Education – John Collings

Welcome to Summer?

If you want to see pure exhaustion, find a teacher who has just finished a long school year. It does not matter the level that they teach, this is the moment in their busy schedule where they have plowed through the final assessments, attended all of those important milestones in their students’ lives such as graduation or promotion, and have tidied up their classrooms enough so it will look like they care about the way outsiders perceive them. The end of the year is a mad dash at the end of a long marathon, and it takes the last remnants of energy that any educator has left in their tanks. I know that when I make my way out of campus for that final time of the school year, carrying my milk crate full of my personal effects, I feel completely spent like I want to flop down on a couch looking to run the laps on television with the remote in my hand. It is about all my mind can handle at this time, but I know in my heart that it will not last for very long.

After all, it is summertime! This time of the year that I find my own choices to do with as I will, and the television will just not satisfy my craving for adventure, and intellectual stimulation. There are so many books I want to read, so many games I want to play, and so many places I want to see that I cannot let that pure exhaustion plant me in my living room. I have to get out, and see what the world has to offer. This means that I look deep within myself to find that reserve I know is down there.

Every teacher has this reserve. They pull from it constantly. It usually comes at the beginning of the day, during a hurried lunch, or right after the final bell when a troubled student stumbles into their room to look for some kind of guidance. This could be anything from help with their writing to advice about relationships to just a friendly face that they need at that exact moment. It is part of the teacher’s job to put aside what they are doing, and all of their worries and concerns, to take care of the needs of their student. And people tend to forget that it is not just one student. The stream of students can sometimes feel like it is ongoing, and at the end of the year that stream really starts to surge. Add on to this, all of the little things a teacher needs to do at the end of the year: create and grade exams, calculate final grades, and tie up any loose ends, and you have the perfect storm where that reserve well will quickly run dry.

The management of a classroom is another thing that most people do not consider when talking about the drain on teachers. I recently had a talk with a friend of mine who works outside of academia about this. He is a manager of a group of twelve people and he was telling me how exhausting it could be to make sure that all of these people are getting the work done that needs to get done. I had to chuckle a little bit because managing twelve people sounds like heaven. He did not consider that a high school teacher has at least five classrooms of people that they have to manage. I am one of the lucky ones that work internationally, so the schools I have worked at cap their classroom sizes at twenty-two students, but that is even worse in classrooms in the United States where due to budgetary concerns, classrooms have exceeded thirty students in them, and I have heard in some places up to fifty-five.

This is why summer is so important to teachers. For those who teach the early years, it is a time to participate in more grown-up activities, to return to that time in their lives where they can once again be adults, to have conversations grounded in logic and reason. For those who teach in secondary schools, it is a time for them to enjoy life free of the hormones and drama that comes with the teenage years, to have days filled with people who are motivated to do what needs to get done and they do not have to be the ones to motivate them, and to have a life free from the constant pressure that their career places on them. It is a time for the teachers to recharge their batteries and get ready to take on the challenges of the next year.

Most summers, it takes a couple of weeks to get caught up on sleep, and find that restful state that is conducive to most other people in the world. It sometimes takes three to four weeks before teachers can let go of the worries of being a teacher and relax enough to feel somewhat human. It is also around this time that teachers start to see the end of summer approaching, so they have to place up mental blocks to avoid the stress that comes with the dawn of a new school year. With that block in place, they can usually to get a place of calm by the start of the school year so they can have the patience and resolve to make it through another one. So when you see a teacher taking it easy for some time have some empathy and understand where they are coming from. It is not an easy job, and the break is a necessary evil so they can do their job well. It is an act of kindness that will go far and help to prepare the next generation of the challenges they will face in this world, hopefully making it a better place overall.

The Final Report

You like to hold up the love of your son
As proof he is the head of his classes,
But when you look at all that he has done,
He is just another of the masses.
You cannot claim that he is the smartest
Just because you wish for it to be so.
You just need to see him taking a test
That you’ll recognize him to be below.
Maybe if you engaged in his learning
And tried to grow in his abilities
Then the longings in which you are yearning
Would be worthy of the praise that you tease.
Practice in the art of education,
And stop with this grade negotiation.

The Freedom Flight

The world needs to beware. Teachers everywhere are putting away their red pens and lesson plans, and are making their way to the far reaches of the globe. It is summer time, and there will be a need for these people to unwind. For all teachers, the release at the end of the year is a time where they can let out that breath they have been holding on to. The kids have been on edge because they know the end is near, and the older they get, the more stressful it becomes for them. But after that final bell rings, and everybody floods out of the building for the summer months, there is a collective sigh. It is over, and we can recharge our batteries, and find a way back to that sanity we all crave.

For international school teachers, there is another layer to this. Most of them live thousands of miles from their family and friends. They do build many relationships with the people that they work with, but it is those other relationships that they wish to return to. Their new found home, wherever that may be, becomes a burden at the end of the school year, and they wish to escape to different environments.

This is where the freedom flight comes in.

Many international teachers wait a couple of days before they board that flight to their adventure for the summer. It gives them a couple of days to unwind. But there is another group of teachers who will throw a bunch of clothes in a bag, and rush to the airport a couple of hours after they have clocked out for the last time. Even before the clock strikes midnight, they are on a flight to a different part of the world. This is known as the freedom flight. It is an escape from the daily grind to try to grab as much of summer as they can. It can induce a different kind of stress than what is presented during the school year. They feel like they are leaving something important behind, and they are not quite sure if they will make it to that plane in the first place. But the rewards are worth the effort.

I woke up in the afternoon on the day after my last day in school in a completely different country with a completely different ecosystem. I had left behind the hot, dusty streets of Amman, and was in the cooler, tree lined boulevards of Tbilisi. Responsibility had been placed on hold, and I could now focus on different important things in life such as enjoying a great meal, and having my first adult beverage of the summer season. It only took a night of flying and a distance of about 900 miles to have a change of perspective and attitude.

It is a great way to start the summer, and I am already feeling the stress of the school year wash away as I prepare for a couple of months of rest and relaxation. I hope you join me on my adventures as I travel around the world, and if not, I hope it is because you are out there enjoying your own freedom flight.

Wasta

This institution is about learning,
So kindly leave your wasta at the door.
Please quit pretending that you are a king;
You cannot know what you didn’t before.
Being able to say that you know who
Does not demonstrate what you do not know.
I would rather see that your learning grew
Than hearing about your people in tow.
What you can do should take priority
Rather than your latest self-centered need.
Can you show to me your ability,
And put in check you pedigree’s greed.
The world does not need a nanny culture,
Maintaining people’s life of indenture.

Wasta – a practice in Arab society where people use their personal relationships to gain favor.

Grant’s Ranch – A Walker’s Paradise

I have been spending a lot of time over at my parents, and one of the things I have been enjoying every morning before the Colorado sun gets too hot and makes the outside unbearable is a walk around the neighborhood with my dad. They moved a while back, so it is not the same neighborhood that I grew up in, and it was when I was old enough to have moved out of the house, so I did not really have much of an opportunity to explore the neighborhood that they moved into. I thought of it as just a place with a bunch of big house with small yards to keep maintenance to a minimum, and a couple of parks for people to walk through or play at if they wanted to wear out the kids. I was unaware of all of the space that was designated to keep the area beautiful while highlighting the beauty of Colorado at the same time.

A lot of this open space is maintained by the good people at the Colorado lottery and I am happy that there are places like this out and it is a benefit of having an organization dedicated to collecting money and reserving places in Colorado to keep natural so the whole Front Range will not be overcome by human sprawl. But I do have a little bit of a love/hate relationship with the organization. Though I love the fact that they are dedicated to keeping Colorado beautiful, they do collect a lot of money that could also be used for other purposes that need attention in the state of Colorado. In the year of 2020, the Colorado Lottery collected $658.8 million dollars, making it the second biggest year for this organization that has been around since 1983. I love the way that they make sure that a little part of Colorado stays Colorado, and when I find these hidden little corners that they protect, I am happy that they are there.

But I am also an educator, and spent a lot of my first few years working in one of the smaller districts in the state. The building I used to work in housed a small alternative high school that kept students in school who wanted to drop out for various reasons. It was not a priority of the district, but I like to think that we did a lot of good there with very little money. Parts of the building were falling apart and we did not always have the equipment we needed in order to give the students the education that they needed. I was not paid well, nor were any of the other teachers that worked in this district. A little bit from the state could have helped out a lot to make this struggling district a great place, but one of the biggest contributors to the coffers of the state went to protecting the landscape of Colorado. If they could have allocated some of that money to education, it could have transformed this field into something really great.

And that is where the love/hate relationship with this law comes into effect. I love Colorado for its beauty and I know that with the amount of people moving here, the need to protect this land becomes greater with each passing year, but I also believe in education and the system has been broken in Colorado for a long time without any sign of anybody willing to come along to fix it. There are ways to do allow both things to exist, but it would take some strong leadership to bring it about. The priorities of the state do not seem to align with my thinking either, so I will just have to keep on letting my voice get heard with my votes, and maybe some day the change will happen.

Until then, I will continue to enjoy what Colorado has to offer by enjoying my walks, and finding those little treasures that can only be found in this state. I hope it continues to be that way and the new influx of people into the state will not change the beauty of the Front Range and that my parents will always have the wonderful neighborhood that they can always enjoy due in large part from the funds generated by the Colorado State Lottery.

Closing the Chapter

I don’t think that anybody is going to disagree with me when I say that the last couple of years have been strange ones. A lot of people had to reimagine what their lives were, and many routines that we lived by had to be thrown away as we tried to figure out a new way to make it work. Teaching was probably one of the biggest fields that really had to rethink the way it did things, and it wasn’t always easy. It definitely tainted the way that people in this career viewed their profession. It was hard to recognize how effective they were being.

Elementary school teachers told tales of students easily distracted and who were more interested in showing off their pets to the rest of class than engaging in the lesson. Middle school teachers also struggled delivering concepts that were verging on being a little more abstract and students being able to follow simple instructions. My experience as a high school teacher showed me a new perspective. I can tell you what the foreheads of all of my students look like, but beyond that I haven’t a clue. I was amazed at the amount of students that could not figure out how to tilt the cameras on their computers so I could see their whole face. Of course, this was a great way to hide what they were really doing, texting their friends, or playing video games. I completely understand why they loved this style of learning because it meant that they didn’t have to do much and then later pretend that the stress of being online all of the time was the reason for their low production.

Of course, I was not much better. There would be many times that I would stare out my window wondering what the outside world had to offer when I should have been doing some work instead. It was really hard to stay motivated in the place I had reserved for relaxation. The lines between work and home blurred, and I am still struggling to separate the two even though last night was my last night of the school year and the last time I would work at this school. I still woke up this morning thinking that I needed to check my email, grade some papers and prepare some lessons, but this was not the case. It will take a few days before I will be able to shed this feeling and see life in a different light.

I did say my final farewell to the school last night after watching the awards ceremony for the high school. It was a little bit of relief, but I will not be able to celebrate until tonight. Because I was working in Oregon at the time, 14 hours ahead of the time of the school in Thailand, it was really late at night and I just wanted to get to bed instead of unwind from the school year. Blowing off a little steam will help me make this adjustment as I say goodbye to the school.

It is something that I have wished to do for about a year now, and my negative attitude towards the school is not necessarily fair. Yes, the school has some problems that will take an uncomfortable couple of years to overcome, and I do not necessarily agree with a lot of its philosophies, I have dumped an undue amount of negativity at the school. Most of this is because I have associated the school with the problems of Covid and teaching online. I don’t think I could be at any school and spend time teaching online and look at the school favorably. It is not an easy thing to do, and I am happy that it is all over. I hope that I will never have to spend time teaching online again.

On the other hand, I do not think I can look past the pain of online teaching when I look at the school. It will always be looked at through that lens. Even during the times I got to spend teaching my students face to face, it was stressful. It gets really tiring to tell students to put on their masks correctly to stop the spread of this deadly disease while other teachers on campus make comments about how the disease is a hoax and masks are useless. It is a noble fight against a losing cause.

Overall, it is a chapter in the book that is my life. I could close that chapter and hope to never revisit again, or I could look at the pain and frustration from this time in my life and learn from the experience. It will always be what it was, but I may look back at my time with this school in Thailand with some fondness. There were always the students, some of my all time favorites in my long career, who worked hard and were so eager to learn. It was the best English department I ever worked for. And most of the time that I lived out there, I did not have to worry about this world wide pandemic in the same way that many other people elsewhere had to. I just need to close that chapter for right now, and prepare for the next one coming up at the end of the summer. It may be an opportunity to put this Covid kind of lifestyle behind us, and look to a future that resembles that happy life we all once lived.

Seeing the Finish Line

I know that I have been talking more about my career as a teacher lately, but that is because I am finishing up my school year in a remote location. It is not the typical way that I have done it in the past, and with all of the ways we all have done things differently over the last two years, I thought it would be interesting to document my feelings along the way.

I am getting to that point of the school year where things are wrapping up and I am starting to work on thinking about what I will be doing next year. This time of the year is always busy and very stressful, and Covid has not made it easier. Tracking down students to get them to turn in missing assignments and finish up the school year is made more difficult by the fact that I am hoping that they will eventually check their email to see the urgent message I have sent them. I get that the latest video game is more exciting than an email from an English teacher, but I wish they would prioritize enough to make sure they finish the school year before they start playing their game. But I can’t blame them because I would be in the same spot if I was them.

Despite this, I have gotten to the point of where I have checked all of my boxes and completed most of my duties. There are a couple of other responsibilities I need to take care of before I go, but they are minor and don’t add to the level of stress I am starting to shed. Really, all I am doing is waiting around for that final metaphorical bell to ring so I can log out of email account one last time, and get to enjoying the summer. It is a lot of sitting around which has made me feel bored and busy at the same time, but I will take this feeling over the stacks of papers I had to work through a couple of weeks ago. It is nice to know that it is finally coming to an end, and I am looking forward to next step in my career as I switch schools and countries next year. It is the spark I need right now, but I am just not there yet.

It is that finish line that is always the hardest to cross. All of my years of running has taught me this. It is the time of the race where you are spent. You lungs are burning, and your muscles are wishing to seize up, but in order for the pain to stop, you have to keep plugging away at it. The location of the finish line never changes, just your relation to it. I can see that finish line right now, and I know what it feels like when you finally cross it. All of the tension and pushing you have done during that long race is finally released as you can now take life at stroll and collect your breath. Their is always a refreshing drink waiting for you at the end, and the rest of the day can be spent the way you want to. But looking back at the path you came from, you can give yourself the satisfaction that you just finished that race, and accomplished something many people are afraid to. It is a simple feeling, but it is one of the best feelings in the world, and I am looking forward to it.

There are only a couple of days left until I get to cross that finish line, and I will keep slowly plugging away at it until I reach it. And once I cross it, I can go back to the usual posts that having nothing to do with work, and have more to do with taking the world in I get to visit. I hope to see you there.

The International Community – Siam Summer

It may hard for me to admit it right now not being able to go back home to America, but one of the best decisions I made in my life was joining the international teaching community. There are the obvious advantages such as traveling opportunities, experiencing different cultures by living in them, great work environments, and being able to work with some of the brightest young minds out there right now. But I think the things I enjoy the most is the community that comes with working international. You would think that it is huge and there would be no way to know all the people that work in this field in all of the different countries that have international schools, but this is not the case. The more I work in international teaching, the more I realize how small of a community it actually is.

Earlier this year I was talking with a friend I made out in Thailand, and he was telling me this story of his friend John and a camping experience he had in Alaska with a bear. I sat there listening to the story, and I could have sworn that I had heard it before, and I asked him if the John he was talking about was the same John I was friends with back in Korea. We found out that we had a mutual friend, and these are not the only cases. My principal right now worked with other friends of mine in Columbia. The car I bought in Thailand I bought from the same person that I bought my car from in Korea. There is a network of friends that I have all over the place in the world. I know people all over Asia, Europe, and even Africa that I could go visit at the drop of a hat. If I pick any person at the school I am currently working at, we could probably six degrees of separation and find out that we have acquaintances with other people somewhere else in this community. Even though we are spread all over the world, we still have created a small community within that world.

This is probably my favorite thing about teaching internationally. It makes me feel like I belong to something bigger, yet still feel comfortable enough with the people that I encounter to feel like it is still intimate. As I start to prepare for my sixth year overseas, I look forward to the new connections I will make this year and renewing the older ones that I have already encountered. It is one of the factors that people who are considering this field should consider because the friendships I have made through this experience will last a lifetime, and I believe you would find the same thing as well.

Basketball at Airports – The PreMove Day 1

I have known for quite some time that I would be making a big change in my life. I have been living in Seoul for the last four years and teaching at a great international school there, Korea International School, but it was time for me to move on as a person and as a teacher. I was in fear of growing complacent at the school I was working in because the years were starting to become routine, and I needed to find a new challenge so I could remain relevant as a teacher. I also needed a new adventure, so I looked into new jobs last October and found a new position in Bangkok in December. I did not want to say anything about it until the school year started to wind down because that knowledge compromises what I can do in the classroom, so this is the first time I have made the information public.

I am pretty excited about the move, but it does cause some stress in my life as I try to get everything together for my new job while wrapping up the school year at my old school. Luckily for me, KIS has three day weekend in May and I took the opportunity to move a lot of my stuff to my new school to make the transition a little easier. So I loaded up way too much stuff for a weekend trip on a budget airline and flew down to Thailand to look at my new school, my new neighborhood, and meet some new colleagues and get some paperwork taken care of. It will make for a busy weekend, but it will make things easier in the future.

I left Friday night to get the most of the weekend, but before I left, I had a couple of hours to kill in an airport. Most of you know that I come from Denver, Colorado originally and love the sports teams out there. And if you are following the NBA and the NHL, you know that Colorado is having a year that they have not experienced in a long time. The Nuggets look like serious contenders for the first time ever, and I wanted to watch the game. So I pulled out my tablet, found a place near my gate, and started watching the game.

It seems like a boring story I know, but it was the reaction of the Koreans that made my evening complete. The NBA is huge in Korea and there are many times that I have to tell my students to turn the game off and focus on the work of the classroom. The adults always love the opportunity to watch a game, so when they saw that some random waegookan was watching the Nuggets/Portland matchup from earlier that day, they started to gather around me to watch a play or two. I didn’t get to finish the game before my fight left, but I did have a couple of people peer over my shoulder to pass the time they were forced at an airport.

It is those small things that I am going to miss when I make the move to Bangkok. South Korea has been frustrating at times, but that is true for a lot of places in the world. But I found that I need to ignore those things that frustrate me, and focus on the moments that make me smile. If I do that in Thailand, it will be an experience like no other over the next couple of years.

I am excited to see where this weekend will take me, and I am excited to take that first step towards a new adventure. The weekend will probably fly by really quick, but I should take the time to pause and watch what life presents me. I will find those small moments that make life worth treasuring.

Games are Important – The Holidays Day 16

Last night I gathered around the dining room table with my parents, and My sister’s family to play a game of Codenames. It is one of the newer games that has helped bring about the resurgence of the popularity of board games, and I can see why because it is a smart game that with endless possibilities that will never let the game get old. It would almost impossible with all of the way the cards can be laid out that you would never experience the same type of mental connections that make this game interesting in all of the amounts of times that you get together to play the game. Its gameplay is also unique, and I have never experienced another game like it. Getting together with my family on a Friday night to play a board game might sound like a boring way to spend the start of a weekend, but I tend to disagree, and I think it is part of the reason why board games are becoming big business again.

These games are important. First of all, they are a social event. This is something that you cannot get from television or video games as well as you can from a board game. Television used to be a social event with people gathering around to experience the same story at the same time, but people still remained quiet so as not to disturb the action on the screen and didn’t really interact with each other. In recent years, it has gotten even worse. People rarely watch television in real time. Instead, they grab their tablet or phone, find a quiet corner of their house and experience the show on their own. The same can be said for video games. Yes, there are a couple of games like Madden, Smash Brothers, and Mario Kart that lend themselves to people getting together to play, and they have even set up on-line communities that allow people to interact over headsets, but the speed of the game takes over and the opportunity to talk gets taken away, and people become more interested in their reaction times rather than talking to each other.

Board games like Codenames are actually designed for people to interact with each other. There is enough downtime during the game to allow people to talk about their days and what is going on in their lives, and when the action is going on there is collaboration that is happening that once again forces people to interact with each other. It might not be as slick as a video game or cost as much to produce as a television show, but for some reason, this interaction with other people ends up more satisfying then getting together around a screen. I feel that after I play a game that I have made a stronger connection with the people I played with rather than when I sit down and watch something on the screen.

As a teacher, I also think that board games are important. On Fridays in my Creative Writing class, we always play a game of some kind such as Gloom, Balderdash, Magnetic Poetry, Exquisite Corpse, or Line-by-line Story. My students love these days the best and not just because it allows for some downtime in their hectic schedules, but because they get something out of the experience as well. The games are designed to spark creativity, and help my students with their writing whether it is with their voice, word play, or putting together a tighter plot. They are learning while having fun. In fact, I believe that when you are having fun is when real learning is taking place. This is when true engagement is taking place. This is part of the reason that I always try to make my classroom a fun place to be.

Codenames is a great example of how a game can be fun and at the same time a learning tool. It requires that the Spy Master makes connections to various words spread out on the table, and communicate that connection with the use of only one word. It requires that people start to see the connections in words. It also forces players to see that words can have multiple meanings. There is a lot going on in this game through some mental challenges. And it wasn’t like we were all sitting at the table staring at the matrix we created with intense concentration. We were laughing, talking, and having a good time.

This is why games are important. I am happy for this resurgence of games, and I am amazed at the different ways that people have come up with to challenge us while still being entertaining. It is the reason why when I have the opportunity to play a game, I always take it up.