Final Reflection: Snowballs and Wake Up Calls

“Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you’ll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’ll be tempted to say to the people around you, “how can you listen to this stuff?” ― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

I travel with a stash of dog-earred paperbacks in the bottom of my bag. For me, they are part of the company, part of the crew, with distinct voices and provocative ideas. Like their human counterparts, these travel companions have the ability to impact everything from my perspective and mood to the next city to see or next meal to eat.

These soft-covered friends are often directly connected to a particular place, and other times the topics are perfectly irrelevant. When I think of a city or country, I immediately remember what I was reading. I can’t think of the desert canyons of southern Peru without thinking of AJ Fikry and Marquez. I can’t think of Prague without thinking of Kundera and Hemingway. I can’t think of Croatia without Uris or the Arctic without Kim Heacox.

Each trip has its before, during, and after reading. Despite the best laid plans, each stage of reading is full of its surprises and exceptions, as a book list is never sequential but rather a tidal swirl of new additions and old favorites. My list is full of cutting and delays, a frustrating queue where no one follows the rules.

Near the end of our time at Maranyundo, Dara recommended a book to me. And like so many of paperbacks crammed into old duffel bags, or left in seatback pockets, or lent to strangers, or forgotten in hostels, Ishmael shaped me. It became the lens of my observations and the frame to my reflections.

For this last post, all of us are responding to the same five prompts. So here is one long post and four short ones.

How my perspectives shifted…

I am starting my 6th year of teaching at the Boston Arts Academy. As soon as I entered my first classroom years ago, I have lived in the world of education. I say “lived in” because the world becomes an all-consuming reality. The world is full of conversations of how things work, or how they should should work, or how things have always worked. This discourse of the world, the world of education in this case, becomes an ambient hum that is spoken even when its not being spoken.

Each year, the role of the teacher changes ever so slightly, usually with an additional requirement outside the classroom and a new fad of instruction in the classroom. Its a snowball rolling down a very shallow hill, gathering a bit more snow and gunk each year, but not changing in its composition. The speed of the snowball is so slow that it’s nearly impossible to discern any difference between this year and the last. We tweak schedules, modify curriculum, and adjust lesson plans, but never can we reach the core of change. It is always both invisible and inaccessible. We are sedated by that nearly silent messaging saying “Keep going, keep doing it, you all are doing the right thing. It makes sense. Keep going, and a few more changes this year will make it better.”Even when we want to change, we are most limited by our own imagination.

As educators, we spend a lot of time unpacking and repacking that snowball. We turn it around and look at it from different perspectives. We change its shape and orientation. And when our hands get cold and tired from the work, we are surprised to look down and see a nearly identical snowball.

It was time to stop looking at the same snowball.

Rwanda, specifically the Maranyundo Girls School, was a breath of fresh air. It was a slap in the face. It was the blaring of an alarm clock. Pick your favorite wake-up metaphor.

I am not going to go deep in the differences between Maranyundo and Boston Arts Academy. The important part was not how the school were different, but that they were so different yet both successful.

(I measured both schools as successful on my fool-proof school effectiveness rubric: 1) the students and teachers seem to like being there and seem to like each other, and 2) the students seem to be learning things, and seem to be learning that the learning of things is important.)

At Maranyundo, we observed some awesome things and some things that the school is still working on. We observed some structures and systems that we could take back to BAA and some structures and systems that wouldn’t make sense in our context. We shared ideas and practices that we use at BAA and we didn’t share some ideas and practices that wouldn’t make as much sense. Towards the end of the week, a week filled observing students, teachers, classes, and noticing such large differences, the background hum of our own country’s educational narrative finally became audible. To use Quinn's language, our own mythology became clear. The stories we tell ourselves and the stories we subconsciously work to enact. It was a realization of just how limited our conversations and our educational solutions have become.

I was able to see the snowball and I began to see how small and myopic my world had become.

We have shrunk our educational universe and defecated on imagination. We have hamstrung the very systems that were created to be creative. Our pilot schools, originally created to be innovative and creative, have come to resemble their traditional public school counterparts. And I hadn’t realized it.

Long term impact...

In summary, I was shown that there are different ways to do school. The teachers and the students of Maranyundo unstuck me. As an educator, this “unsticking”, this redefining of schooling, was transformative. This experience will be a milestone in my career for I expect that I will look back on my views on schools in two periods: those before Rwanda and those after.

What I learned…

I learned that generosity and gratitude are some of the most commonly used but least practiced words in American culture.

Short term impact...

I have a craving for a milky tea everyday at 10:40.

Something I'll never forget...

See photo.