education and 10 years in the Afghani military. The saddest thing though is that there is nothing at all to put someone off this man. He is the simply the most gentle, polite, respectful and kind man with me and with all the students in the class. He has so much challenged any stereotyped ideas about Muslim men that I had (and I had them I have to confess but all my Afghani students especially him have made me realise that they may be the most misunderstood people in the world). He actually stands up when I come into the classroom. A habit I am trying to stop as quickly as I can I must say. Especially, as I feel that it is I who should be standing up when he comes in. A man who has been through all that he has but has maintained such a gentle spirit and no bitterness is truly extraordinary I reckon. I don’t think he feels like that though, having been treated in the ways that he has been treated he has lost most of his pride in himself.

As he left he said to me “You are very nice. What can I do for you?” I actually teared up. How could I tell him that I am actually not that nice. That I benefit on a daily basis from the exploitation of people like him, helping him write a resume is the least I can do. But more than that I wanted to somehow explain to him that in the sharing of his story with me he had given me something worth so much more than the resume I had written for him but I couldn’t quite find the words.

Then I came home and watched Q and A and Lateline. As the politicians and the people battled it out about what we are going to do about “boat people” and how we are going to get “the balance right of being compassionate and protecting our borders” I just wanted to scream.

Today I rang my superviser in Darwin to discuss an issue with him. We had a good chat and as I was hanging up he said, “I am sending you the summaries of the student’s evaluations today”. “Are they okay?” I asked all of a sudden feeling unnecessarily nervous. “They’re great” he said, “as far as I can remember only one, maybe two things you may have to note but nothing bad”. I hung up the phone feeling very worried in deed and checked my emails every couple of minutes to see if something had come through. It was ridiculous. I have 32 students, of course there will be one or two comments that I may have to note (in fact it is a good thing) but this does not mean that I am bad teacher or the students hate me or all the other negative things that were going through my head.

I really want to be less concerned about what people think of me. I had this issue a few years back when at course I was attending we were required to write notes to people giving them feedback about themselves. Of the 40 or so lovely notes I got one of them was negative and I totally fell apart. At the time I really worked hard to get over that and made some plans about how I would deal with negativity in the future and now here I was again out of proportinally worried about my students evaluations and feeling like I had gotton nowhere on that.

They came through a little while ago and they were absolutely lovely. While I know that people are always more likely to write good things and thus you can not put everything on these sort of evaluations they were a real boost for me. When asked if they were happy with class everyone single one of them said yes and there were a plethora of lovely comments to go with that. The one or two issues were simply one student who wrote “I like Emily’s teachings but we need more vocabularly” and another who wrote “I am happy to teacher but we need more grammar”.

I am very annoyed with myself and in light of the positivity of these evaluations I feel even sillier for worrying so much. But I guess that is not the point. I need to find a way of dealing with the fact that through life there are going to be people and students who do not like me but that’s normal and okay. I would like to be in a place where if one of them had of wrote “Emily is by far the worst teacher I have ever had and I have not learned a thing this semester” I would still be able to cope. I know I am no where near that.

I am in Darwin. It’s my first time here so feels a little bit special. I came up for work yesterday. Finally got to meet my boss and colleagues. They are all a bit mad I think, they all seem to talk more that me (which as you all know is a fair bit) but they are great. All very passionate about what we do and passion is contagious so I am feeling all inspired too. I was only at the office on Friday for two hours but it already feels so valuable. I have been winging it a fair bit since I started and haven’t been entirely sure if I’m on the right track at all but when I went through the stuff with my boss she kept saying things like, “this is so great” and “what a good idea” (she even wants to use some it herself) and was really excited by some of the students work. It was such a weight off my shoulders. I am going back on Monday and Tuesday to go through some admin stuff, observe classes, have some meetings (of course) etc but I feel like even if I wasn’t that the trip would be worth it.

This weekend though I am hanging Darwin. I am staying with some friends of mum’s. They are uniting church minister’s (even the wife) and are very cool hippy Christians, who have a very cool hippy Christian house, with lots of cool hippy Christian books and friends so I am really indulging that side of me. I am reading Marcus Borg because Gemma has been talking to me about him and I like him too.

Today, I went to the beach. It made me so happy. I don’t think I realised how much I missed that salty smell and the sounds of the waves and the feel of sand and water on my feet. It was a beautiful beach, surrounded by these amazing cliffs but no one it really. I went for a massive walk. I didn’t swim. They said you could, the box jelly fish don’t come until October but I was still a bit nervous so I went to the pool instead. It is right on the beach so I could still enjoy the view without the worry and I could also swim some laps. it has been a long time and that also made me so happy.

Tonight the hosts are taking me to the beach again to watch the sunset and drink wine with nice cheeses. How perfect is that.

Perhaps I could come up with a reason why everthing in my life is like exercise. But right now I think my work is like exercise in that when I am not teaching classes I find myself dreading them a little. I feel nervous, inadequate and all those things. However when I actually am in class I really enjoy it and after feeel quite good after. I feel the same about exercise. When I am not doing it I find it hard to get motivated but once I do I really enjoy it and feel great after.

Most people who know me well (or even a little bit) have heard me rave about the adult educator Paulo Friere. I am big fan of his thoughts (which he put into action) and recently I heard the coolest Paulo Friere story ever.

My mum is doing a course and she had the teacher’s of the course over to lunch. They are very passionate social activists and are obviously really good at it too. Anyway, my mum, knowing they shared my passion for Paulo Friere told them how much I liked him. One of the teachers asked me, “what do you like most about Paulo Friere” to which I responded, “I am not sure, you have really put me on the spot”. Not allowing me to get away with that he said, “Paulo Friere put people on the spot”. He was right so I made a fairly crappy response although he seemed to think it was okay and thus agreed to share with me his Paulo Friere story.

He had visited Brazil (where Paulo is from) to do some work with people living on the streets there. While there people talked over and over about Paulo Friere. Somehow he managed to get his number and after much deliberation plucked up the courage to call and organise an interview. Paulo agreed. When he arrived Paulo asked the translator if he spoke Portuguese. He said he didn’t so Paulo proceeded to speak Portuguese to the translator. After about 10 minutes he switched to a very fluent English. His point had been made though. They should have learned some of the language.

Paulo then talked for awhile about adult education, poverty, oppression, social action, all the things he is passionate and thoughtful about. The guy was trying to make notes. His switch from Portuguese to English had happened so quickly that he did not manage to put on a tape recorder. Finally, there was a pause. The guy thought, “this is my one chance to ask Paulo Friere a question”, so he did. Paulo looked at him and said something like, “it’s questions like those that are really the problem”. As the man had said Paulo was never afraid to put people on the spot.

That night he flew home, feeling himself to be completely changed by this meeting with Paulo Friere. On arrival to Australia with a bit of jetlag and the ideas floating around his head he could not sleep. He got up to try and write the interview down, seriously regretting not having been able to tape it and feeling more and more impacted on by this man. In the morning though his regret at not taping the interview and its effect on his life was even more profound when he discovered it was his last interview. Paulo Friere had died that night.

Since starting to teach I have found Paulo’s ideas hard to put into practice in the context that I teach. Hearing this story though has reinspired me to keep thinking about these issues and trying to implement them. And while I acknowledge I am still learning and need to take it slow (I bet even Paulo did in his first few months of teaching) it is good to feel inspired.

The other day I had to go to an award’s ceremony at work and accept an award. What happened was that the department I work for Territory wide had won the Vice Chancellor’s Award for something (I don’t even remember). There was a big ceremony in Darwin but then the Vice Chancellor came to Alice Springs and wanted to present the award again and because I am the only person in my department in Alice Springs I had to go and do this. This was very embarrassing for me for a number of reasons. Firstly, I have only been there for five weeks and have absolutely nothing to do with the receiving of the award but there I was none the less shaking the Vice Chancellor’s hand and having my photo taking with everybody clapping (it felt like graduation day again). Secondly, the Campus Administrator, who was announcing the award thought it would be a good time to tell everyone that I was the youngest teacher they had ever had on campus. Finally, I had, had no warning that I was to be receiving this award. I just arrived at work and was told by our admin assistant that I was to go. Unfortunately I had chosen this day to wear jeans and thongs to work. Normally this would not be an issue but all the other people receiving awards were wearing skirts and blouses and high heel shoes. It was one of those moments where I was really hoping that the ground would swallow me.

For the last three months, since coming here to Alice Springs, I have been feeling very time rich and under stimulated. This week however has been one of the busiest, most overwhelming weeks of my life…..

It started okay on Monday morning, got up late, had a relaxing breakfast, went to my poustinia to drop some things I am keeping there and had a bit of a quiet time. Then I went to town to meet my friend Sandi for a coffee at mid day. It was a good coffee (finally) but she has some pretty intense stuff going on so it was a fairly full on conversation. From there I went and had a haircut (I have really short hair now) and then to look at ovens, pick up taps and run some other errands for the house. At 4.30 I picked up Leonie, the woman from Darwin who had come to help me sort out what I was doing. We went straight to the office just for her to have a look at some things but didn’t end up leaving til 8.30. It was good though, we chucked out pretty much everything. Anyone who is a hoarder would have hated it but we found it really satisfying.

Picked up Leonie from her hotel the next morning and we were back in the office just after 10.30. Apart from a short lunch break, in which she continued to fill my brain with things I needed to know for the job, we worked all day. By 5pm my brain was so fried with all the new information (and more mess we had discovered from the previous person) but I had to run to an on call meeting and then run back for my evening class. That was totally chaotic again and by 9pm when it finished I was not feeling great.

Back at work by 8.30 on Wednesday for my 9.00 class. It went better than the previous evening but I still wasn’t thrilled. After class Leonie went through a few more things and then left. I was hoping that by this stage I would have everything all sorted but she had created almost as much work as relieved so I just kept going til 6pm. Then I went to class for three more hours and got home 9.15. 13 hours after I had left that morning. I was shattered.

Thursday, I had the morning off to clean, wash and do some paperwork. Then it was back to work for the evening class which as usual finished at 9pm. It was a lovely class though, I finally had a moment in which I thought, well I don’t totally suck at this, and I think the students actually learned something.

Today, I was in at 9.30 for an interview with a new student. I was only going to be there until noon but instead walked out at 4pm. That is a lot of hours especially as I am only supposed to be working 20 hours a week (from now on I hope). I was just really keen to feel like I was on top of things. And I do, at last! I am also home. I am totally exhausted but I am happy to know that I don’t have to think about work again until Tuesday afternoon. Lots of work to do on the house though.

I’ve started my new job. It is really intense I have to say. The woman before me left very quickly and unexpectedly so there’s been no hand over or anything. She was obviously not a very organised person as there are papers everywhere and no clue as to what they were for or anything. I truly have never seen anything like it in my life. On top of all this I am the only AMEP person in Alice, all my supervisers are in Darwin and they don’t really know much either. They have promised that someone will come next week to help me sort it all out and explain to me what I am supposed doing. Hopefully that will make this a little less overwhelming.

In the mean time I have just been attempting to teach some classes. I have had three classes and although they have not been great I think for my first attempts they haven’t been too bad either. Perhaps that’s more to do with the fact the students are lovely and very forgiving. They are a diverse group that is for sure. I have a number of Asians and Sudanese people, as well as an Afghani couple and a Cuban girl (there is also a Venezualen on the list but she didn’t come). There are no Europeans thus far at all though.

Although I feel fairly nervous all the time at the moment and very overwhelmed by it all, it feels good to be doing what I studied all those years for.

A few things happening on the job front after four weeks of nothing. Last week I thought I would put my name down at some cafes. It seemed that it could take awhile to get a job I really wanted so I could do this in the interim. That day I had an interview and the next day I was offered a job. It was a little bit of a cheer up as I had, had a rejection that morning for another job I was applying for.

But then in the evening another job I applied for rang to offer an interview which will be tomorrow. I was quite clear with the cafe lady it would be an interim thing and that seemed to suit her too but I wasn’t expecting to hear from this job so soon. Not sure how much I want this job though. Well I do but it is not exactly in education rather mental health again and I am not sure if I should hold for the education one.

I guess I will just have the interview and see what happens and then decide. They may not even want me.