Venn Diagram

The first quarter is nearly over. I've been trying very hard to be a good teacher to my students and a positive and contributing member of the teaching staff. I strive to be positive with my students but firm when I need to be--as much as my personality will allow. I try to model patience, gratitude, and understanding with varying degrees of success. Sometimes I even try to teach stuff. I am grateful for the opportunity to do this work here in Saudi Arabia. It is no less of an honorable endeavor here than it is for my friends back in Minnesota.

No matter the interpersonal confusion within a system or the general backwardness of a place where the tail often wags the dog and the forest is lost from view because everyone has been directed to put their head inside of a single tree or we communally fixate on our ability to describe, admire and talk about all of the educational tools one has at their disposal (even though a hammer remains the tool of choice) there are still 15-30 kids sitting in each classroom waiting, oblivious of the machinations and ambient clabber playing at a frequency only people with advanced degrees in educational leadership can hear.  [that may be a run-on]

Sometimes I imagine animated shorts, the kind you catch a glimpse of during the Academy Awards ceremony but never get to see the whole thing. One of them goes like this. A girl (or boy) stands before an audience trying to make themselves understood but each time a member of the audience whispers to their neighbor or looks at their phone or the clock, a portion of that girl disappears like a character beamed off a hostile planet on Star Trek, but they proceed to articulate their point. A person at the back of the room giggles at something her friend has whispered and before you know it the shoulder or torso of the girl at the front fades out. Someone else checks their snap chat and half her leg vanishes. The girl exists only in so far as the energy of the space is not violated, but each time a violation reoccurs another piece of her dissolves. At some point the audience is left just staring at a google slide waiting for a bell to ring when they will get up and go on to the next room and try it again.